2015: Will The North Be Calm After Jonathan’s Landslide Victory?

Prolific writer and veteran political analyst, Femi Aribisala wrote an interesting analysis of the possible outcome of the presidential election in 2015 in an article entitled, “Jonathan Will Win 2015 Elections  With A Landslide.” If you read through Aribisala’s analysis dispassionately, you will find it difficult to fault his submissions. I will get back to Aribisala later.

 What has been my concern as we terrifyingly nears the ultimate decider of Nigeria’s fate: 2015 presidential election, is what kind of presidential election result will be acceptable to the north next year? To be specific, what kind of presidential election result will be acceptable to the core north? By core north, I mean states in the northeast and northwest of the country. How will Kano, Kaduna, Katsina, Jigawa, Sokoto, Zamfara, Kebbi, Yobe, Borno, Bauchi, Gombe and Adamawa states react if the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declare a landslide victory for President Goodluck Jonathan? Or should the appropriate question be: how will INEC conduct the presidential election that will be acceptable to the core north? Do the core north have confidence in INEC to conduct free and fair presidential election in 2015 even though the chairman of INEC, Professor Attahiru Jega, is one of their own? Do we have to hire the United Nations to conduct it, before it would be acceptable to them? These questions need to be answered by the core north and fast too because indications are that the reactions that will trail Jonathan’s expected landslide victory is ominous. The danger is palpable. You can feel it from comments on Facebook and elsewhere. Already the way conspiracy theories are being manufactured in the run up to the election is frightening.

Boko Haram has continued to unleash terror for the past five years. The group has unambiguously made it known to Nigerians and the world what their missions and visions are. That they want an Islamic state throughout Nigeria, where Sharia will be the ultimate legal system; that they are not satisfied with the political sharia presently in operation in many states of the north.

Despite the clarity of their visions and missions, many of their actions are now conveniently being attributed to the federal government led by President Jonathan. When former head of state, General Muhammadu Buhari, was attacked by suicide bombers recently, before the shaken General could get to his home in Kaduna from the scene of the unfortunate incident, some Northern leaders have already started twitting that it was the Presidency(reads Jonathan), that wants to assassinated Buhari? This is despite the fact that when the former president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, alleged in his well circulated letter that 1,000 top politicians have been marked for elimination, he alleged that the elimination would be done by snipers! I can’t imagine Jihadists wanting to commit suicide in order to help Jonathan who they considered Kafir(unbeliever) and who they have insisted must become a Muslim before they can sheath their sword? The whole scenario does not add up, yet some northern intellectuals still believe that there was Presidential hand in the attempt to kill Buhari. If Northern intelligentsia could believe that, you can then imagine the mind set of the almajiris! Little wonder the President rightly pointed out that if Buhari had died in that attack that Nigeria would have been engulfed in orgy of killings that would pearl in comparison to what Boko Haram is already doing. Even Islamic cleric Dahiru Bauchi who was narrowly missed by a suicide bomber the same day as Buhari, is still pointing accusing finger to the Presidency, saying no Muslim will want to kill him, as if it was not Muslims that are slaughtering each other in Iraq by ISIS, in Syria and Libya to mention but a few. This is also despite Boko Haram’s position that there are no differences between Christians and Muslims that embraced democracy or that are against their position on Islam. Similarly, the Izzala spiritual leader, El-zakzzaky, whom three of his sons were among those allegedly killed in Zaria at a pro-Palestine protest, still pointed accusing finger to the Presidency. How would all these leaders and their millions of followers take it, when Jonathan is declared the winner? Can they still endure another four years under Jonathan? A major part of the core north was engulfed in flames shortly after Jonathan won what all international monitors considered a free and fair election in 2011, what will they do now that the streets of the north is already sucked with blood of the innocent and the report from INEC is expected to be outside their expectations? That takes one to Femi Aribisala’s assertion that Jonathan will win with a landslide.

 One of Aribisala’s key assumptions is that while PDP’s presidential candidate is already known, the presidential candidate of the APC will not be known till October or thereabout. This he argued will give little room for campaign by the APC presidential candidate in an election that would take place early next year. He noted that the only nationally known presidential aspirants of APC are Buhari, former vice president, Atiku Abubakar and former Lagos State governor, Bola Tinubu, adding that they are pushovers for Jonathan. He dismissed governor of Kano State, Alhaji Rabiu Kwankwaso who is rumoured to be a presidential aspirant as among the “nonentities” that stand no chance with Jonathan. Aribisala who had been a political pundit for over 35 years was emphatic that APC is a newspaper weight political party with no structures to rival the PDP and advised the party to start planning for 2019 elections if it wants to occupy the Aso Rock Villa. Aribisala was also right that elections anywhere in the world are not won on the pages of newspapers. It was Barack Obama’s innovative structures which are being understudied worldwide by serious politicians, that get him to the White House, and not opinions in newspapers and electronic media. While the media is one of the keys that can open doors for public office aspirants, it is not the only key. It is a lesson that APC is yet to learn. But my greatest concern is whether they will accept the people’s verdict in 2015, or act like the bull in China shop and endanger our democracy especially in the core north where passion is unbelievably high for the exit of Jonathan? Yet Jonathan’s exit is not likely to be 2015 but 2019! Will they still allow us to have a country after the landslide victory of Jonathan or will it be “To your tent, O Israel?"