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2015: The Arithmetic Of Bad Luck by bilms(m): 3:42pm On Sep 06, 2013 |
2015: The Arithmetic of Bad Luck By Dr. Aliyu U. Tilde The ongoing crisis in the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is deepening by the day. I was among the sceptics that dismissed the crisis as one of those that the ruling party would weather. However, there are many indications that this one is proving to be different. Comparison We have seen the disenchanted founding fathers of the PDP leave the party or politics entirely, one after another. Few, like Audu Obgbe, its former chairman, joined other parties and remained there. However, many, like Atiku, Rimi, Na’abba, etc, returned to the witch-mother, quickly or eventually. The overall picture that we have of such decampments is that for reasons of power and wealth, PDP members can hardly survive outside the party as long as it continues to occupy the presidency. In previous conflicts, it was easy for the party and the president to use the material resources at their disposal and the power invested in his position to buy disgruntled elements back or force them to return. More important than the two is the fact that since they are hardly popular, PDP politicians cannot stand on their own outside the party and survive in the harsh weather of opposition politics. This was highlighted by Senior Special Assistant (on Media) to the President said just a month ago when he said that the rebelling governors must eventually return to PDP because they cannot afford to abandon the winning party. Subsequent developments show that he may be wrong. What makes this crisis different is a combination of many things. One, the new PDP faction is engineered by a good number of governors from states that cannot be ignored by the President in his election arithmetic. To lose seven will be substantial. They are outgoing, not in need of the party to give them a second chance, and from states that have substantial amount of votes. There are many first tenure governors belonging to their camp, claimed the rebelling governors, but who are advised to keep their heads low in view of the complications they may face now. Never in the history of the PDP was it faced with a gang of seven governors. Atiku might have had many governors behind him but since he was central in the revolt against Obasanjo, persuading him and threatening the governors with EFCC was enough to close that chapter. And when he left the PDP and joined hands with the AD to form AC, he did not go with any governor behind him. The situation outside the PDP has also contributed immensely. The formation of the APC has provided the rebelling governors with an alternative to join or align with in order to give the obstinate President a good run for his money. PDP no longer enjoys the monopoly of winning an election. It is not the winning party, as Okupe would like us to believe. Abandoning it is no longer a class suicide. Okupe himself has realised this and is tuning down his rhetoric of dismissing the tamarrud governors. Also, the crises have hit the President when he is weakest especially with his breakup with the architect of his presidency, the former dictator president, Obasanjo. Essentially, the President has miscalculated that he could dispense with Obasanjo and get away with it, seeing, among other setbacks that the latter suffered recently, that he could not even get his daughter win a senatorial seat, that he could not install a speaker or Chairman of PDP Board of Trustees and, after all, he no longer enjoys an incumbent control over state resources as he used to do when he plotted the ascendency of the present President. Jonathan is misled by Mr. Fix and his position-happy assistants, forgetting that Mr. Fix too could not even fix his Edo constituency which he lost to ACN. More than the Obasanjo factor, Jonathan is not assisted by his lack of popularity among Nigerians, arising mainly from his widely believed incompetence, which he did everything to prove right, willingly. If he had worked hard to earn the trust and support of Nigerians through good governance, he would have been in a position to pitch the masses against the tamarrud governors. Instead, his tenure has proved to be a disaster and as corrupt as any Third World leader could be. Then the conflict between the President and the rebelling governors is of the insoluble genre: they are asking him to “forget” standing for another election in 2015 based on a promise he made in the run up to 2011. Here, carried by his power of incumbency, the President thought he could, as Obasanjo did, break the promise without attracting any harm. It is proving difficult. This time, the governors are not letting it go without a fierce