By Dele Sobowale

“Complacency has no place in our operations; we should be ever ready for competition” CEO of a Multinational in the 1970s..

This column could easily have been titled JONATHAN’s TAG TEAM SLAMMED and it would still have been appropriate. A wrestling champion who selects his tag team partners from the geriatric ward, in a contest with young and agile opponents, should expect a wicked body slam.

The President of Nigeria was handed a humiliating pin-fall at the Nigerian Governors Forum election – irrespective of what Reuben Abati said about it. And he deserved it. Nobody listens to Abati anymore anyway. Jonathan, disably supported by Chief Anenih (78) and Alhaji Tukur (76), had been lured into the ring by a vocal governor from the Southsouth, who, in his own contests leads with his mouth and invariably receives a sucker punch.

He led the team of pro-Jonathan governors into the slaughter house – brimming with hubris. After all, the Team Manager from Niger Delta, had a list of nineteen governors with signatures pledging support to the hastily drafted surrogate contestant – Governor Jang of Plateau State.

So sure was Jang of victory that he did not even bother to lobby other governors, not on the list, who he was programmed to lead – if he had succeeded. That shows what sort of leader Jang would have made for his colleagues. As usual, “pride goes before a fall” according to the old adage.

Unfortunately for Jang, he did not win the election. Now, his faction of the NGF is shopping for a new Secretariat; where he will lead a faction of the NGF shameless losers. No Chairman of the NGF, since it opened shop, has ever started his tenure with such humiliation as an excess baggage.

Even Jang is not stupid; he knows that those who voted for Amechi in a free and fair election will never attend any meeting he calls. What Jang should ask himself, if he ever asks the right questions is, “since when did a list of signatures become substitute for ballot papers in an election”? Now, we know the sort of leaders we have in state executive positions nationwide. These guys, including lawyers among them don’t even know the defini
tion of democracy.

Jonathan’s primary mistake was his reliance on two octogenarians – the Chairman of the Board of Trustees, BOT, and the Chairman of the National Executive Committee, NEC. “Mr Fix-it”, who was forced on the BOT, by Jonathan, once bestrode the political landscape in Edo State like a colossus. But, since Oshiomhole became governor, the mystic has gone.

His only successful candidate for governor in Edo State started in I999 with grandeur and ended as a convict. As the saying goes, “show me your friends; and I’ll tell you who you are”. The BOT chair went round the states, cap-in-hand, to lobby governors in support of the presidential candidate; and fell flat on his face. This is the fourth contest the man is losing. The mystic is gone.

Alhaji Tukur was another official imposed on the party despite the near total lack of influence in his own state – Adamawa. Tukur could not even get his own governor to vote with the President. What sort of a Chairman is that who cannot even control his own state?

The President’s “Team Manager”, must have assumed that, with nineteen signatures on a list in his pocket, the election was a foregone conclusion. Stuffed with hubris, he willingly allowed the election to proceed. Then, he was flattened with a sucker punch. Instead of nineteen votes, only sixteen were recorded for the President.

Three moles had defected to the other side. What “Team Manager” and his crowd failed to realize was the fact that the candidate, Jang, they put up, at the last minute, was a loser. Most governors will not on their own vote for Jang. The secret ballot allowed three governors to vote their consciences.

Beaten black and blue, the losers staggered to the Akwa Ibom Governor’s lodge and held a comical press conference attempting to discredit a free and fair election which they lost – but without gallantry – for the President. Then, they proceeded to meet with the BOT Chairman – clutching a phony trophy.

It was pathetic watching “eminent” Nigerians in disgraceful mutual embrace and getting ready to set up an office as a monument to an election they lost. It is more remarkable that not a single one of them is under thirty years old. Where, for God’s sake, is honour? Where went maturity and self-respect?  With “friends” like these, does Jonathan need any more enemies?

FOR THOSE GOVERNORS I RESPECT: OBI, MIMIKO AND UDUAGHAN.

“Any man who wants to be a cowardly slave can have no honour”. (VANGUARD BOOK OF QUOTATIONS p 94).

Of all the governors who participated in that show of shame, after the NGF election, only three surprised me because, on those three, I had invested a lot of faith that, win or lose, in any election, they will honourably conduct themselves. The three, in alphabetical order were Obi of Ananmbra State; Mimiko of Ondo State and Uduaghan of Delta State.

Together with Fashola, Fayemi, Kwakwanso, and Aliyu, they constitute the small number of governors who, to me, were cuts above the rest in integrity. On the night of the vote, a senior brother Dr Vaughan asked me how I thought the vote would go. I told him that Amechi would win, but the pro-Jonathan governors would try to break up the NGF.

I also said that some governors would not support the pro-Jonathan governors. Among those I listed were the three. To say I was mortified to watch as my “heroes” followed the bad losers is to understate my disappointment. Who can one trust in politics any more?

President Jonathan, Amechi must not die

“Men make history, but not just as they please”. Karl Marx, 1818-1883.

Mr President, Governor Amechi has raised alarm about a plot to kill him. If I were you, the security around Amechi would be beefed up to ensure that nothing happens to him. Right or wrong, if the fellow is ever assassinated fingers of blame will be pointed in a particular direction.

A word is sufficient…