JONATHAN’S RE-ELECTION: Anenih takes on Buhari in his comfort zone

Chief Tony Akhakon Anenih, Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Board of Trustees, BoT, Chairman, has launched an offensive into the stronghold of Major General Muhammadu Buhari, All Progressive Party, APC, presidential aspirant, reconciling leaders of the PDP there, explaining to them the dangers of going into next year’s election as a divided house. He has recorded considerable progress; and he pushes on. Anenih and Jonathan It was very successful, the meeting in Kaduna, the capital of Kaduna State, last week, between the team led by Chief Tony Anenih, PDP BoT Chairman, and some leaders of the party in the state. Seated in the hall filled to capacity with chieftains of the party were, among others, Ramalan Yero, Governor of Kaduna State, and Senator Ahmed Makarfi, who had held that post before. They had come to listen to their BoT Chairman speak truth to leadership in the state. Why this meeting was very critical cannot be overstated because of the strategic importance of Kaduna in the affairs of northern Nigeria. That is the state of Vice President Namadi Sambo. Therefore, when Anenih delivered his sermon of peace and unity anchored on party discipline, apportioning blames where they were due and giving commendation where they were deserving, the meeting had a good end. Instructive was the commitment extracted from Makarfi, that he must deliver the state to the party. For a politician who believes in the sanctity of the state and its machinery, perhaps many have come to confuse the role and personality of Anenih. But to those in the leadership of the party, he epitomises experience and loyalty. Since 1998 when the party was formed, Anenih remains, perhaps, one of the very few – very, very few –leaders who have never contemplated decampment as a directive policy of politicking. Anenih, who has the traditional title of Iyasele (Prime Minister) of Esanland, had set himself some targets when he took over as BoT Chairman. Concerned about the widening chasm in the party, especially between members and leaders on the one hand, and the damaging consequences of the ceaseless bickering among members of the National Working Committee, NWC, of the party, on the other, Anenih had set for himself targets. In private meetings at the very highest levels, Anenih, information available to Sunday Vanguard suggests, made it clear that he would be focusing on the following: Unity & fairness Oneness Progress Rancour-free party Assisting the NEC in bringing everybody together Assisting the NEC in resolving the challenges and crises confronting the party in the state chapters Working with members of the BoT to live and act the spirit of the conscience of the party Re-positioning the party for the challenges of 2015 Ensuring adherence to strict party discipline Keeping faith with the legacies of the founding fathers of the party Sunday Vanguard gathered that at the time of his emergence, the agenda was not codified; but it has since become Anenih’s agenda for development and repositioning of the party. “The reason is simply because when you look at the happenings within the party, a wise leader like chief would be interested in and committed to what you have in the 10-point agenda’’, a top party chieftain anonymously told Sunday Vanguard. “In fact, it even becomes more pressing now with the rampaging opposition threatening to dislodge the PDP from power. “The BoT Chairman believes that if every member and leader of the party at the different levels key into these points and make them cardinal objectives to be achieved, the party would be better positioned to silence critics”. All attempts by Sunday Vanguard last week in Abuja to get Anenih to talk ran into a stone wall. But feelers from the camp loyal to the BoT Chairman indicated that the old and tested political warhorse is determined, in the face of burgeoning opposition against Jonathan by the APC, to give the president’s 2015 re-election bid his all. The strategic importance of making peace moves in Kaduna, Katsina, Kebbi, Jigawa and Sokoto States flows from the fact that these are states of the North West where the APC hopes to capture considerable votes. The merger between the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, and the Congress for Progressive Change, CPC, was built on a possible coalition of votes between the former’s South West geo-political zone, and the latter’s North West area. Therefore, sensing the danger in allowing relations among PDP stalwarts to go to the dogs North West is no more than sleeping while the roof is on fire. To a large extent, the peace moves were considered successful Politics, thy name is Anenih From his days in the National Party of Nigeria, NPN, in the defunct Bendel State, Anenih’s