Jonathan - Amaechi, the big challenge

The crisis in President Goodluck Jonathan’s backyard, the faceoff between him and Rivers State Governor Rotimi Amaechi, may be a local row, but it has assumed a national dimension, which may take its toll on the president’s ambition for re-election in 2015, except all hands are now on deck to resolve the issue. Tunde Rahman and Okechukwu Uwaezuoke report… Big things start small. The faceoff between President Goodluck Jonathan and Rivers State Governor Rotimi Amaechi, which has now taken a national dimension, began like a little quarrel between the president and the governor from his South-south zone. In the beginning, both Jonathan and Amaechi were buddies. Amaechi was one of the governors who stood by Jonathan in his battle to become the acting president in the wake of the illness, the pericarditis syndrome, of the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua in 2010 and later in his move to become the substantive president. Like a majority of the Peoples Democratic Party governors, Amaechi also rallied round President Jonathan to trounce former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar in the PDP presidential primaries in January 2011 and later in the election proper. Jonathan recorded the highest votes to become president in 2011 from Rivers among other states. So, what went wrong between them? Genesis of the Crisis The background to the crisis could be traced to when Amaechi emerged as the Chairman of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum. President Jonathan had no qualms about Amaechi contesting for the NGF chairmanship or emerging as chairman of the forum at the time perhaps because both did not rankle him or his politics in any way. But once the governor assumed office as NGF chair and began to champion some of the constitutional issues agreed upon by the forum – issues like the governors’ opposition to the Sovereign Wealth Fund, deductions from the Federation Account to fund oil subsidy, etc–, Amaechi began to incur the wrath of the president. Needless to point out that some of the positions the NGF chairman was canvassing in respect of these issues were aggregate views of all the governors, the decision reached collectively, but if you say Amaechi canvassed those views in an impetuous, aggressive and arrogant manner, which did not help matters, you would be right. A distraught Abuja responded to all that by moving to split the NGF. First, it created a splinter group with the NGF, the PDP Governors’ Forum, and ensured Akwa Ibom State Governor Godswill Akpabio, its ally and acolyte, emerged chairman of the body. When that did not work well enough, the presidency moved to stop Amaechi from getting re-elected as NGF chairman. When it couldn’t stop him from contesting, the presidency created an ally in Plateau State Governor Jonah Jang to contest against Amaechi. All these machinations fed the anti-Jonathan elements in the North, the seven Northern governors who teamed up with the opposition All Progressives Congress coalition governors to ensure the defeat of Jang, in the process humiliating the presidency, though Dr. Reuben Abati, the Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to the President, would claim the presidency had no hand in the NGF election. Amaechi polled 19 votes to Jang’s 16. Instead of backing off at this point and counting its cost and reaching for truce, the Presidency dug deeper, raking opprobrium in the process, as it claimed that Jang had won, giving the impression that 16 is greater than 19, introducing a warped arithmetic into the political lexicon. Meanwhile, this Jang victory line was the line canvassed by Governor Akpabio and his ilk, who insisted that 23 governors had endorsed Jang before the election, and that the Plateau State governor could not have lost. The presidency went ahead to recognise Jang as NGF chairman. President Jonathan received Jang as NGF chairman at Aso Rock, blocking out the authentic chairman Amaechi, but it was clear to all and sundry that Jang had no legitimacy. Aso Rock recorded one sordid victory at this point though: it succeeded in breaking up the NGF, which would mean the forum’s potency was gone. Dame Jonathan Entered Fray Then the First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan, entered the fray. Under the guise of performing one social event or another, she moved over to Port Harcourt, Rivers State capital, holding the city by the jugular, with the state Commissioner of Police Mbu Joseph Mbu and all the security apparatus in the state at her beck and call. The governor, Amaechi, the fabled chief security officer of the state, was left in the lurch, as even restrictions were placed on his movement. Wherever the First Lady visited remained locked; she thus became the new Lord of the manor. There were speculations that during the period of her stay in Port Harcourt, she held series of meeting with the five members of the Rivers State House of Assembly loyal to Minister of State Nyesom Wike and who are up in arm against Amaechi. It was at such meetings that the plan to move against the governor was allegedly perfected. Hon. Evans Bipialaka, who represents Dame Jonathan’s birthplace of Okrika in the state assembly, leads the group of