12 People Who Ruined PDP And Jonathan's Adminstration

– Obasanjo’s devastating attacks against
Jonathan, sometimes through letters, at other
times through public lectures have taken a
heavy toll.
– Sambo has nothing of the political drive and
ambition of, say, Atiku Abubakar.
– The president contributed to his party’s
current predicament in three ways.
(Daily Trust) – 1. Alhaji Bamanga Tukur
His disastrous tenure as PDP’s national
chairman was the biggest game changer for
the PDP from which it might never recover.
Bamanga’s tenure also coincided with the
period when three major opposition parties
were consolidating into one mega opposition
party, but the chairman failed to recognise
the emerging threat. Instead, he encouraged
the Party Leader to settle personal scores
within the party. It was a cover for Bamanga
to also settle personal scores of his own. He
suspended a state governor for refusing to
answer his phone call; he watched askance
as seven governors formed a faction called
‘the new PDP’ (nPDP), and he didn’t care a
hoot when 5 governors jumped ship and joined
the APC.
2. Chief Edwin Clark
As soon as Dr. Goodluck Jonathan rose to the
presidency, this Gowon-era Information
Minister created for himself a position hitherto
unknown in Nigerian politics, that of the
president’s ethnic godfather. No Yoruba
potentate occupied this post during Chief
Olusegun Obasanjo’s eight year rule and even
the feeble President Umaru Yarádua had no
such godfather. Rather than use his extra-
constitutional position to steady the
president’s position, Clark used it to create
numerous enemies for Jonathan through his
use of intemperate language and regular
assaults at dissenting folks.
3. Mrs Diezani Alison-Madueke
No one gets to sit atop Nigeria’s oil industry
without making many enemies. Mrs Allison
Madueke’s beauty, fluent English and polished
manners gained for her a lot of mileage, but
the sleaze in the oil industry ultimately caught
up with her. Most damaging have been the
scandalous rip offs in subsidy payments, the
botched attempt to remove the oil subsidy in
2012, Sanusi’s allegation of the missing $20
billion and the reported N10 billion spent to
hire private jets, not to mention the failure to
pass the PIB bill.
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4. Mrs Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
The first ever Coordinating Minister of the
Economy fancies herself as an economic
wunderkind at par with the German Chancellor
Konrad Adenauer or the Japanese Prime
Minister Sato. While most Nigerians thought
economic conditions were harsh, Mrs Okonjo-
Iweala bandied figures and said it is among
the best-managed in the world. This sharp
discrepancy between the official claims and
people’s feelings did much damage to the
administration’s credibility. Nor was there any
preparation of the public mind for the steep
fall in oil prices, the sharp drop in external
reserves and the precipitous decline of the
naira.
5. Dame Patience Jonathan
In the last five decades Nigerian First Ladies
have often been mired in one controversy or
another. Mrs Patience Jonathan however
stands in a class of her own by making many
gaffes and ill-advised actions that badly
affected the public image of her husband’s
regime. Worst of them all was her intervention
in the Chibok girls’ saga and her futile
attempts to prove that her husband’s political
enemies orchestrated the whole affair. Her
quarrel with Rotimi Amaechi, the governor of
her home state, also resulted in PDP’s most
impactful loss of a political figure.
6. Mujaheed Dokubo Asari
This ex-militant’s coarse manner, intemperate
language and his open threats against whole
regions of the country supposedly in
Jonathan’s service did much political damage.
Asari was later joined by more ex-militant
leaders to threaten war against the country
should Jonathan lose the election. Their joint
threat greatly antagonised non-partisan
opinion all over the country.
7. Chief Olusegun Obasanjo
If remarks must be matched to records, this
former two-time ruler has no moral authority
to criticise anyone but the wily Obasanjo re-
launched himself back into the reckoning of
Nigerians by spearheading attacks against the
Jonathan regime in the last two years. Many
people suspect that his motives are ungodly.
Yet Obasanjo’s devastating attacks against
Jonathan, sometimes through letters, at other
times through public lectures have taken a
heavy toll. The Jonathan Presidency never
quite settled on the best way to tackle
Obasanjo. Sometimes it answered his letters;
at other times it tried to ignore him and at
still other times it sent seven PDP governors
to plead with him to keep quiet.
8. Governor Godswill Akpabio
The ambitious Akwa Ibom State governor
rapidly moved very close to President
Jonathan and soon installed himself as the
president’s top gubernatorial enforcer. At one
point he went about the task wisely, such as
when he talked Bamanga into reversing
Governor Aliyu Wamakko’s suspension. Other
times he handled matters with very damaging
crudity, such as the 16 is greater than 19
affair, which effectively destroyed the Nigeria
Governors Forum.
9. Alhaji Adamu Mu’azu
When he replaced Bamanga Tukur as PDP’s
chairman, the former Bauchi State governor
was proclaimed by his partymen as the game
changer. It turned out that he underestimated
the fall in PDP’s esteem and total political
stature. Even though Mu’azu toured the
country trying to lure back members who
defected and though he refrained from
creating more problems by not trying to settle
personal scores, the damage had been done
and he was unable to reverse it.
10. Vice President Mohamed Namadi Sambo
Many of Jonathan’s kitchen cabinet members
would sit back and say that the Vice
President is to blame for failing to stem the
tide when the country’s single largest voting
bloc, the far North, turned completely against
the Jonathan regime. Some northern PDP
governors encouraged this belief in the hope
of replacing Sambo on the ticket. Sambo has
nothing of the political drive and ambition of,
say, Atiku Abubakar. His affable and non-
controversial nature did not add to the
regime’s problems but it did not stave off the
decline either.
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11. NSA and military service chiefs
The top security chiefs have contributed to
President Jonathan and PDP’s problems in
only three ways. One was their failure to tame
Boko Haram despite repeated claims that they
will do so. Second was their timing the
operation to end Boko Haram once and for all
with the date set for presidential election. The
third, final damage inflicted by the service
chiefs was their asking for the election to be
postponed while they attack Boko Haram.
12. Dr Goodluck Ebele Jonathan
The President contributed to his party’s
current predicament in only three ways that I
can think of. They are his lack of adequate
knowledge about Nigeria, lack of adequate
preparation before becoming the president of
Nigeria and lack of rapid catching up study
when he became the president of Nigeria.
His mistake in choosing Bamanga Tukur; his
overreliance on Ngozi, Diezani and Akpabio;
his initial misreading of Boko Haram as a
political plot; his inability to manage
Obasanjo, Edwin Clark, Aminu Tambuwal,
nPDP and ex-militants can all be attributed to
those three inadequacies.
How can a match be won with 12 players
scoring own