By Ochereomen Nnanna

PRESIDENT Goodluck Jonathan’s intimidating outing last Saturday, when he declared his presidential ambition, must have sent shivers down the spines of the pro-zoning, pro-North-for-president-in-2011 Nigerians.

In comparison with other countries of our stature, the Eagle Square must be the tiniest national square. Luckily, there is an empty space adjacent to the Square, which currently serves as car park.

As Abuja grows and the Eagle Square is expanded into this space, the Federal Capital Development Authority (FCDA) may have to approve the erection of multi-storey parking lots for the workers and visitors to the Federal Secretariat, which surrounds the Square.

The Jonathan declaration was easily the largest crowd ever pulled to the nation’s foremost political arena. By most newspaper accounts, 23 governors attended. The entire National Working Committee (NWC), most members of the Board of Trustees (BOT) and the National Executive Council (NEC) of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) were fully mobilised.

I did not notice a single member of the party’s major ruling organs at the flag-off of the General Ibrahim Babangida flag-off three days earlier.

Curious, I made enquiries from a friend of mine at the PDP to know why Babangida was not only “boycotted” but nearly had his campaign marred by fixing the NEC meeting on the same day and at about the same time that his rally was to take place.

My friend informed me that the PDP did not attend Babangida’s event because it regards such rallies as the personal affairs of the aspirants.

He assured me that they would not attend Jonathan’s flag-off or those of the other aspirants, adding that it was only when any of them had emerged as the candidate of the party that the party would shoulder the candidate into the presidential campaigns. Well, the rest is already history.

The National Chairman of the party, Dr. Okwesilieze Nwodo, and the rest of the officials of Wadata House were at the Square for Jonathan, but not for Babangida.

There is Nwodo’s “level playing field” for  you. The former National Secretary of the PDP seems keen to return the kind gesture by President Jonathan who sponsored him to that prestigious post.

How times have changed! What a deep, round world we live in! Once upon a time, who would have convinced General Babangida that time would come when he would become a victim of the use of state power?

The man who once boasted: “Tell those human rights activists in Lagos that we are still in office and in power”, after he annulled the June 12, 1993 presidential election and triggered a series of civil disobedience, especially in Western Nigeria, is now receiving the butt of state power.

His campaign organisation, when ranged against that of the President, is the underdog. Babangida and the military political class had created an institutional monster in the presidency of Nigeria.

Wasn’t  it amazing that Jonathan, a  man who never had any political structures, never sowed any political seed (by empowering people as Babangida did during his eight years in power), a man who became an unelected president of Nigeria only seven months ago, a man from one of the nation’s medium-sized ethnic minorities, and a man who has never on his own contested and won any previous elections, could pull the crowd that Jonathan did last Saturday, without so much as lifting a finger?
And now, we come down to the question I posed above. It seems that Jonathan is set to win the nomination of the PDP.

If he does, his chances of winning the presidential election will be very good. The only thing that will stop Jonathan from achieving both aims is if the North will beat the odds, produce a single, credible and acceptable candidate and throw their full weight behind him, pending whatever  votes such a lucky candidate might scrounge up here and there from other parts of the country.

The South appears well disposed to giving Jonathan block support. Governors of more than half of the six states of the Middle Belt (Benue, Kogi, Nassarawa and Plateau) have pledged their open support for the President.

Are governors of the rest of the North willing to brave the odds and stand up for a Northern candidate, and with their superior number of delegates, attempt to retake the presidency?
The only way that Jonathan can be stopped is if the North is able to put their acts together and work in concert. If they succeed, their supporters in the South will be heartened and emboldened. But it is not an easy task.

Those who do not hold power always find it difficult to unite, especially in Nigeria where the lure to be found in the same bed with the winner is all-consuming. From the moment the zoning argument broke out and Jonathan’s presidential ambition became apparent, Northern leaders, such as Babangida, Atiku Abubakar, Adamu Ciroma, Tanko Yakassai and others, have been unceasing with their demand that the presidency must return to the North in 2011.

Over the weekend, a group of Arewa youth coalitions met and issued a threat that they would assert their claim to the presidency “with the last drop of their blood”.
It requires cast-iron resolve for the North to snatch the presidency from the hands of Jonathan. Given the personal interests of the governors and other top Northern politicos, I doubt the North’s ability to hold up.

It is a pity, though, that the race for the next president of Nigeria  is turning into this zero-sum game. Whoever  wins the election has a lot of work to do in re-uniting the sectional and ethnic fissures that have developed.

The aspirants must find ways of reducing this ethnic sabre-rattling because they cannot rule if there is no Nigeria.