politics has been variously described as one of pacification. However, beneath that pacifist paradigm of his resides a very strong vice-grip mentality of loyalty to the general cause of party position. An example can be drawn from the very turbulent days of the Social Democratic Party, SDP, when the party was forced to agree to go for another presidential election. The pillar of the then SDP, the late General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, had agreed to another election as a way out of the emerging crisis of the June 12, 1993 presidential election. Indeed, the leadership of the party at that time had seen the hands of General Sani Abacha, eager to wrest power and, therefore, had hoped that an early resolution would checkmate Abacha’s adventure. But the gale of antagonism to that decision, coupled with the short-sightedness of a section of the political class, first gave way to an Interim National Government, ING, which was made to look all the more interim by Abacha’s dismissal of Ernest Shonekan, the then head of ING. But Yar’Adua and Anenih’s position for another early election, which was pooh-poohed, led to Abacha’s five-year disaster as Head of State. True an annulment was anathema to Nigeria’s growing democracy. But another election would have seen MKO Abiola win by an even bigger margin had it held. During the February 1999 National Convention of the PDP in Jos, from where former President Olusegun Obasanjo emerged, the victory recorded by Obasanjo over Alex Ekwueme, his closest rival, was made possible by a combination of factors from which you cannot divorce Anenih. In fact, as early as 6:45am on voting day, apart from this writer, the only person who sat in the VIP section of the Jos Township Stadium that Sunday morning was Anenih. Clad in his now familiar blue jeans jacket and trousers, he kept making sorties between the VIP section of the stadium and the delegates’ stands, each time to nip suspected emerging crisis in the bud when voting was about to commence. In 2002, at the height of the burst-up between the National Assembly and the rambunctious Obasanjo, it was to Anenih the latter turned. Working tirelessly with a handful of other committed leaders of the PDP, Anenih became the arrow-head of that rescue mission, negotiating, conciliating and making compromises with a view to saving a situation which had pitched the North against the South. That Obasanjo could survive the onslaught, and later serve out his first term and even secure a second term, was due, in part, to Anenih’s role. Worse for Obasanjo, on the eve of the PDP National Convention in January 2003, when a majority of the state governors in the party almost threw him to the dogs, preferring, instead, the then Vice President Atiku Abubakar, it was the same Anenih who again threw himself into the battle to save Obasanjo. However, between the selfsame Obasanjo and Anenih, the centre could not hold when the issue of Third Term began to gain fervency. The latter objected to the move and this angered Obasanjo. And whereas the former president recruited some political upstarts to drive his Third Term project, the effort ended as a fool’s errand. Had Obasanjo adhered to good sense and wisdom, he might have spared himself and his presidency the odium of the embarrassment that trailed his failure to secure the Third Term, which still haunts him till today. Presidential watchers insist that when the issue of zoning became very contentious in the run up to the 2011 presidential contest, it was Anenih who brought out data, showing how zoning had almost always been breached since 1999 whenever the party wanted a presidential convention, citing the instances of the late Abubakar Rimi in 1999 and 2003 (when the slot was supposedly reserved for the South); and 2007 (when some southerners contested against Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, a time when the slot was supposedly reserved for the North). For the BoT Chairman, he accepts the praises where due and takes the bashings which are sometimes caustic with quintessential equanimity when they come – as they often do, especially in his home state of Edo, where a political party other than his own is in control. Some may never agree with his politics, but for a man steeped in his ways, some phrases commonly used by Anenih in the face of party indiscipline are, ‘Things are not supposed to be done this way’, ‘You cannot behave like this’. Anenih has his multitude; and he still leads. It was in 1992 that the late Shehu Yar’Adua christened Anenih, “The Leader”. The title has since stuck. That he is moving round to cool otherwise heated climes in the North West is not by accident, especially at a time when the PDP needs leadership with character to confront the challenges of 2015. Anenih was 81 in August.