My very smart PDP friends say Goodluck Jonathan lost the 2015 election the day he forced those five out-of-seven “rebel” governors out of the party in 2013. (“…lost the 2015 election…” because I know he will lose by a wide margin.) The so-called G-7 governors who initially pitched their tents under the canopy of the nPDP were Musa Kwankwaso (Kano), Rotimi Amaechi (Rivers), Babangida Aliyu (Niger), Abdulfattah Ahmed (Kwara), Murtala Nyako (Adamawa), Sule Lamido (Jigawa) and Aliyu Wamakko (Sokoto). Recall that five of those governors eventually decamped to the APC. I quickly add that forcing Atiku Abubakar – an influential former vice president – and Kawu Baraje, a PDP acting national chairman and chairman of the nPDP, out of the party was hardly a brilliant thing to do. It was like your house cat escaping onto your gated compound; you ought to have been worried that it might eventually scale the gate and escape onto the streets. But Jonathan was not worried. That legendary miscalculation was symptomatic of the lack of intellectual rigor that was the hallmark of Jonathan’s actions or inactions. How on earth could he have assumed that those people who had such huge chips on their shoulders would just go away quietly and accept being relegated to the background of the party they helped found with their personal funds during many late-night travels and schisms?

What actually wrecked the PDP and destroyed the careers of many of its members is Jonathan’s vaulting personal ambition, greed and lack of gratitude. After being plucked from relative obscurity as Bayelsa’s Deputy Governor and even as Governor, and then propelled into national limelight as Vice President almost single-handedly by former President Olusegun Obasanjo, something got into Jonathan’s head that caused him to start believing in the efficacy and omnipotence of his first name. “Oh, I can, in fact, become President when this sickly Yar’Adua dies!” And he became President without having to work for it. Nigerians – ordinary Nigerians – galvanized by the Musa Yar’Adua cabal’s arrogance and power drunkenness in trying to deny a sitting Vice President the rightful ascendancy as President upon the demise of the substantive President, rose in support of Jonathan.



In the effusion and intoxication that followed his ascendancy as Acting President, Jonathan promised the PDP power brokers – the real people who made him President – that if they allowed him to serve one full term after completing the balance of Yar’Adua’s (totaling six years as President and two as Vice President), he would not seek reelection, thereby allowing the presidency to return to the north. It was a promise he repeated privately to no less a personality than former President Obasanjo and at a public function in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on January 31st 2011. While addressing a group of Nigerians there, Jonathan regretted the fact that Nigerians abroad would not be able to vote and promised to work towards fixing that problem by 2015 even though he would not be running. His exact words: “Nigerians in the Diaspora will not vote, but I will work towards it by 2015 even though I will not be running for election.” It was duly reported in, at least, The Guardian. Jonathan or any of his handlers did not deny it then. By the way, this is 2015 and Nigerians abroad still can’t vote. It was a gentleman’s agreement; the type not uncommon in politics all over the world. It didn’t have to be written down even though Babangida Aliyu claims to have a written proof. But in what amounted to a monumental heist; a swindle if you will; a slap in the face of those northern PDP heavyweights, Jonathan thought he had out-maneuvered them. He would serve out Yar’Adua’s balance, four full years of his own and then another four years – making 10 years as Nigeria’s President! Ten years!! Nobody ever served 10 consecutive years as Nigeria’s President. (By the time Yakubu Gowon served nine years, he had been ousted. Obasanjo who ruled for a total of 10 years and seven months had to come back for his last eight in 1999 after having left the stage in 1979.) In a country of 170 million and in this day and age, for Jonathan to contemplate pushing his luck this far was a manifestation of inordinate ambition and unparalleled greed – all of that on top of having been a Deputy Governor and Governor. He clearly had gotten sucked in by the perks, appurtenances and regalia of political offices. No reasonable person should want to remain on the same job and in the same position for that long unless they have sit-tight tendencies or they fear someone would come along to expose the skeletons in their cupboards.

