2015: Many rivers to cross (1)

“If you are the big tree, we are the small ants, ready to cut you down.” Bob Marley song.

The elections in 2015 promise to be different in many ways. If the current widespread state of insecurity extends into the preparations, campaigns and the conduct of the elections, they could very well be conducted under a substantially-militarized atmosphere in many parts of the nation. In parts of the country which the insurgency appears bent on “liberating”, they may not take place at all. In that context, they will go down in history as the only elections which have been conducted in a state of war. If circumstances make it impossible to conduct the elections in many parts of the country, the President may invoke constitutional powers he shares with the legislature, to postpone them. They may also be the only elections since 2003 in which a ruling party will face genuine threat of being defeated. It will resist this of course, and the opposition which has smelt the possibility of success will fight, literary, to the finish.

It is obvious that the PDP is taking the threat from the merger seriously. You will not know this from what its leaders say, but from what they do. The signs that it is re-strategizing for a bruising contest are all there to see. The high profile role of its BOT chairman, Chief Tony Anenih is evidence that it is rolling out its big guns. The party chairman, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur appears to have lost out to the intrigues within the party, the awesome powers of its governors, and the widespread doubts that he and President Jonathan at the head of a campaign for 2015 can win anything.

The man who calls the shots, Chief Anenih, now appears to have re-designed strategies for re-engineering the party. His attempt to win back difficult and ambitious PDP governors to join the train appears to have sank Bamanga’s boat, and created the impression that the party has a role for them. How this plays out in the next few months is not clear, but the party will buy a little time with President Jonathan’s claim that he has not made up his mind to run in 2015.

Further forays are being made by Chief Anenih’s strategy to paper over massive cracks. His visit to President Obasanjo has been duly noted as a knees-on-the-ground appeal to him to sheath his sword against a Jonathan candidacy. Chief Anenih and president Obasanjo know each other very well. Between these two gladiators, there are very few tricks in the book they did not pull together, or separately in the past. If Obasanjo takes the bait and agrees that he is better off on board than rocking the PDP boat, he will still have to consider his value in a southwest PDP where the waters have receded too far from him, in a party which has respect for you only if you have a letter from home. His ace in influencing some northern governors to challenge a Jonathan presidency may have to be surrendered in exchange for an uncertain future, to a few people who are still wary of him.

There will be other moves the party will make in the next few months to attempt to control damage and head off the threat of a promising merger. It will try to contain the seeming belligerence of the River State governor, or scare him into silence or acquiescence. It will have to find a way around the ambitions of a number of northern governors as well as Alhaji Atiku Abubakar who believe that the next PDP candidate must come from the North, or the party will commit suicide.

It will have to address widespread worries over the poor record of President Jonathan in office, and convince many genuine members that he can be trusted with another mandate in 2015. But its biggest challenge will be convincing President Jonathan not to run again in 2015, if he wants to. It will take superhuman courage, which is not particularly evident in the PDP at this stage, to tell President Jonathan that he will tear the party apart if he choses to run in 2015. The leaders may be able to alert him to the possibility that he will be fiercely challenged in the build up to the primaries, and how it is safer not to assume that he will be unchallenged. Some may find a way to tell him that his candidature will substantially play into the hands of the opposition which is, right now, praying fervently that the PDP does field him. A few ambitious and wealthy members may avoid the arrows fired at their ambitions to cripple his candidacy and his campaign, and may trigger massive defections and elaborate “anti-party” to get him defeated. Those close to him who will worry over the outcome of the elections may hint that it will quite possibly be the most divisive elections organized, and the nation may be pushed nearer the abyss if a bitterly-contested election compounds its existing insecurity.

If, for the sake of argument, President Jonathan says he will not run in 2015, a whole new set of scenarios will unfold. Would the south-south PDP insist on another term under another candidate? If its militants and other fire-spitting beneficiaries of the administration of President Jonathan think he did not jump, but was pushed, will they resume large scale, armed hostility against the Nigerian State, with the nation’s assets in oil and gas as hostages? If the party fields a northerner as its candidate, who is it likely to be? Atiku is stupendously wealthy and has an unyielding ambition. But he has many enemies who would rather live under any other President than him. There are also many ambitious governors who will give him a run for his money. They will get a hefty push from people like Obasanjo and quite possibly Anenih, but they will run a campaign against opposition candidates who will enjoy popularity that will, in part, be the product of the failures of the PDP.

All in all, the PDP has some major challenges ahead of it. The confidence of the emerging opposition is partly derived from the current weakness and limitations of the PDP, and in part from its assessment of its own strength. It will be foolhardy for the opposition to think replacing the PDP as ruling party will be easy, however. This is a party that has all the cards stacked in its favour, in spite of its current limitations. It has resources and control over vital institutions of the state which are part of the electoral process. Life without power will expose too many people to threats and dangers of losing privileges, and huge sources of wealth and influence. A different leadership may ask too many awkward questions; reopen or open new investigations into the management of the nation’s economy; or assume tougher stands against criminality and routine subversion of the judiciary and law and order institutions.

The possibility that it could lose power in 2015 may likely be the strongest motivation for the PDP to put its house in order, and prepare to defeat a potentially-damaging opposition. Many people think the PDP has already lost the 2015 elections. Their optimism may not be without foundations, but it will be wrong to assume that the PDP will surrender its entire fortunes and future to an electoral process to decide. The period between now and 2015 will test the resilience of the PDP, the strength of the opposition, the integrity of the electoral process, and the nation's capacity to survive more challenging crises.