Politician touts in action as troubles brew in the north over Jonathan nomination
Atiku Abubakar, whipped in his home state of Adamawa by Jonathan
Spates of protest are being reported in Northern part of Nigeria as youth are taking to the streets protesting the recent nomination of Goodluck Jonathan as candidate for People’s democratic Party in the coming election in April.
Sources claimed that the protests had been engineered by calculated propaganda on Radio in which some so called delegates to the nomination in Abuja last Saturday claimed they had been bribed to sway their voting.
Angered protesters are taking to the streets in parts of the country’s mainly Muslim north, building up a negative trend of likely confrontation with security agencies and creating a precedence of unhealthy political confrontation and unholy events between the north and south of Nigeria,
Observers saw the trend as attempts to stuck the election in April and force the nation to cave in to the whims and caprices of the self seeking political actors from the northern part of the country.
Last weekend, the ruling party spoke with a loud voice through an unprecedented transparent election nominating in which Jonathan Goodluck emerged as the presidential candidate for the rruling party in the election coming up in April this year.
Many diplomatic sources are indicating their intention to restrain staff movements which specifically, Western embassies are warning their staff to watch their movements and are issuing travelling restrictions to them for the next two weeks to enable them monitor the situation.
Public demonstrations began last week in Jigawa, Katsina and Adamawa States, following the PDP primaries. In the past few days, they have spread to Bauchi and Kaduna with youths grouping to embark on protests and anarchy aimed actions.
“There are organised confessions that many of the delegates were paid and the confessions are being made up to stir up trouble on the basis of the facts that governors received huge bribes to “sell” the North to a Southern Christian candidate in Goodluck Jonathan. With such organised protests and mayhem, the country is being driven towards civil disobedience and anarchy, such that may distort t or disable the election coming up in April, source spoke to EMNnews on line this morning from Nigeria.
Some of the delegates allegedly are confessing that they were actually cavorted in their hotel rooms in Abuja prior to the party primaries.
Some of them said they were dropped from the final delegates lists that went out to vote for Jonathan at the Eagle Square building up and whip up sentiments and angers in the mind of the youths.
Jonathan, a southern Christian, easily won the Peoples DemocraticParty primary vote last week, even thrasing his main opponent in his home state of Adamawa.
Hundreds of Muslim youths poured into the streets of the northern cities of Kaduna, Bauchi, Katsina and Hadejia at the weekend in protest, burning PDP flags and membership cards, witnesses had told AFP.
On Sunday, the PDP campaign headquarters in the northern city of Sokoto burnt down, but the cause was unclear as local radio reporting the incident gave no clue of the cause.
In some states of the north, especially Katsina, the home state of the former late president Umaru Yar’Adua, fiery sermons are being delivered in mosques and pther venues to stir up protests and during last Friday prayers Muslims were being urged not to vote for PDP candidates, according to local media.
Mass text messages on mobile phones have also been sent condemning northern state governors as “the enemies of the north and Islam” for supporting Jonathan instead of Atiku Abubakar, who challenged the president for the nomination.
The controversy stems from an arrangement within the PDP that says its candidates should be rotated between the mainly Muslim north and predominately Christian south every eight years — called “zoning.”
Jonathan became president in May after the death of Yar’Adua, who had not finished his first term, leading some to argue another northerner should take his place.
The party has won every presidential vote since Africa’s most populous nation returned to civilian rule in 1999, making the PDP nominee the obvious favourite in the April 9 election.
“We have resolved to renounce our membership of the PDP for the injustice meted on the north over the zoning arrangement and have started consultation on which of the northern candidates to vote for in the presidential election,” said Ahmad Yazid Rafindadi, who led the protest in Katsina.
All three major opposition parties have nominated northern Muslim candidates.
Former military ruler Muhammadu Buhari, running under the Congress for Progressive Change banner, is particularly seen as a potential threat to Jonathan if he forms an alliance with another influential party.
But despite the bluster, the extent of northern discontent with Jonathan remains difficult to gauge.
Democracy in action: The delegates have spoken
Now the situation is being analysed as having been whipped up be disenchanted political actors who are desperate to stuck the present dispensation, perhaps to ignite the interest of the military in the event of laws and order breaking down in the country. Politicians co-opting youth gangs and sending them into the streets to ferment crisis is a common place in northern Nigeria.
“There is strong public anger against northern PDP governors for going against the popular will of their people in supporting Jonathan in the primaries,” said Abubakar Sadiq Mohammed, a political science professor at the northern Ahmadu Bello University.
“Certain political forces are no doubt exploiting this public disenchantment, especially the religious aspect of it.”
Some had also predicted that Jonathan’s primary run would result in violence and that Abubakar, an ex-vice president, would be a strong challenger.
In the end, Jonathan handily defeated Abubakar. There has been an upsurge in violence in recent weeks, including bomb attacks in the capital Abuja and the central city of Jos, but it is unclear whether it is directly linked to Jonathan’s run.
“The whipping of religious sentiment in the north against … President Goodluck Jonathan is a dangerous development to the sustenance of democracy and national peace and stability,” said Shehu Sani of the northern Civil Rights Congress organisation.
The Northern Elders Assembly, which challenged Jonathan’s candidacy in court, blames northern PDP delegates who supported the president.
“The delegates should have thought that the choice of President Jonathan would provoke religious sentiment, which is very dangerous,” Tanko Yakasai, a spokesman for the group, told AFP.
It will be recalled that last year, elder statemans and the leader of the Northern Forum, Allhaji Adamu Ciroma, said that if Jonathan refused to withdraw his candidacy for PDP’s nomination, the north would make the country ungovernable for him.
many northern elders have expressed similar opinion.
Atiku Abubakar, the main opposition to Jonathan in the just concluded primary has continue to make statements capable of whipping up sentiments across the nation and he is yet to congratulate Goodluck Jonathan.
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It’s a shame that in this modern world some people out there will still be thinking like they own the whole of the globe. These so-called northern leaders are contributing factors to the reasons why most youths in the north are not as productive and useful as their counterparts in the south. Wake up northern youths and take your own destiny along with you because these so-called leaders will only use and dump you…they all have their kids studying in best universities around the globe while 99% of northern youths roam about begging for food on the streets of Kano, Kaduna, Sokoto, Zaria etc….it’s time we woke up and stop being used by these useless leaders…
@ Humar Adamu… I think you have made a good comment here and I must commend you ‘cos you re one of the very few Nigerian youths of northern origin that understand the root of our problems as a country. Not many northern youths will just talk the way you did!