Although his breach of that promise to not run in 2015 was the proverbial last straw that cratered the once dominant PDP, Jonathan serially shot himself in the foot and continued to drive 10-foot nails in the party’s casket throughout his presidency. While touting himself as a rule-of-law man, he blatantly refused to have his party reinstate Olagunsoye Oyinlola, the one-time embattled PDP National Secretary and former governor of Osun State. He and Bamanga Tukur (then national chairman and lackey of Aso Rock) rubbished Oyinlola, an Obasanjo acolyte and, in fact, publicly and privately insulted Obasanjo himself through loquacious and foul-mouthed surrogates. Jonathan himself personally lobbed a few thinly veiled jabs in Obasanjo’s direction about faux statesmen who thought they earned statesmanship merely because they once governed Nigeria. Jonathan and his goons forgot that people like the Ebora of Owu have influence far beyond what appears on the surface. Jonathan also hid under his rule-of-law mantra in his disregard for the Governors Forum election which Rotimi Amaechi clearly won but was denied the victory simply because the Rivers governor would not dance to GEJ’s tune. He alienated the Kwara kingmaker – Bukola Saraki – and his protégé, incumbent Governor Adbulfattah, along with the entire real power brokers in Kwara. And he still thought he could win the state!

But being ambitious is not a crime. It is, in fact, a virtue we all should strive to emulate and imbibe in our offspring. But we should aspire to heights within our capabilities. I would love to write as good as Wole Soyinka or Niyi Osundare, but no amount of practice would give me their levels of diction and vocabulary. Nigerians might not have minded another four years of Jonathan if he had been a transformational and visionary President. The simple truth, which some of my friends who are his supporters know but will not admit publicly, is that the man is simply out of his depths in matters of leadership. He is adept at scheming for political office but he is grossly incompetent, too lazy to learn and has supine morals. Other than corruptly enriching himself and, at the minimum, skirting the edges of alcoholism, his only conviction is that everybody has a price. He would get anybody to compromise their stand by throwing money at them. After all, he got Reuben Abati to work for him, didn’t he?

In spite of indecorously stepping on the heads (not just toes) of his benefactors, Jonathan could still have had the support of the same ordinary Nigerians who pleaded his case during the “Doctrine of Necessity” campaign had he been the can-do leader Nigerians thought a PhD holder would be; or a competent flag bearer of the minority tribes of Nigeria. Instead, he squandered that goodwill by engaging in ethnic politicking and divisive propaganda through proxies. The probably-senile Ijaw leader, Edwin Clark, and the leaders of Niger-Delta militants blackmailing the rest of Nigeria with threats of bloodbath should Jonathan not be “given” a second term helped burn the bridges Jonathan could have used to redeem his battered image.

Nothing probably destroyed Jonathan’s reputation with most reasonable Nigerians more than the blind eye (and probably acquiescence) to otherwise brazen acts of corruption. The administration of Jonathan defanged the EFCC and rendered it a toothless Chihuahua dog (not even a Bulldog). The agency became a shadow of what it was when Nuhu Ribadu was at the helm. Curiously, in the past six years, no former or sitting Governor or Minister has been investigated much less prosecuted for corruption! This must mean that corruption has been wiped off in Nigeria, ehn? Executive impunity went viral under Jonathan when he pardoned one of Nigeria’s most celebrated and convicted corrupt politicians – his former boss, Diepreye Alamieyeseigha. It was a punch to the face of the EFCC officials who prosecuted him and the judge who sentenced him. It was hardly a motivating signal to the agency and the judiciary. His infamous “stealing is not corruption” statement will dog him forever.

On his watch, Nigerians identified $6.8 billion fuel subsidy scam which included known individuals collecting ungodly sums of money for oil purportedly imported into Nigeria, when, in fact, they did not import anything! It was bad enough that our four oil refineries (just four at the time) were left to rot at under 30% capacity, forcing us to export crude at give-away prices and import finished oil products at exorbitant prices. But it made us all look stupid paying billions to subsidize something that was not delivered! I never understood how that was allowed to continue. Then, instead of arresting the bunkering perpetrators and getting our supply and demand right, he had the temerity to remove the oil subsidy in the false hope that it would fix the scam. It was clearly a case of putting the cart before the horse.

On his watch, his CBN governor alerted the world to a $20 billion NNPC scam (you would think as chief accountant of the Federation, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi would know if his account was not balanced), but rather than send the EFCC and ICPC and the Police out to unearth the truth, he protected the NNPC and shielded its Minister – the Super Minister Alison Diezani-Madueke – from accountability. He then fired Sanusi! Even if the money was not missing, for Nigerians, perception was reality. Nigerians perceived a cover-up and concluded the missing $20 billion was siphoned off for Jonathan’s reelection campaign.

SOURCE
http://www.safecozzy.com/news/abiodun-ladepo-talks-about-how-jonathans-vaulting-ambition-ended-pdp-hegemony/
http://saharareporters.com/2015/02/04/jonathan’s-vaulting-ambition-ended-pdp-hegemony-abiodun-ladepo

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