michelepacker2’s blog

Of all the main events that shaped 2017, three stand out for their great effect on the country and on the year. The furious legal gymnastics more than who leads the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) convulsed the improved component of the year and only ended, pretty significantly, soon after the party’s December 9 convention. The outcome of the legal fight and the consequences of the convention are bound to influence the shape of politics in 2018 and possibly far beyond. There was also President Muhammadu Buhari’s illness which took the far better element of 2017. The health crisis began virtually imperceptibly in January, intensified by midyear, and culminated anticlimactically in August. The politics of that illness has already begun to shape 2018 and will most probably reverberate into 2019, Nigeria’s epoch-defining election year. The third event was the Indigenous Individuals of Biafra (IPOB) agitation that rocked the Southeast and exhumed a hugely disruptive and sweeping ethnic suspicion and bigotry template lengthy thought to have been ameliorated by years of tribal co-mingling, expansive interethnic and interstate organization deals, and political alliances.

It is not particular which takes the precedence involving the PDP’s fateful events of the year and the president’s equally impactful illness. But it is clear that both events will deeply shape Politics 2018 and Elections 2019. When the president 1st took ill about June 2016, it seemed to be nothing much more than the consequence of overwork going by what was marketed as a thoughtful president engrossed in the humongous activity of cleaning the Augean stables left by the PDP. But by early 2017, it was gradually becoming clear that the president was not in such a fine fettle as he and his aides sold to the public. For an illness that first manifested as a easy ear infection, and was apparently believed to elicit practically nothing extra than a week or two of trip and healthcare examination in the United Kingdom, it shocked absolutely everyone that that trip quickly yielded to another trip in May, this time far more desperate and urgent. Whereas the January trip was to start on the 19th and end on February six, but ended inadvisably on March 10, the Might trip took almost all of 104 days, ending only on August 19.

Both the January and May trips, about which buzzed whispers and rumours of the president’s death or vegetative state, triggered rounds of speculations and permutations about the survival of the ruling party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), and the politics of re-election or, far more accurately, succession. Presidential aides, supporters, ambitious celebration officials and other political adventurers had even started to entertain really fanciful projections about Elections 2019. Visit after visit to the president in the UK, not to talk of social media gossips that strained credulity, birthed morbid stories of the president’s debility. It was quickly concluded, albeit prematurely, that even if he recovered he would be in no shape to seek a second term. Neither the president, whose voice in these debilitating days under no circumstances rose above hoary whispers, nor his dispirited aides who pined in agony, talked about a second term.

But when he returned in August hunting far more sprightly than anticipated, most calculations fell apart. His recovery since August has even been more surefooted, major to speculations that he may possibly be disposed to re-election. Not only has he now spoken of a second term, for a man and president so naturally reclusive, he has even begun to make trips to states few ever thought he would go. As his well being status becomes a lot more robust, he has turn out to be extra mollifying, much more gregarious, a lot more conciliating. It is outstanding how the ebb and flow of his well being bore direct impact on the political mood of the nation, and especially the moods of a lot of top politicians. These who can't endure the president having a second term, that is if the electorate would oblige him, have embraced radical options. The conclusion in both the APC and the PDP is that President Buhari is interested in a second term, will be nominated by his celebration, and will give the re-election race his all.

Now to the PDP. Just after initially appearing to be depressed by its terrible electoral loss in 2015, and even seeming to have fractured irreparably, the PDP ultimately decided to pick up the pieces in 2016. But like a jilted lover falling in adore on the rebound, the PDP in desperation climbed into bed with the colourful and rambunctious former Borno State governor, Ali Modu Sheriff. He seemed the fantastic counterpoise to the fierce and unrelenting APC, and with his immense wealth and generosity of spirit, gave indications he was both ready to invest the cash at his disposal and give battle to the intransigent ruling party. He was not beholden to any individual or group, and was not known to suffer fools gladly, nor to be discomfited by any type of squeamishness. The PDP leaders hence saw in him a champion worth the name and the funds. Having said that, quickly just after a giddy start to a reign initially conceived as a quit-gap only, PDP leaders and apparatchiks whose strategies and suggestions appeared at variance with that of the former Borno governor began to scheme how to reclaim their celebration.

