By Ochereome Nnanna
THESE are not the best of times to be an insider of the President Goodluck Jonathan presidential campaign team.

It is obvious from what one sees that the President’s strategists believe they have an uphill task in getting him nominated and elected president in 2011.

How else would you explain away these corner-cutting blundering from pillar to post in search of quick-fix solutions to ensure he does not become the first sitting president of Nigeria to lose a nomination bid?

Even before he formally announced he would contest the presidency in 2011, the President’s camp had attempted to change the order of the primaries in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in mid-September, 2010.

They made the Party’s National Working Committee (NWC) to propose that the presidential primaries should come before the gubernatorial. The reasoning was that with the president taking the first shot, governors would be forced to support him in return for his help when it comes to their turn.

The pro-zoning governors of the North would have no choice but to dump Northern presidential aspirants in the PDP.

However, it did not quite work out, in that when the governors converged in Abuja along with other members of the National Executive Council (NEC) of the Party, Jonathan had no choice other than to personally ask the NWC to back down when the pressure from the governors assumed crisis proportions.

Shortly after that, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) asked for an extension of time to enable it conduct a computerised method of voter registration.

The shift of the earlier January date for the election to April 2011 provided an opportunity for the Goodluck Ebele Jonathan (GEJ) camp to seek another easy way out for their man.

Just as we entered the month of October 2010, the President sent a proposal to the National Assembly requesting for an amendment for certain political appointees to be allowed to vote as delegates to their parties’ primaries.

He specifically requested that the section of the 2010 Electoral Act that reads: “A political appointee at any level shall not be a voting delegate at the convention or congress of any political party for the purpose of nomination of candidates for any election”, should be expunged. He later met another brick wall, as the PDP-dominated federal parliament threw out his request.

The antics of the President’s camp was soon copied by some federal legislators, who decided to sponsor a private member’s bill to advance the selfish interests of members of the National Assembly.

The controversial bill seeks to make members of the National Assembly automatic members of the National Executive Committees of their various political parties and to put them in a position to take crucial and final party decisions.

Clearly, if this diabolical legislation sees the light of day, the Speaker of the House of Representatives would emerge as the most powerful figure in the ruling party, in that if he is able to rally his members to his side, he could even overshadow the President in the party’s scheme of things.

Many commentators have also lashed at the idea of making monsters out of National Assembly members, in that the bill seeks to legislate a common decision-making process for all political parties, thus watering down their powers to decide how crucial decisions are taken.

Earlier on, the National Assembly had matched the presidency in this act of political desperation by seeking to force the political parties to grant the power of first refusal to seek re-election, which also failed.

The beautiful thing about democracy is that even here in Nigeria, it is difficult to ram dirty proposals down the throats of Nigerians. It is only the military that is known to use law making to get what they want, whether the people like it or not. When General Obasanjo was the Head of State and he and his colleagues were about to retire to civilian lifestyle, most of them decided to become farmers and landowners.

They simply made the Land Use Decree and forced the state military governors to hand over large parcels of land to them for their “farms”. That way, Obasanjo was able to corner a quarter of Ota. His colleagues in other parts, especially the North, got even more.

They had to use lawmaking to grab the land because they knew there was no other civilised way they could get it.

The same thing is happening with the camp of the President, which is being desperately copied by some legislators. The President’s camp feels the easiest way for Jonathan to overcome the odds is to change rules and laws at source. But it should have been clear to them that this method does not work in Nigeria.

Nigerians have learned how to stop those seeking to use the instrument of lawmaking to gain unearned political advantages. Our instinct toward it is similar to our reflex towards tenure elongation by presidents or anybody in high political authority.

Those who fail to obey simple instructions or follow prescribed rules are, in most cases, the ones who in the end start looking frantically for miracles. As far as I am concerned, the President does not need the law being changed in his favour to emerge as the candidate of his party or to be elected in April 2011.

All he needs is to convince Nigerians that he is the long-sought leader for the Nigeria of our dreams we have been looking for since 50 years now. He has every opportunity to convince Nigerians that he is better than the expired regional hawks that are ganging up against him.

The federal legislators know that most of them have little chance of coming back if subjected to due democratic process.

That is why they are trying to use lawmaking to impose themselves on their people.