fight. But few presidents can willingly yield to threats even in the face of American might or mass protest. The Presidency, especially to people like Jonathan, is a position of do or die. On the other hand, the New PDP governors are equally stubborn, if not more than the President. Moreover, the conflict has been allowed to ossify so much so that it is impossible for them to back out. On their side are people like Atiku who are already warning them of the dangers of contemplation: “Do not make the mistake of contemplation, which I made in 2003. Once you do so, rest assured that the tiger of Jonathan will return to devour you mercilessly. Remain on cause.” Add to this advice the characteristic vengeance of Obasanjo that is adding oxygen to the fire in the background. With these voices and those fears, the governors could only become more dogged by the day. We can go on and on in our comparison of past and present conflicts in the ruling PDP. Let us break that now and focus on the implication of the President’s position. Effectively, the crisis shuts the gates of 2015 before the President. The scenarios are obvious and they all point to a President in his decline and fall: Goodluck is faced with bad luck in all directions. Let us look the arithmetic. Arithmetic Starting from the APC governors, the President should not expect a support from their eleven states. For ethnic reasons, one may allow him the majority votes of Edo state. That takes away the support of eleven governors and the majority votes of ten states. Then Jonathan is certain to lose the majority votes in six of the seven New PDP governors – that is granting him Rivers State who may decide to support him for ethnic reasons. This brings the number of states that the President may lose their majority votes to sixteen. Then come the five states of Bauchi, Gombe, Katsina, Kebbi, Kogi and Kaduna in which the President will also lose their majority votes though the governors are yet to abandon him. He lost them in 2011, some woefully. This brings the number of states against the President to a staggering figure of twenty-one. Taraba state is uncertain, the votes being likely to be shared equally between the APC candidate and the President. That leaves the President with the majority of the votes of only Benue and Plateau States in the North for obvious reasons, plus, of course, the majority votes in the southeast, South-South and, possibly, non-APC states of Ondo and neighbouring Ekiti in the southwest. Even here, the states and zones are not big enough on the voters register to make any significant impact, with some having as low as 472,00 votes (Bayelsa) when compared to Lagos (6million) and Kano (5million) votes, both of which are not supporting the President. I will come to another possibility where the opposition can win the overwhelming majority votes in all states of southwest without exception. But before then, let us see what the above arithmetic means in terms of voter-opportunity for the President – a complete bad luck: 22.9million against 45.7million or one-third against two thirds! I have presented below the total number of voters in each state belonging to the President and the opposition APC. (I am afraid that the formats of my blog and Facebook page may not keep the table intact.) Jonathan States 1 Bayelsa 472,389 2 Ekiti 750,753 3 Ebonyi 876,249 4 C/River 1,018,550 5 Enugu 1,301,185 6 Benue 1,415,162 7 Abia 1,481,191 8 Ondo 1,558,975 9 Imo 1,611,715 10 A/Ibom 1,714,781 11 Anambra 1,758,220 12 Delta 1,900,055 13 Plateau 1,983,453 14 Rivers 2,419,057 15 Edo 1,412,225 16 Taraba 1,308,106 TOTAL = 22,982,066 APC Candidate States 1 Fct 886,323 2 Kwara 1,115,665 3 Yobe 1,182,230 4 Kogi 1,215,405 5 Nasarawa 1,224,206 6 Gombe 1,266,993 7 Osun 1,293,967 8 Kebbi 1,603,468 9 Adamawa 1,714,860 10 Niger 1,721,478 11 Zamfara 1,746,024 12 Bauchi 1,835,562 13 Jigawa 1,852,698 14 Sokoto 2,065,508 15 Oyo 2,577,490 16 Borno 2,730,368 17 Katsina 2,931,668 18 Kaduna 3,565,762 19 Kano 5,135,415 20 Lagos 6,247,845 21 Ogun 1,869,326 TOTAL = 45,782,261 Depending on who the APC fields as its presidential candidate, the President may not even get the votes of Ekiti and Ondo states. That makes his chances bleaker: 20.6million against 48million votes. This picture is a complete bad luck for the President in two ways. If the opposition is able to join hands with the New PDP, pick a winning candidate, mobilise its voters and fight fiercely to protect the votes, then it is certain to defeat the President at the polls in 2015, hands down. There is simply no way the President can bridge the gap between 14 states that he would have and the 22, plus the FCT, against him. I cannot see how he can leap from a majority of N22million votes to position himself above the majority of 48 