Except when personal reasons were cited, only few
known Presidents had not sought re-election after a first term in office. From
the United States where Nigeria copied her brand of presidential democracy,
President James Polk (1845-1849) was the first willing one term US President after he decided not to seek
re-nomination from his party based on personal reasons (health). The others who
followed this trend were Rutherford B. Hayes (1877-1881) who promised only to
serve a single term and fulfilled his promise, President Theodore Roosevelt
(1901-1909) who declined a second term because he did not want it to look as if
he had spent three terms in office after taking over as a vice-president with
the assassination of William McKinley in 1901. President Harry Truman
(1945-1953) took over from FDR after the World War II President died in first
few months of his 4th term in office. The last President in this category was
President Lyndon B. Johnson who took oath of office after the assassination of
President Kennedy in 1963.
There are also quite a number of American Presidents
who wanted a second shot at the office but lost out during the polls. The first
President to lose a re-election bid in the US was President John Quincy Adams,
US 2nd President. Others are Presidents Van Buren, B. Harrison,
Taft, Hoover, Ford, Carter. The last was President G.W. Bush who lost to
President Bill Clinton in 1992.
In Nigeria, no President has ever lost a re-election
bid, although we have only had one re-election situation since 1999, President
Shagari won a re-election in 1983 during the 2nd Republic while
President Obasanjo won a re-election twenty years later in 2003. Tuesday’s
declaration of President Jonathan for re-election in the 2015 general elections
makes it a third time in Nigeria’s history that a President would be seeking to
face the electorates for the second time after a first 4 year term. Though many
would cite the incumbency factor as a reason why a Jonathan re-election is
bankable; the odds are not that in his favour as compared to his first shot
2010. Mind you this is not a trait associated with President Jonathan alone.
Odds are that most Presidents who seek re-elections after a first term
experience a kind of diminishing returns by the time they face the people
again.
By his declaration, President Jonathan seeks to test
the waters again by asking Nigerians to entrust another four years of their
lives in his hands. But the question is would Nigerians oblige him of his
request? Answer to the above lies in obtaining the inferential of the President’s
appeal of 2010 and then compare it to 2014.
In 2010, the electoral appeal of President Jonathan
was almost similar to a movement. The “I had no shoes” slogan cut across the
different layers of the Nigerian society, especially those of the educated
middle class. Even the said elites would admit not having shoes at some point
their lives as kids. Muslims and
Christians identified with the slogan which in turn gelled with the victimized image of a humble man being
denied his legal right by the cabal
of the Yar’adua Presidency. Perceptually, Nigerians keyed into Jonathan’s Cinderella’s story and his candidature was not much of a hard sell. Then again,
there was the factor of him being new in
the landscape when compared to his opponents. The extent to which Nigerians
accepted Jonathan was manifested even when Jonathan himself said he had little
or no experience in handling a high profiled post as the President of Nigeria
and many ignored that fact and still voted for him. Such was the level of his societal
acceptance.
But in 2014, President Jonathan, like most second
term seeking politician is not as bridal as
he was in 2010 in the minds of Nigerians and the work of his hands is largely
to blame for this.
Firstly, that the President had spent five odd years
in office means his performance rather than anything else would be the most
scrutinized. Tried as much as he could have in resolving many other things(as
claimed by his supporters), the monumental inability to resolve the security
challenges facing the country would be the altar upon which President’s re-election
chances will be laid; and every enlightened soul including the opposition are
aware of this.
Let’s go to the United States to draw two parallels
from the George Bush senior and junior administrations to shed more lights into
what not to do and what to do as a
first term President. President George Walker Bush Snr. Was the Vice President
of President Ronald Regan from 1980-1988 and he won his own term in 1989. While
in office, he led a coalition of US allies to the first Gulf War in 1990
against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. By the
time the war ended in February 1991, it was just ten months to election time.
Although the war was successful, the economy of the US was in shambles and Bush’s
rival Bill Clinton knew this. And so Clinton spectacularly exploited this weakness
with his “it is the economy, stupid”
slogan and before anyone knew what was on, a small time Southern State governor
had dislodged the most qualified American President of all time from the White
House. Analyst would later say George Bush Snr did not exploit the security
issue of the first Gulf War enough to his advantage.
But when his son came on board with similar
circumstances prevailing in 2000, he did things rather differently. When faced with a re-election hurdle in 2004,
George Bush Jnr simply sold fear to
Americans to win a second term by telling them, the US was still under threat
of the Al-Qaeda terrorist attacks. Although like the time of his father the
economy of the US was also in crises, George Bush Jnr held on to his strong
forte of security to defeat John Kerry of the Democrat 10 years ago. The key
lessons of these examples is that the security
of a nation is paramount at all times in the mind of the people be it in the
form of physical protection or in economic terms.
For President Jonathan, he might have bungled a very
good opportunity for his re-election with the discordant handling of the
security situation of Nigeria since 2010. The unprofessional manner upon which
security matters has been handled under his watch has made all other possible developmental
progression subjective. Even the
greatest of statesmen that organs like TAN made us believe Jonathan is equal to
would not survive an election anywhere based on the how Jonathan has handled
the security situation of Nigeria.
In fact, it would have been
more favourable to President Jonathan had three quarter of his declaration
speech been on his victory over Boko Haram during his first term. This is a big
albatross on President Jonathan’s chances...
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