rampaging five members of the assembly. However, the plan against Amaechi was eventually hatched on July 9, when the five members of a 32-member assembly took over the leadership of the House and convened a meeting at the House of Assembly to impeach Speaker Otelemaba Amachree with protection from the police. The plan was, however, resisted by the 27 other members loyal to Amaechi, leading to a free-for-all, and eventually foiled when the governor moved to the chamber to restore peace. The rampaging lawmakers were beaten up, with some sustaining injuries. The Majority Leader of the assembly, Hon. Chidi Lloyd, an ally of Amaechi, is at present being interrogated by the police in Abuja and may be arraigned in court for being caught on camera unleashing the mace on Hon. Chinda. If Amaechi had not moved in decisively, the five members, who had forcibly taken over the leadership of the assembly, would have impeached Speaker Amachree and moved to commence impeachment proceedings against Amaechi. If impeached by the splinter group, the presidency and police would have given effect to the illegal impeachment and Amaechi’s case would then be like those of former Plateau State governor Joshua Dariye and his former Bayelsa State counterpart Depriye Alamiyeseigha who were removed from office when the minorities in their state assemblies were induced to impeach them. Amaechi would then be out of office as governor fighting such an illegality from the outside. Recall that after the mayhem in the assembly, the PDP in Rivers had congratulated Hon. Bipialaka as the new speaker and he was also later welcomed at the Presidential Villa. The presidency, however, blamed Amaechi for the crisis in the assembly. Speaking about the crisis and the way he viewed Dame Jonathan, Bipialaka had said: “I want to sacrifice myself for Rivers people; I am fighting for justice. Why must the governor come and supervise the beating on my colleagues? Why must he be insulting the President, why must he be insulting my mother, my Jesus Christ on earth? I can’t take this”. Also, the First Lady told some South-south Bishops who called on her at the Presidential Villa, Abuja that her grouse with Amaechi began four years ago over planned demolition in Okrika. He urged Amaechi to embrace peace and avoid being used by outsiders against “his own blood”. Dame Jonathan had said: “This matter started four years ago at Anyugubiri in Okrika when I begged him not to demolish a part of Okrika but that he should dialogue first with the people. After that incident, he called the chairman of Okrika Local Government and sacked him for holding a reception in our honour; that boy was the first victim.” Playing into Opposition’s Hands But in fighting Amaechi, President Jonathan is playing into the hands of the opposition within and outside his party. The opposition rallied behind Amaechi and ensured that the president had something to worry him and keep him busy in his backyard. It is a thing of surprise that the handlers of the president are not reading between the lines in their debilitating battle with Amaechi to see that instead of concentrating on the North, where Jonathan was spurned in 2011 and is being snubbed at present and the South-west, which has developed a lukewarm attitude towards his 2015 re-election, the president has been kept busy at home. “Political correctness would mean that the presidency resolves the matter quickly, put its backyard in order and move to other areas like the core North and South-west where it has real problem of support and following,” one political analyst told THISDAY last night. Meanwhile, the matter of the faceoff between the president and Amaechi is hitting newspaper headline daily and dominating the airwaves. Governor Amaechi himself has his plate full. He has been kept busy at home. The Rivers State PDP chapter, which hitherto was firmly under his control, has been hijacked from him, a crisis has been foisted on the state assembly and on the state and governance has taken a flight. The least issue on his mind now would be governance in the state. The Coup De Grace/National Dimension However, the ultimate coup the grace in the crisis was the decision of the National Assembly to take over the legislative functions of the Rivers assembly. It was a masterstroke of sort. There were speculations that the Jonathan men have been enticing the Rivers lawmakers with hefty amount of money, trying to buy some of them over and prepare for an imminent take-over of the assembly and impeachment of both the speaker and Amaechi. But the decision to take-over the assembly in line with the provision of Section 11 (4) of the 1999 Constitution has put paid to all that. The House of Representatives had on July 10, a day after the fracas in the Rivers assembly, passed a resolution to take over the functions of the state legislature. It was feared then whether the Senate would concur with the House. The Senate is seen as more mature and a bit cautious when issues touch on the president’s raw nerves as the developments in Rivers seem to, but the decisive manner in which it supported the resolution would mean that the upper legislative chamber has also become exasperated about the turn of events in the state. Not only did the Senate concur