million. Stepping Down What may make the depiction even darker is the possibility that once the ship of the President starts sinking, the remaining governors may abandon it and he may not be sure of anything anymore. At that point, I have no doubt that the party will be wise enough to prevail on him to step down and stay as a lame duck for the rest of his tenure, defeated, deflated and disgraced by bad luck. That is the path he has chosen and he has himself to blame for it. The nation, including this writer, rallied around him when he was fighting to be recognized as Acting President. After becoming the President, he blew the opportunity of becoming a statesman and, instead chose to become a gangster that is bent on installing his loyalists and members of his ethnic group in every position of influence. He swallowed the poison of greed alone. He will die alone. Conclusion The days ahead will definitely be interesting to watch. Will the President be able to weather the storm and turn the table against his opponents in the PDP to enable him clinch the ticket and face the APC and its allies in the next election? Will the opposition itself forget its regional differences and personal ambitions and oblige itself the indisputable winning candidate that will enable it give a devastating blow to the President in 2015? Will the PDP see the writing on the wall and ask the President to honourably step down from his 2015 ambition such that it can at least have the energy to stand up to the opposition and possibly defeat it at the polls? What are the possible cards that each side will use as we approach 2015? Bamanga, the chairman of the old PDP faction, for example, is already threatening the use state institutions to sanction legislators who joined the New PDP. This is stupid. The PDP has set the precedence already that once a party is factionalized, its elected members can decamp to other parties. That judgement is returning to harm it severely. The law enforcement agents, the judiciary and INEC will also be calculating in their response to Bamanga’s threat: they have their self-interests to protect in a post Jonathan Nigeria. Once they calibrate that the position of the president is unpromising, they will be unwilling to harass anyone on his instigation. Our assessment above is limited to the sight that today can afford us. Regardless of the how wide that band is, tomorrow could give us a different possibility altogether that may favour the President or it could further collaborate against him and corroborate the testimony of its immediate predecessor, thus relieving us of the calamity of having a president that is destructive, corrupt and incompetent. 3 Likes |
Re: 2015: The Arithmetic Of Bad Luck by bilms(m): 8:12pm On Sep 06, 2013 |
Nice analysis |
Re: 2015: The Arithmetic Of Bad Luck by fagbalex(m): 8:33pm On Sep 06, 2013 |
Jonathan has forget the promise he made in 2011, as power con sweet am, he no won commot after turning the whole nation into darkness. Mr president our eye don open. thump up for this article this man wrote. ;DJonathan has forget the promise he made in 2011, as power con sweet am, he no won commot after turning the whole nation into darkness. Mr president our eye don open. thump up for this article this man wrote. |
Re: 2015: The Arithmetic Of Bad Luck by Adam200(m): 9:11pm On Sep 06, 2013 |
Mr. jonah said in 2011 he is "shoeless" when he was a child i wonder what "terminology" he will use in 2015 |
Re: 2015: The Arithmetic Of Bad Luck by hardywaltz(m): 9:46pm On Sep 06, 2013 |
Nice write! |
Re: 2015: The Arithmetic Of Bad Luck by bilms(m): 10:21pm On Sep 06, 2013 |
Lol |
Re: 2015: The Arithmetic Of Bad Luck by bloggernaija: 10:50pm On Sep 06, 2013 |
The fact is that he cannot win. Ondo state is totally out of his reach. Even the so called mimiko only scraped through with barely a little over 30% of the vote. On a more realistic note, ondo state hates GEJ. |
Re: 2015: The Arithmetic Of Bad Luck by Perkins007: 11:02pm On Sep 06, 2013 |
Nice work, but in politics the table can still turn around |
Re: 2015: The Arithmetic Of Bad Luck by Brimmie(m): 2:41am On Sep 07, 2013 |
Ekiti is for APC!! Edo.. APC!! Ondo.. APC!! Anambra, come November.. Ngige is winning!! |
Re: 2015: The Arithmetic Of Bad Luck by Nobody: 5:58am On Sep 07, 2013 |
A very stupid write up.You make sound as if all the voters in one state would be voting just one candiddate.If the election is going to be free and fair(which I doubt it will) Jonathan will not get anything less than 45% of the votes in Lagos,Kadunna states.Anybody who thinks APC will win Nassarawa also needs to have his/her head examined. The population of NW/NE/SW voters in the SS/SE is nothing compared to the population of NW/NE/SW voters in these regions that was why Buhari was winning by 51-60% while GEJ kept winning by 90-98% of the votes till he won the elections.The huge xtian populations of Niger,Adamawa,Kadunna,Nassarawa,Kogi,plateau,Benue,are going to come in handy in these elections 2 Likes |
