[size=14pt]2011 presidency: How the North will vote [/size]
Written by Sola Adebayo and Idowu Samuel, Abuja
Sunday, 08 August 2010

THE likely voting pattern for the presidential election across northern states is gradually emerging and, according to Sunday Tribune findings, the result is not favourable to either Alhaji Atiku Abubakar or General Ibrahim Babangida.

A detailed survey in the North in the past one week on the thinking in the North, as it affects the controversial zoning formula adopted by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), indicated a subtle departure from the belief that majority of the Northerners are rooting for zoning.

One of the leaders, while speaking with Sunday Tribune in one of the states in the ultra-conservative North over the weekend, conceded that IBB and Atiku are ready to vie for the presidential seat and either may win going by their political clout. He stated that their victory may however, rob the younger generation of Northerners the chance to lead the country.

The leader, a state governor, who pleaded for anonymity for strategic reasons, explained to Sunday Tribune that, “ majority of those in the North will vote for Jonathan because our generation will be prepared to lead this country in the next four years. We are better groomed, better placed and are ready to look at Nigeria from the purview of a nationalist and will address issues that affect the nation from that perspective.

“These people who have re-emerged on the national scene and are vying for the highest seat in the land are those who have been there since and that is why they are angling for the zoning formula but while I will vote for zoning, I want the presidency to go to the South South now so that it will quickly come back to the North where our generation will then have a chance to play at the highest level. IBB was there in 1985 and he wants to come back, Atiku was there for eight years. Even Buhari was there in 1983. Will we ever have the chance to improve our own lives, the lives of our people?

‘’Ünder OBJ, many young Northerners were exposed to governance at the highest level and were taken to international fora where they were allowed to shine. Are those trainings, those preparations going to waste? They will if IBB or Atiku emerges as president in 2011 and are allowed to govern for eight years,” the governor noted.

Another leader, who, because of his being an ally of Yar’Adua’s political family also pleaded for anonymity, stated that some governors of northern extraction who are doing very well for their people and should replicate such for the country will be denied that chance if the North produces the president in 2011.

He mentioned two governors from the North East and another from the North Central, as those who can successfully fly the flag for the North after a Jonathan presidency.

“I see the Jonathan presidency and the coming elections as an opportunity to clear off the present leaders of the North, as this is their last chance. After this period they dare not show interest in the office again,”he explained to Sunday Tribune.

North pushes for pact with Jonathan
The liberal wing of the conservative North, peopled by former government officials and the youth, are eager to have the North enter into a pact with President Jonathan which will ultimately enable him to rule for a period of time beginning from 2011, after which he would transfer power to the region by a special arrangement.

The group, which was yet to assume a definite move, has been engaging in talks with top northern leaders, traditional rulers and presidential aspirants from the zone and also former Nigerian leaders; including former President Olusegun Obasanjo, General Yakubu Gowon and Alhaji Shehu Shagari, who for now appear to have no keen political interest.

All things being equal, the North, in the thinking of the group, will enter into a negotiation for power with Jonathan, who is yet to formally declare interest in the presidential election.

The negotiation is to ensure that in case he would enter into the presidential contest with core support from the North, and with an agreement that he would automatically drop the baton of power for the North at the expiration of his tenure.

A former minister who is one of the leading members of the northern group, Honourable Bala Kaoje, told Sunday Tribune that most northern leaders that he and his colleagues had talked with showed deep understanding of the need for the North to enter into a pact with Jonathan on power sharing, ahead of the 2011 general election.

Kaoje, a one time Presidential Adviser on National Assembly, disclosed further that the reason members of his group thought out the idea of committing the North to talk with the president, stemmed out of the need to prevent national unity and democracy from drifting, against the backdrop of hostilities which the issue of zoning had started generating among the political classes in the country.

Wants OBJ, Gowon, Shagari as witnesses
Kaoje explained the reason why members of his group felt the need to involve former leaders like Obasanjo, Gowon, Shagari and others in the planned negotiation with Jonathan, stressing that they were to serve as a source of inspiration and strong witnesses to any accord the North might strike with the president on power rotation in the country.

According to the former Minister of Sports, some leaders in the North were beginning to have a re-think on the issue of zoning, mindful of the circumstances which produced Jonathan as president, and which to them was divine, since neither Jonathan nor anyone ever envisaged a sudden twist in national politics which eventually produced a new horizon in the nation’s polity.

The North, said Kaoje, was beginning to realise that it had an entrenched relationship with the South-South politically, and could not discountenance such relationship at the present moment when providence has placed power directly on the laps of the South-South through Jonathan, a reason he said many in the North now believed that Jonathan should not be pushed away, just immediately.

He said as the incumbent president, Jonathan should enjoy the right to contest in the next presidential election, noting that anyone in his shoes would not just dump power and walk away without being pursued.

http://www.tribune.com.ng/sun/index.php/front-page-articles/1804-2011-presidency-how-the-north-will-vote