If
you think President Goodluck Jonathan has no plan or strategy on how to
win the 2015 presidential election you are dead wrong. I just finished
reading a document produced by Goodluck Jonathan’s political advisers
and strategists.
The title of the document is “2013-2015: Political power and governance road map.”
It is a carefully written document that identified and analyzed the
strengths and weaknesses of President Jonathan, and his chances of
winning the 2015 presidential election, if he decides to contest. It is
the good, the bad and the ugly of how Jonathan and his team will
approach 2015.
In the introduction, authors of
the document acknowledged that a new political order has emerged which
seriously pose a threat to the political order created by Jonathan and
his team. According to the document, “The public perception of
government, the tension and contradictions within the PDP, extremist
insurgencies and grave national security concerns, and desperation by
the opposition parties to cobble together a mega-party are concrete
indications of the struggle between an old and a newly constituted
national power arrangement.”
The authors alleged that “there is
sufficient evidence that attests to a well-oiled grand strategy to
diminish the person of Mr President and the institution of the
presidency, sabotage and impede the efficient execution of public
policies, distract and compromise key institutions, and ensure a chaotic
and unpredictable outcome in the 2015 general elections. Because these
forces are critically entrenched in the key organs of the PDP, in the
NASS, among the ranks of the party’s governors, in the media, within
dominant ethnic and regional political formations and violent non-state
actors, this struggle will become more acute and intense as the nation
plots its political graph and trajectory to the 2015 general elections.”
The document started with a Strengths, Weaknesses,
Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis of the person of President
Jonathan and the “new national power center he has constructed.” The
following is directly from the document.
Strengths
•Power of incumbency and utilization of governance machinery,
especially the careful and legal deployment of its propaganda and
coercive apparatuses
•Secure financial resources base and leveraging on strategic media assets
•Formidable
political apparatus—a reformed, disciplined and tightly controlled
PDP—with significant presence in all the 36 states and dominant control
over 23 states
•Deep-rooted, nation-wide support structures in
the shape of GSG, N2G and literally speaking, hundreds of youth, women
and regional affiliates controlled and supervised by the more dominant
support structures
•Effective and efficient implementation of the transformation agenda in critical national sectors
•High personal likeability rating which has to be further strengthened and deepened
•When
chips are down immense support will be secured from the National
Council of State by ex-leaders who value continuity and order over
instability and chaos
Weaknesses
•A less than forceful Presidential presence and infective deployment and application of presidential power
•The
perceived appropriation of presidential advocacy space by exuberant
partisans and fanatical supporters who project a wrong image of the
presidency as a regional agenda. This situation tends to alienate
moderate political forces across the country whose sense of co-ownership
of the presidency appears diminished
•A perceived sense of
distance between the Presidency and the PDP that has opened the space
for internal dissention and outright rebellion by party stalwarts. This
sense of disinterest and disengagement has engendered a culture of
apology among Presidential spokespersons whenever matters connecting Mr
President and the party appear on the public sphere
•Following
on the above, the reality of Mr President being the leaders of the
nation and the LEADER OF THE PARTY is not sufficiently grounded
•A
technocratic cabinet that is not fully politically engaged, especially
in media advocacy and community-wide outreach programmes. This unhelpful
situation out burdens a handful regime insiders in their constant
defense of The Presidency and the Transformation agenda
•A presidential communication strategy that is weak on proactive propaganda and rapid response
•Inability
of Presidential power strategists to manage the relationship between
The Presidency and the NASS to the degree that the later, particularly
the HOR, which is dominated by the PDP, appears as an outfit and
mouthpiece of the opposition
•Problematic relationship between
the Presidency and some former heads of State when, in actuality, they
should constitute the bedrock of his support
Opportunities
•Exploiting the current fractured state of the NGF for maximum
political advantage by strengthening the co-operative faction and
sustaining the pressure on recalcitrant PDP governors
•Exploiting
the opportunities inherent in the putative fracturing of the Northern
Governors’ Forum by strengthening co-operative governors and sustaining
pressure, directly and through different front organizations, on the
recalcitrant governors
•Playing on the political ambitions of
regional champions, especially in the North, to the degree and extent
that no unanimity of political purpose and cohesive agenda is ever
achieved
•The APC may appear as a formidable threat initially
but substantive opportunities will abound when ambitions and egos clash
among its principal promoters. Strategic planning should factor in the
scenario in the designing of intervention blueprint
•Exploiting
the immense public opinion opportunities in the current war against
terror in the North, especially given the steady successes thus far
recorded by the NSA, and the military high command through the JTF
•Utilizing
the social and economic empowering and inclusive space provided by
SURE-P, particularly its integrated community empowerment schemes, to
advertise and show case the populist and pro-people orientation of the
government
Threats
There are sufficient
grounds to believe that the NASS continues to pose a threat to the
effective exercise of Presidential power in the areas of budget-making
processes and the on-going amendments of the constitution with specific
reference to devolution of power and tenure of elected officials
•Formidable
forces in both the NGF and the NNGF continue to pose significant threat
to the political calculations and choices open to Mr President
•Regional alliances among dominant ethnic blocks may constitute a threat to the political choices open to Mr President
•If the APC does not implode along the way, it will constitute a real threat to the PDP and Mr President
•Extremist
insurgencies in the North and the burgeoning oil theft in the Niger
Delta are already sources of concern and worry; the way and manner these
issues are dealt with will determine the degree to which they will pose
a threat down the line
•Regrettably, the current, crisis-ridden
state of the PDP poses significant threat to the realization of the
party’s political ambition in 2015, including that of Mr President.
The
SWOT analysis above is just a small excerpt from the document. The
document was written after the New PDP was created but before the G5 and
members of House of Representatives defected to APC. The rest of the
document is an in-depth analysis of what the PDP and President Jonathan
should do to win the 2015 elections. This include changing perception of
Nigerians through propaganda, establishment of a political intelligence
unit, reforming PDP, fund mobilization strategies, causing political
division in the North and South West, appointing politicians with
grassroots support as ministers, deploying SURE-P for political
purposes, using the civil society organizations and professional
organizations, increasing the number of registered voters in
South-South, North-central and South-East, and reducing the number of
voters in the North and South West, etc.
Mr. Gamawa is a doctoral candidate in Law at Harvard University.
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