Re: 2015: The Arithmetic Of Bad Luck by Nobody: 6:30am On Sep 07, 2013 |
chukwudi44: A very stupid write up.You make sound as if all the voters in one state would be voting just one candiddate.If the election is going to be free and fair(which I doubt it will) You always make the next election sounds like its going to be all about politics of religion...which won't...it will be more realistically about tribe more than religion.. As thing stands...Tilde has given a fairly realistic prognosis of how things will develop towards and during the 2015 election, but you are always talking along the Muslim / Christian divide..that only exist in your mind. |
Re: 2015: The Arithmetic Of Bad Luck by Nobody: 6:51am On Sep 07, 2013 |
ilugunboy: Bros it is going to be tribal as well as religious.The boko haram gunmen has been harrasing the indigeneous xtian population of plateau,benue and kadunna states.We have also seen religious crisis recently in Taraba and nassarawa states.Don't forget most of these people with the exception of southern Kadunna are not even hausas. If APC makes the mistake of fielding a muslim-muslim ticket in the persons of Buhari/Fashola or even Tambuwal/Fashola then we religion is indeed going to play a very key role in this elections. The writer of that article made it look as if these states are going to vote 100% for one parties even in highly cosmopolitan states like Lagos and Kaduuna. Even a 4 year old kid knows there are more igbo votes in Lagos than in ebonyi state. |
Re: 2015: The Arithmetic Of Bad Luck by Bensonn: 7:22am On Sep 07, 2013 |
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Re: 2015: The Arithmetic Of Bad Luck by Bensonn: 7:22am On Sep 07, 2013 |
chukwudi44: A very stupid write up.You make sound as if all the voters in one state would be voting just one candiddate.If the election is going to be free and fair(which I doubt it will) you always include nassarawa as a jonathan state, my friend if jonathan score 20% in the present day Nassarawa, if i ever comment here again call me a bastard. 2011 Nassarawa is not 2013 Nassarawa, a whole lot has changed. |
Re: 2015: The Arithmetic Of Bad Luck by Nobody: 7:34am On Sep 07, 2013 |
Bensonn: We shall wait till that time then.That is assuming if GEJ intends to run a free and fair elections.I think he has been pushed to the wall and now wants to fight dirty. |
Re: 2015: The Arithmetic Of Bad Luck by kokoA(m): 7:55am On Sep 07, 2013 |
chukwudi44: A very stupid write up.You make sound as if all the voters in one state would be voting just one candiddate.If the election is going to be free and fair(which I doubt it will)Stop spreading falsehood sir. GEJ got the Northern christians' vote in 2011 only because he was up against Buhari whom you people painted as a religious fanatic. Northern christians do not hate muslims, we have lived together with them all our life, infact there are families here where you'd have a christian brother, muslim uncle, christian cousins, etc.. Its a mixed society here. So, I can tell you with sense of responsibility that if the opposition selects a liberal northern muslim candidate, GEJ can kiss the christian votes goodbye! Besides, bokoharam attacks have already painted a bad image of GEJ on the hearts of northern christians.. His government allowed these guys to keep bombing places of worship every sunday without doing anything for a long while, only to declare state of emergency when thousands have been killed already. You think we are happy with that? |
Re: 2015: The Arithmetic Of Bad Luck by soundtruth(m): 7:57am On Sep 07, 2013 |
Sycophants have just misled my brother GEJ. He could not foresee what is happening now. The indices are not as fabulous as some are made to believe. Our oil revenue is reducing with each day, still no constant electricity, east west road remains in construction. GEJ now has a lot of work cut out for him. He needs to get sincere advisers. |
Re: 2015: The Arithmetic Of Bad Luck by hopilo: 9:38am On Sep 07, 2013 |
![]() Jonathan(PDP) = 22,982,066 APC = 15,260,753 PDM = 15,260,753 VOP = 15,260,753. those desperate Northern Politician 3 of the can nerver work together quote me anywhere. by april 2015 bring the maths again. ![]() Jonathan(PDP) = 22,982,066 APC = 15,260,753 PDM = 15,260,753 VOP = 15,260,753. those desperate Northern Politician 3 of the can nerver work together quote me anywhere. by april 2015 bring the maths again. |
Re: 2015: The Arithmetic Of Bad Luck by bilms(m): 2:00pm On Sep 07, 2013 |
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