By Douglass ANELE
The months of maneouverings, ad hominems and scratch-my-back-I-will-scratch-yours for the Peoples Democratic Party’s presidential ticket are over.

On Friday, January 14, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, the incumbent President decisively defeated former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar and “serial contestant” Sarah Jibril to clinch PDP’s presidential ticket for the April 9, 2011 presidential election.

At the momentous event at the Eagle Square in Abuja, President Jonathan polled 2,736 votes; Atiku’s tally was 805 while Jibril had only one vote. Apparently she was the only person that voted for herself – were there no female voters among the delegates?

Certain implications flow from Jonathan’s overwhelming victory and the successful convention of the ruling party, PDP. First and foremost, the defeat of Abubakar has virtually wiped away the chances of the Turakin Adamawa of ever ruling Nigeria. Several reasons can be adduced to explain his ignominious defeat by Jonathan.

For starters, due to the unpredictable dialectic of political equation since his disagreements with erstwhile President Olusegun Obasanjo and ill-advised flirting with the Action Congress of Nigeria, Atiku’s political machinery has been severely compromised. Second, a significant number of PDP delegates across the country believed that the death of Umaru Yar’Adua demands a pragmatic re-evaluation of the zoning principle to ensure that PDP fields a candidate with what one may call “strong presidential value” so that the party will retain the presidency in this year’s election.

Then, the issue of morality appears to favour Jonathan. Although no one, including the President’s loyalists, believes that Jonathan is totally immune from graft, there is a widespread feeling that Atiku built his impressive wealth on the foundation of corruption. For example, two days before the PDP’s presidential primary, six members of the party had petitioned its Presidential Primaries Screening Committee and gave reasons why the former VP should be disqualified.

Top  on the list of accusations against Atiku is that he is yet to be cleared from allegations of corruption in the United States for which he is still labelled “a corrupt foreign official.” The manner by which Atiku emerged as the North’s consensus candidate for PDP and his bitter campaign against Jonathan alienated some northern delegates who felt that the Adamu Ciroma-led Northern Political Leaders’

Forum does not have the mandate to speak for the entire North. Such delegates voted against the former VP to spite Ciroma and his group. Moreover, several delegates from the South (and from the North also) rallied round Jonathan, convinced that the North has had a fair share of political power at the centre and that it was time the inequalities and imbalances of the past should be addressed.

On a more personal level, whereas Atiku exudes the aura of a self-assured arrogant bourgeois, Jonathan comes across as a humble, urbane and even-minded individual. Even right before the voting proper began, when the candidates were allowed to address the delegates, Atiku made a bitter speech, wasting precious time attacking what he considers as the President’s attempt to torpedo zoning. Jonathan, on the other hand, was calm and even-tempered in his address.

His call for a minute silence in honour of his former boss, Yar’Adua, was a show stopper which resonated well with many delegates. Thus, it was not surprising that he received a standing ovation which indicated the likely outcome of the primaries.

Jonathan’s crystal clear victory over Atiku, in a sense, is a micro version of M.K.O. Abiola’s victory over Bashir Tofa in the annulled presidential election of June 12, 1993. Just as Abiola garnered majority of the votes across the geo-political zones of the country, Jonathan trounced the former VP in all the zones except the North-West. Furthermore, Tofa lost in Kano, his state of origin, while Atiku lost to his rival in his home state, Adamawa.

Jonathan and Namadi Sambo performed extremely well in some muslim-dominated states such as Jigawa, Adamawa and Katsina, comparable to the performance of the muslim-muslim ticket of Abiola and Babagana Kingibe in core christian states in the South. Therefore, the possibility of transcending ethnicity and religious affiliations in Nigerian politics exists and should be strengthened for the consolidation of democracy.

As we have argued several times in the past, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with the zoning formula of PDP as long as it is not interpreted or applied in a way that would promote mediocrity at the expense of merit, competence and excellence. Even, the federal character provisions in the 1999 Constitution can be interpreted in a way that accommodates zoning.

Yet, we strongly recommend that the major political parties in Nigeria should concentrate on implementing programmes and policies that would render ineffective, politically, economically and socially those factors that tend to divide us. The perception that the office of President is the birthright or prerogative of a section or group is pernicious to the idea of “One Nigeria” and must be totally abandoned if the country is to progress.

In that regard, merit, excellence and track record of performance should be the defining criteria for choosing our leaders. In our view, Adamu Ciroma, Ibrahim Babangida and Atiku Abubakar etc. who were championing zoning are unfair to the youths in the North who are still very backward, educationally-speaking, compared to their southern counterparts.

What demonstrable benefits has northern domination of federal political power conferred on the poverty-stricken talakawas and almajiris? Whose interests are Northern Political Leaders’ Forum and Arewa Consultative Forum pursuing or protecting? If political domination has been good for the average northerners, how come states in the North are still labelled with the derogatory designation “educationally-less-developed states”?

It is time for youths in the north to ask their so-called leaders searching questions and demand answers: they should rise against political dinosaurs like Ciroma and his cohorts to liberate themselves from political servitude and subjugation, economic dependency and educational backwardness.