JONATHAN & NWODO CROSSFIRE: Who Is Right?

In the media of Friday December 17, 2010, President Jonathan argued that the PDP governors are being given (returned) automatic tickets because there is need for continuity; for development sake. Jonathan probably argued so in order to secure the ‘hollow’ endorsement he got from the twenty PDP governors. On Saturday December 18, 2010, the PDP National Chairman, His Excellency Okwesilieze Nwodo, countered that there will be no automatic ticket for the governors. Whose statement should be taken as final and/or in order, is yet to be understood.

One was disappointed that President Jonathan could argue the way he did. Does he mean that government is no more a continuum; after all any project being carried out by any present PDP governor, once a good one, would be continued by any incoming governor? I feel in this case, the President has again displayed directionless and his (PDP) Party, double-speaking. Good governance should not be sacrificed on the altar of mediocrity and corruption which is the bane of the present crop of ‘elected’ and appointed politicians.

When I was contemplating this short piece, a friend of mind told me that I was only wasting my time because PDP cannot make the presidency come 2011; I felt otherwise. But with the continued heating-up the polity generated by the funny campaign of calumny being carried out by Jonathan and Atiku Campaign Organizations, I am having a rethink.

It is looking as if PDP, as many are predicting, would be finished by 2011, if at all the elections that are being scheduled takes place. Once the continuity thing becomes the bedrock of PDP, most of its members are bound to be taken over by the opposition.

If Jonathan is insisting that for continuity sake the governors should be returned because not all of them are doing well, what has he to say about the National Assembly and State House members? Are they also to be awarded the automatic ticket? In which case, democracy is dead in the PDP and this is looking good as its albatross. Most statements coming from our President Jonathan point directionless.

Dr. Segun Osobu, Osborne Road, Ikoyi,  Lagos State.