The last Northerners standing Monday, 17 January 2011 00:07 Mahmud Jega mmjega@dailytrust.com, 08054102925
I was still dizzy with sleep at 11am last Friday, having stood up all night to report on the PDP convention, when my friend Umar phoned from Funtua. He was driving through that commercial town in Katsina State on his way to Sokoto that morning, and when he stopped to refuel, he said he saw a large group of men, young and old, huddled together in the harmattan cold to discuss the issue of the moment.

They were in mournful mood, Umar said; they were saying, in unison, that the very large Katsina State delegation to the PDP convention the previous night, which they watched live on television, had betrayed them by voting for President Goodluck Jonathan.

As the day wore on, the dozens of text messages and phone calls I received indicated that the mood of the Funtua men was the same in many parts of the North. Angry text messages described Governors Ibrahim Shema, Murtala Nyako, Sule Lamido, Aliyu Doma, Ibrahim Idris, Isa Yuguda, Danjuma Goje and Bukola Saraki in unprintable terms.

On the other hand, Governors Aliyu Wamakko, Mu’azu Babangida Aliyu, Sa'idu Usman Dakingari and Mamuda Aliyu Shinkafi, as well as Kano PDP leader Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, were hailed in the text messages as “true sons of the North” and “true heirs of the Sardauna.”

Well, well. Someone sent me a text message that day charging that the minority of Northern delegates that voted for Atiku Abubakar at the convention did so “on sentimental regional grounds.” That could be true. What will he however say of the Southern delegates, more than 99% of whom voted for fellow Southerner Dr. Goodluck Jonathan?

Anyway, I personally did not expect a different result from what obtained on Friday. Last Monday, I noted in this column that no PDP governor, no matter how unpopular, was defeated in the party’s governorship primaries, and even departing ones easily anointed their successors. How then could you expect the sitting president to be defeated in his own primaries?

Now, even though the idea that another Northerner should complete the hypothetical Yar’adua second term gained a lot of support in the North in the past one year, the idea of a Northern consensus candidate, such as was championed by the NPLF, was not greeted with a lot of enthusiasm. This was partly due to the aspirants that were thrown up--not the most popular fellows in the North--and partly because President Jonathan’s mild character made it difficult to turn him into an Obasanjo-like hate figure.

Still, the whole back and forth debate for and against “zoning” [actually, power rotation] since mid-last year put the Northern governors in quandary, forcing a majority of them to vote for “zoning” at a summit in Kaduna last July.

Governors’ opinion is very important here, because political events and processes in this country over the past decade have shown them to be the political force with the greatest ability to deliver delegate votes at primaries as well as to deliver general election votes, by hook or by crook.

Now, the President of the Federal Republic, even a powerful one such as Obasanjo, cannot really deliver delegates or popular votes on his own. However, since he controls the party’s national officers as well as other instruments such as the police, EFCC and [until recently] INEC, he can and does control the state governors. It looks like INEC is now gone from the president’s bag of electoral tricks, but he still has many other tools, including the Federal Treasury.

Ordinarily, given that self-interest directs a Nigerian politician’s actions, any state governor, especially a PDP member, would love to be in the President’s good books, even if the President is unpopular.

Until recently, governors did not care very much about popularity, believing as they did that factors other than popularity win elections here. However, last year’s changes at INEC, and the electoral commission’s new body language of apparent independence, has had a psychological impact on the governors. For the first time since 1999, they are beginning to think that perhaps the will of the people could prevail in April’s elections.

As such, a governor may want to support the president for his own political self-interest, but he must also look over his shoulder at public sentiment in his home state.

Southern governors have no problem in this regard, since there is a general sympathy for President Jonathan in their states, especially in the Niger Delta states. Their personal self-interest therefore coincides with their constituents’ wishes.

It was the Northern governors that faced and still face a dilemma, especially since the presidential elections will hold before the governors’ own elections in April. Many of them already face a serious challenge from General Muhammadu Buhari’s CPC. The last thing they want is to be accused of betraying the Northern consensus and the desire of the North to hold on to the presidency in 2011-15.

That, in addition to other factors, helps to explain the overwhelming vote for Atiku by the Sokoto, Kebbi, Zamfara, Niger and Kano delegates. Otherwise, Atiku Abubakar is not particularly popular in the old Sokoto area, due to statements he made during the 2003 campaign. He said in Gusau that he would not visit those states again if they did not throw out their ANPP governors [they didn’t, in 2003].

Atiku was not particularly popular in Kano State either, because he once said that the North East region was marginalised by the North West. However, Kano’s PDP chapter is in a tough 3-way race against CPC and the ruling ANPP. It therefore needs a lot of Federal support, but then, if the delegates had been seen to have voted for Jonathan at the convention, Kano’s volatile youths could have made life difficult for them.

Though Jonathan won all the other Northern states apart from these five, Atiku’s relatively good showing in Bauchi, Borno, Yobe, Kaduna, Adamawa and Taraba suggests that he would have won those states if not for the forceful intervention of governors and, in some cases, ministers.

The Northern governors’ fear, in summary, is that if the president were to lose the election on April 9, then most of them would go down to defeat the following week. Now, even if Jonathan wins the election but he loses in a particular state, that state’s PDP governor will be in deep trouble the following week.

Given the feelings across the North at the weekend, the possibility is high that Jonathan will not be able to carry many Northern states in the April elections.

I am saying this despite a text message that someone sent to me, saying there will be no Northern backlash because Jonathan won 14 of the 19 Northern states and FCT at the convention. Now, my dear friend, winning the PDP delegates is one thing; winning the popular vote is another thing altogether.

The Anenih-style manoeuvre at the convention that allocated ballot boxes to states [Jonathan's people say it was Atiku that invented it] clearly violated the spirit, if not the letter, of secret balloting. As a newspaper commentator, I am not complaining because it turned out to be a boon for political analysis.

Its main purpose, though, was probably to enable the Chief Fixer Tony Anenih to actualise his threat in Port Harcourt to “fish out” and punish anyone, or at least any governor who did not deliver his state to Jonathan.

That may have been Anenih’s purpose, but the manoeuvre has also backfired, at least in the North. It has now enabled the voters to fish out the governors and delegates that voted against the people’s wishes at the PDP convention and probably deal with them at the polls in April.

April would be very interesting indeed. May God spare our lives till then and beyond.

^^^^a loud amen to that prayer my guy, but we still dey laugh oooo!

All these caricature newspapers!
The Southerners, GEJ Supporters and Patriotic Nigerians are very much around! no vex you hear!