L-R: President Goodluck Jonathan, Atiku Abubakar
After its condemnation of the emergence of President Goodluck Jonathan as the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, the Arewa Consultative Forum has been hit by a crisis, which is threatening its relevance as the voice of the North, SEGUN OLATUNJI writes These are indeed trying times for the apex Northern socio-political organisation, the Arewa Consultative Forum. Since penultimate Tuesday when the ACF voiced its opposition to the candidacy of President Goodluck Jonathan in the April elections with little regard for the immediate political consequences of such a decision, things have not been the same among its members.
The crisis of confidence that has since hit the forum seems to be threatening its continued relevance as the umbrella body for the entire North, especially with the sharp division in the rank of its chieftains over the propriety or otherwise of their rejection of Jonathan as the presidential flag bearer of the incumbent People’s Democratic Party in the forthcoming polls.
The political faux pas the organisation has now found itself following its intervention in the internal affairs of the ruling PDP has torn its once united membership apart. Penultimate Tuesday’s pronouncement by the ACF is still causing ripples. Not since its inception about eleven years ago as the mouth piece for the people of the then monolithic North has the organisation been hit by a crisis of the current magnitude.
Indications that ACF members would have a Herculean task taking a collective stance on the controversial zoning of the nation’s presidency for the 2011 election first emerged in August last year when the group’s Chairman, General IBM Haruna (retd.) shocked the other members of the forum by saying that the issue of zoning/rotation of the nation’s presidency was an internal affair of political parties which the Northern body should not dabble into. Many of the ACF members, from that moment onwards on began to view Haruna as having gone against the popular wish of the region. Since then, a crack appeared on the walls of the once closely knit group. Haruna himself started to stay away from presiding over the official functions of the Northern body.
By September last year, the cracks began to widen following a statement issued by the ACF National Publicity Secretary, Mr. Anthony Sani, in which the group faulted President Jonathan’s public declaration of intent to contest the presidency in the 2011 elections.
The ACF had also accused Jonathan of using the country’s resources to feather his political nest and forcing state governors to back his 2011 aspiration.
The forum had argued that the president should have excused himself from contesting in next year’s poll, especially with recourse to the alleged existing zoning arrangement within the ruling party.
It had argued in a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Mr. Anthony Sani, that it was morally wrong for Jonathan to have decided to partake in the 2011 contest in the manner in which he had been going about it, in spite of all the odds against him.
The forum further argued that the President’s interest in the 2011 poll was capable of causing division within the Nigerian state.
It, however, concluded that the Nigerian electorate should be left to decide the fate of President Jonathan regarding his decision to take a shot at the nation’s presidency in this year’s election.
Some members of the ACF, who were not comfortable with this stance of the forum against Jonathan, had then put up a muted protest.
Earlier in 2009, the same ACF had supported Jonathan to succeed the then ailing President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua who died in 2010. Some chieftains of the group who, however, felt disappointed that ACF threw its weight behind Jonathan to succeed Yar’Adua resigned their membership. One of them was Alhaji Tanko Yakassai, a founding member of the forum.
With the death of Yar’Adua and the eventual swearing-in of Jonathan as the president, there was a lull in the already festering crisis in the ACF.
But the then chairman of the group’s Political Committee, Alhaji Abdulrahman Okene, further stirred up the hornet’s nest when he said in an interview shortly after that the President had the backing of the forum to contest in 2011. This angered the other members of the ACF, who ordered its spokesman to tell Nigerians that they had disowned Okene.
The group did not just stop at that. It now decided to turn its searchlight on other suspected pro-Jonathan members in the ACF fold, especially its Chairman.
Our correspondent gathered that Haruna’s presence at the penultimate Tuesday’s meeting of the ACF after his long absence further angered some already aggrieved members, who felt he and his supporters within the forum, must be dealt with.
The attempt by the aggrieved ACF members to remove Haruna as their leader resulted in the exchange of hot words and almost degenerated into a fisticuff between the masterminds of the plot and his supporters.
When the meeting kicked off at about 10 am that day, our correspondent learnt that some aggrieved members of ACF, who openly accused General Haruna of alleged anti- North antics, moved the motion for his immediate impeachment.
“The meeting became very tense when the issue came up and many members asked for the head of the chairman who had not attended meetings almost six consecutive times.
“But to make the matter worse, the Secretary of the Political Committee, Alhaji Abdulrahman Muhammed stood up to defend General Haruna when he said that the agenda of the day was not to discuss the issue of the chairman’s attitude towards the forum in the past and his anti- Arewa stance on national political issues.
“It took the wisdom of some of the elders to make sure that there was no pandemonium during the meeting. They later suspended the discussion on General Haruna’s removal from office and faced the issue of the day,” the source said.
The ACF chairman and other chieftains left the forum’s Kaduna secretariat on Sokoto road shortly after the meeting to allow the communiqué drafting committee to handle the rest of the job and inform Nigerians of their decisions. They did not speak with newsmen after the meeting.
Unknown to the journalists waiting for the outcome of the meeting, a member of the Executive Council of the ACF, Alhaji Ahmed Hassan Alghazali, who addressed them merely gavw a hint of what to expect in the communiqué to be issued later, regarding the position of the North on various national issues.
Alghazali had seized the opportunity of the interview with newsmen to accuse the President of breaking the political bond between the North and the South by allegedly imposing himself as PDP presidential candidate for the April 2011poll.
Source:Punch
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