Yesterday, as President Goodluck Jonathan unveiled a proposal stipulating a single 7-year tenure for the office of Nigeria’s president as well as state governors, his office circulated a press statement focusing on Mr. Jonathan’s reported concern about the widespread acrimony generated every four years at the federal and state levels as a result of re-election campaigns.
Yesterday, as President Goodluck Jonathan unveiled a proposal stipulating a single 7-year tenure for the office of Nigeria’s president as well as state governors, his office circulated a press statement focusing on Mr. Jonathan’s reported concern about the widespread acrimony generated every four years at the federal and state levels as a result of re-election campaigns.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('content1'); });
Still, SaharaReporters’ investigations revealed that the new proposal is nothing but an ill-disguised tenure elongation scheme by Mr. Jonathan who desires to add seven more years to his tenure as president without going through fresh elections. Handicapped by his open pledge to spend only one term in office, Mr. Jonathan has fashioned the single seven-year term as a gambit to prolong his presidency.
One of our sources disclosed that Tony Anenih, a former Minister for Works, and Petroleum Minister, Diezani Alison-Madueke, are critical to Mr. Jonathan’s current plans. “Chief Anenih has moved back into Aso Rock as a trusted adviser to President Jonathan on this issue,” said the source. He added, “The president has also entrusted Mrs. Alison-Madueke with the task of raising the funds to enable the plan succeed.” Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke played a huge role in sourcing funds for Jonathan’s presidential campaign. Our source disclosed, “She was brought back as minister, despite the First Lady’s objections, because of how reliable she can be in getting the funds to achieve the new proposal.”
According to our reports released in December 2010, Jonathan had made up his mind to extend his tenure by hook or crook even before the 2011 elections that brought him to office. He first broached the idea with members of the Save Nigeria Group who visited him, stating that he considered four years too short a time to make any impact.
Several sources close to the Presidency have told SaharaReporters that today’s press release, which came barely three months after Mr. Jonathan was sworn in to a four-year tenure, was the opening salvo in a larger strategy to achieve tenure elongation, even though Mr. Jonathan claimed that he did not intend to benefit from the arrangement.
An insider who is familiar with the plot revealed that Mr. Jonathan’s rhetoric and plan are meant to deflect the suspicion and resistance of those most likely to oppose the project.
In fact, the scheme borrows from the well-worn scripts of past attempts at tenure elongation. In the same style of his successors who sought tenure elongation, Mr. Jonathan is using appeals to altruistic motives, his own patriotic zeal, and claims that he would not be a "beneficiary" of the single term project to mask his real intentions and to make his plot more palatable.
“Mark my word, this is what I call a political scam-bait aimed at cunning Nigerians to buy into this questionable project,” said an Abuja-based lawyer. He added, “Once Nigerians accept this, then President Jonathan’s handlers and state governors will orchestrate a massive campaign in the ostensible name of Nigerians to prevail on Jonathan to become the first beneficiary.”
The source, who obtained details of the plan from Mr. Jonathan’s closest associates, stated that Mr. Jonathan would be sold “as the candidate best positioned to secure Nigeria’s political stability and guarantee its continued corporate existence.”
Former military dictators Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha applied some of the same tactics in their respective quests for tenure elongation. Mr. Babangida engineered what he projected as a campaign to empower “new breed politicians”. But his lofty-sounding campaign degenerated into a self-perpetuating gimmick. Nigerians caught on to Mr. Babangida’s designs when he cancelled several party primaries that his regime oversaw and twice postponed handover dates. In the process he banned and unbanned many politicians, and eventually created two political parties funded by his government. When the parties eventually produced presidential candidates and contested peaceful, free and fair elections in 1993, Mr. Babangida annulled the result, hoping to remain in office and organize fresh elections in which he wanted to be a candidate. However, a civil uprising chased him out of office.
Mr. Abacha, too, organized a transition program in which all the five political parties he approved and funded were programmed to adopt him as their presidential candidate. Mr. Abacha died while the parties were putting finishing touches to a bizarre arrangement that would have seen him contest an “election” in which he was on the ticket of five parties.
Since the advent of civilian rule in 1999, tenure elongation has returned as a recurring problem. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo staged one of the most daring attempts at self-perpetuation by sponsoring the “third term” project.
Much like Jonathan's current proposal, Mr. Obasanjo began by assembling a group of Nigerians, led by Justice Nikki Tobi and Rev. Fr. Hassan Kukah, to engage in a so-called constitutional conference. As soon as the conference went underway, Mr. Obasanjo’s carefully chosen acolytes began pushing to change the constitution to allow him a third term in office. When the controversial conference collapsed, Mr. Obasanjo's associates took to the National Assembly where they submitted a proposal for a constitutional amendment permitting a “third term” in office.
In order to advance the deal, a motley group of corrupt politicians and shady businessmen lined up behind Obasanjo, calling him the "father of modern Nigeria." The group spent billions of naira siphoned from state treasuries, corporate donations and the coffers of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). In Jigawa state, former Governor Saminu Turaki stole N6 billion in one day to fund the third term project.
The project collapsed in the face of massive opposition from the Nigerian masses. Since he had expected the third term gamble to work, Mr. Obasanjo had made little or no preparations for real elections. Still smarting from the ringing defeat of his scheme, Mr. Obasanjo used former INEC chairman Maurice Iwu to organize sham elections, imposing his stooges in power. The fraudulent process produced a sickly Umaru Yar'Adua as president and Goodluck Jonathan as his deputy.
Sources told SaharaReporters that Mr. Jonathan was using semantics to mislead Nigerians about his true plans. As of December 2010, he had already set his sight on obtaining a seven-year tenure.
Yesterday’s press release from Mr. Jonathan’s office was silent on the number of years involved in the single-tenure proposal. However, in our December 19, 2010 report, we had revealed that the plan was to peg the term at seven years. Part of that 2010 report read: “In a game that is yielding surprises and re-engineered alliances daily, Jonathan’s hunt for a ‘spiritual’ edge is to bolster his determination to stay in office for seven years, if he gets elected in 2011, not just for the four-year tenure he was reportedly endorsed for.” We also added: “SaharaReporters sources revealed that contrary to what is being touted in public, Jonathan has secretly cobbled together a team of strategists and manipulators that include ‘Mr. Fix-It’ Anthony Anenih and Jerry Gana, with the objective of putting together a blueprint for one-time 7-year tenure for Jonathan as soon as the elections are over in April 2011.”
It is significant that, even before touching a single one of his mountain of electoral promises, Mr. Jonathan has chosen to unveil what one of his critics called “a selfish plan.”
A diplomatic source from one of the EU nations said that he was aware that Mr. Jonathan’s proposal had been floating around. “However, the timing struck us as surprising.” The diplomat said the administration “might be too bogged down pushing through the plan to pay attention to needed reform policies.”
A few political analysts who spoke to us said they were astonished that Mr. Jonathan would set a new tenure proposal as a priority. But insiders described Jonathan's position as a ploy to achieve tenure elongation.
“President Jonathan knows too well that an industry of sycophants – including elders, Christian groups, traditional rulers, students, amorphous youth groups and jobless politicians – would quickly coalesce around this proposal and ask that he be the first beneficiary,” said one of our sources, adding that Mr. Jonathan was already planning to “fund and fuel the agitation.”
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('comments'); });
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('content2'); });