political equation ahead of legislative and presidential elections in 2015.

A sinister plot to factionalize and destabilize the opposition ahead of next year’s legislative and presidential elections involving the long-running practice of using oil blocks in shady quid pro quo vote-buying deals in party leadership contests is now being fine-tuned in the presidency, Huhuonline.com has learnt from Aso Rock sources. Having lost the numbers game with the defection of 37 PDP lawmakers to the APC; and with more defections to follow in the Senate, President Goodluck Jonathan is facing the battle for his own political survival on two main fronts: within his own party where some northerners and southern hardliners are opposed to his re-election, and in the general election itself where the deck is stacked in favor of an eventual APC candidate.

Jonathan has therefore decided to wield the carrot and the big stick, by going back to the form book of his predecessors. Huhuonline.com learnt from presidential sources that the strategy involves using oil blocks to woo prominent APC chieftains like Bola Tinubu, Chief Bisi Akande, Governor Rotimi Amaechi and other top-notch opposition leaders such as Nasir El-Rufai and former Vice President Atiku Abubakar who could stand in the way of Jonathan’s 2015 presidential ambitions. For added advantage, the anti-graft agencies will be on standby; ready to harass the opposition chieftains, most of whom are former barons of the regime with skeletons in their cupboards that could be exhumed by the EFCC.

The source noted that the primary target are the “older generation and former PDP members; they are politicians with clout who have built a formidable following in their domain. They have name recognition and will see reason in supporting Jonathan, the devil they know against moving into uncharted territory or being part of complex inconsequential political arrangements in the APC with doubtful outcomes.” The source also added that Tinubu is the first APC bigwig who has been proposed oil blocks since he is already an oilman with his company Oando. The source further explained that Tinubu’s Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) essentially engineered the initial merger, with Gen. Muhammadu Buhari’s moribund Congress for Progressive Change making them the principal leaders of the APC. The PDP will orchestrate a schism over Buhari’s long-standing ambition to be president as a justification for Tinubu and his followers to back out of the APC and back Jonathan for the presidency.
The lynchpin in the plot is the almighty Oil Minister Diezani Alison-Madueke who officially announced last November 28 that 31 marginal fields were to be put on the market at the same time, the Nigeria Petroleum Development Corporation (NPDC) announced it is selling its operatorship rights on several blocks that Royal Dutch Shell is auctioning off in the Niger Delta as part of its divestment program. Although Alison-Madueke claims the transactions will unfold in full transparency, the fact that elections are looming large has triggered much behind-the-scenes horse trading within the PDP and its rambling army of hardcore adherents and desperate power seekers, including dissenters like Babangida Aliyu and his Jigawa State counterpart, Sule Lamido; influential actors within the PDP, who are players with deep knowledge of political foot-shuffling. This issue of oil blocks was discussed when Aliyu and Lamido met with Jonathan at the villa last weekend

Why don't I believe this lofty tale?