Right after lots of months of bitter legal wrangling, full with a Court of Appeal judgement in favour of Sen. Sheriff, the PDP ultimately reclaimed their celebration from the ambitious former governor via a July 12 Supreme Court judgement. That final judgement left the party in the hands of the a lot more amenable, but no much less enigmatic and mercurial former Kaduna State governor, Ahmed Makarfi. Though also clearly ambitious, Sen. Makarfi was having said that noticed as a group player, a bureaucrat, and an ideologue. He in truth appeared like a additional acceptable face of the embattled party, one who could be trusted to organise a convention without having looking for at the similar time to hijack it. An elective convention was finally held on December 9 soon after quite a few backroom offers, major to the enthronement of a new chairman, Uche Secondus. He is trusted. Much more, he is an insider. If the celebration can locate a typical-bearer to match the APC’s President Buhari in 2019, and find the wisdom to cobble a terrific and winning platform to take benefit of the ruling party’s complacency, and also atone for their dismal functionality in workplace in years previous, they could give the APC a run for its income, and even challenge its dominance.

Although less far-reaching in its influence on both politics and the country as a entire, the pro-Biafra separatist group, IPOB, took the country by storm and with additional flourish than both the president’s illness and the PDP’s apparent reincarnation. IPOB was of course not the first nor the only pro-Biafra group in the Southeast, but it was led by the far more colourful but much less cerebral Nnamdi Kanu. In significantly less than one particular year, he took separatist agitation to a new height. Acerbic, unfeeling, illogical and extremist, Mr Kanu pompously roused the disaffected in the Southeast into a frenzied anti-Nigerian horde. That the IPOB agitation was additional common than its predecessors, specifically the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), was due less to Mr Kanu’s flourish or talent than to the alienation supposedly suffered by the Igbo under the Buhari presidency. That alienation was glaring and indisputable.

Mr Kanu also cashed in on the lack of closure to the civil war. Virtually none of the difficulties that engendered the war has been satisfactorily resolved. The Southeast has borne the brunt of infrastructural decay and basic developmental stasis. It has also so far been unable to create a nationally acceptable politician as presidential candidate for any of the two main political parties, and that inability has seemed to accentuate what the area describes as marginalisation. Consequently, and for the foreseeable future, movements like IPOB and MASSOB will continue to agitate, and their agitations will always resonate. Until probably a more acceptable political structure is located, one particular that lessens the value and effect of winning the presidency, and a single that devolves power in such a way as to enable the regions accomplish political, cultural and social fulfilment, the insane craze for Aso Villa will continue with all its attendant frustrations.

The IPOB agitations and the manner in which the group was place down have sadly worsened the animosity against the Buhari presidency in the Southeast. The president is now struggling to convince the area that he does not harbour a organic dislike for the Igbo. He is unlikely to be able to dispel the anger in that region. Instead, that anger will morph into politics and be transferred into the dynamics of the 2019 polls, with the Igbo and the South-South region most likely to embrace the PDP in overwhelming number. In aggravation, the APC government in Abuja will also probably abandon each believed of conciliating the two regions when it concentrates its efforts in holding on to the Southwest, consolidating its reputation in the northern parts of the country, and creating these regions impregnable.

Final year undoubtedly hosted numerous a lot more events of seismic scale beyond the 3 events identified on this column now. The events of 2018 and the polls of 2019 will eventually be found to have taken their roots in the 3 hugely impactful events adumbrated in this place. Next year is unlikely to be as disruptive and earthshaking as 2017 but it will decide what will come about in 2019 and how far the nation can go in its work to reform the polity and transform the economy beneath the APC government.

michelepacker2’s blog

Earthshaking, Disruptive But Anticlimactic 2018 > Naija Breaking News : 28/01/2018

2017: Youths Advised To Shun Electoral - Naija News >> 28/01/2018