President Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan, GCFR, GCON
Is President Goodluck Jonathan the last hope of the PDP?
The ruling People’s Democratic Party is being destabilized by both internal and external forces of discord. Attacks from disgruntled political spoilers in the party have left deep cracks in her walls as many of the losers in the controversial primaries have decamped to different opposition parties and those who have chosen to remain may not prove to be formidable in the forthcoming make or break elections in April and the Opposition is pouring more fuel in the flames of wrath engulfing the PDP.
The PDP has become so unpopular among the masses that the party is spending millions of naira to rent crowds for political rallies and pay for constant rotation of adverts in the print and electronic news media and also desperately using both lawful and unlawful measures to overcome the Opposition.
The horrors of incessant ethno-religious conflicts, assassinations, kidnappings, armed robberies, terrorist bomb attacks and other terrifying incidents have left the citizens in hysteria and melancholia since the ruling party rigged elections in 1999, 2003 and 2007 to control the political leadership of Nigeria. The most harrowing is the insecurity of lives and properties that the masses are now saying that the good luck they expected from President Goodluck Jonathan has turned to bad luck from Yenagoa to Abuja, because the state of insecurity worsened when he was sworn in as the President of Nigeria on May 6, 2010 after the unfortunate death of President Umaru Yar’Adua. But Mr. Jonathan is still undaunted by the nightmarish misfortunes trailing him and continues to hang on to the superstitious belief in his name. In fact, his ruling party seems to have decided to hold on to the same fate as their only hope of surviving the onslaught of the Opposition and the indignation of the disappointed masses. Will their superstition save them?
What the suffering masses of the most populous country in Africa need now is not a superstitious belief in the name of President Goodluck Jonathan, but a realistic solution for the reformation and transformation of Nigeria to end their nightmares of recurrent ethno-religious conflicts, social and economic woes of the perennial crises plaguing them.
~ By Ekenyerengozi Michael Chima