with the House on the matter, the senators also called on the Inspector-General of Police Mohammed Abubakar to “as a matter of urgency” redeploy the state commissioner of Police Joseph Mbu “because of irreconcilable differences between him and Amaechi”. The Senate also resolved that its president, David Mark, should mediate in the crisis by reconciling the principal actors with a view to ensuring that peace returns to Rivers State. It urged the three senators from the state to liaise with all the warring factions with a view to resolving the crisis because, according to the senators, it has grave implications for democracy in the country. International Angle And even if the crisis is local as Presidential aide Dr. Doyin Okupe said, it has assumed national dimension with the takeover of the state assembly by the National Assembly and perhaps international toga, as Governor Amaechi has moved abroad on the issue. Over the week, a smart Amaechi also moved abroad to internationalise the crisis, speaking at the Chatam House in London and appearing on BBC Hard Talk programme among other things. Speaking during the BBC interview, Amaechi said nobody could stampede him out of PDP. He said the problem between him and the president is down to the impression that he has an ambition to contest as running mate to a Northern candidate in 2015. He said he did not have to tell President Jonathan or anybody about his ambition before contesting any public office. He said: “You see what you must know is that I believe in the rule of law. Let’s even assume, for the purpose of argument, that an ambition exists, nobody has the right to bring down a state just because an ambition exists. “It is important to say clearly that everybody should allow 2015 for 2015; it is a bit too early. The President is elected to preside as the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, and I support that and I want everybody to allow Mr. President to preside over the country for the interest of the country.” But Okupe had said the crisis in Rivers was just intended to create fear, despair and apprehension amongst the citizenry and was no threat to the nation’s democracy. He said since the return of democracy in the country, incidences relating to impeachments had always occurred but had never been elevated to the state, which that of Rivers’ had. He said what is happening in the state is purely a domestic issue that has been elevated deliberately to take the form of a national crisis. Okupe said: “Developments in Rivers State do not pose any threat to our democracy. Our democracy remains robust, alive and well. In politics, as in every sphere of human activities, different shades of opinion on issues are not uncommon within the polity, but often get resolved either politically or through legal channels.” Possible Impact of Crisis on 2015 But to whose advantage is the crisis and what is the possible impact of it on the 2015 ambition of President Jonathan? Let us recall what happened in the 2011 election. Following official results of the election released by the Independent National Electoral Commission, Jonathan polled 22, 495,187 votes and led in 21 states, compared with 12, 214, 853 votes by his closest rival, the Congress for Progressive Change candidate, former Head of State, Major-Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (rtd), who won 12 states mostly Northern states. The highest votes of about 2 million (1. 817, 762) came from Rivers and that is the state now embroiled in crisis. The handlers of the president need to check the electoral map and answer the question whether the crisis in Rivers could help or hurt President Jonathan in 2015. Add that to the challenge being posed by some Northern governors who have resolved to now answer their fathers’ names and President Jonathan’s low rating in the South-west. Buoyed by an alleged pact between Action Congress of Nigeria National Leader Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, the South-west had voted massively for Jonathan, in the process ditching the ACN presidential candidate, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu. But the president’s rating in the region is said to be low following a dip in goodwill and the ACN, which is consolidating on its strongholds. Even if things look bleak for the president on the electoral map, in the final analysis, it’s who the opposition presents as its candidate that would make or mar Jonathan. A strong Northern candidate like Buhari or Chief Audu Ogbeh paired by a candidate from the ACN flank in the South-west may prove lethal for the PDP in 2015. TABLE With 18 months to go before the 2015 election and perhaps 12 months to go before the presidential primaries, what has changed between 2011 and today? Here is a list of states where President Jonathan won in 2011 and where he lost to the opposition and where both the president and the opposition are at present. Note: This table looks at the opposition as one group. When a candidate emerges, many of these calculations would change. Without a clear opposition candidate, President Jonathan is running against himself and his record of performance. When an opposition candidate emerges, incumbents, as in this case President Jonathan almost always do better