If these Generals were still very young and could be seen with gusto working the campaigns, I would dare say the road is clear for the former Vice President
Emma Okocha
Field Marshal Emma Iwuanyanwu, Daniels, Senator Common Sense deliver Candidate
“Obasanjo at the last minute nodded to his fellow Generals that he is behind Atiku who he had said he won’t support…. But the Generals through Aliyu Gusau delivered to the delegates in P.H. who their candidate is….”
– See Press Reports and Inside Sources in Port Harcourt
At the Jos NPN presidential convention, Dr. Alex Ekwueme was set for a resounding victory parade and some of his aides were seen in the anterooms of their hotels drawing diligently the crossing of the Ts, and Ys of his much-anticipated presidential acceptance speech. Ubiquitous Igbo entrepreneurs and business moguls travelling from as far as the Greenland, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, South Africa, the Congo, Rwanda, America and Jamaica had descended on Jos and virtually closed up all the Plateau hotels. Nigeria, after the Civil War, was going to elect the first Igbo President and that landmark NPN convention in Jos was the beginning of a predictable end. Just like what happened last weekend in Port Harcourt, that NPN convention was to be hosted in Port Harcourt. At the last minute, Ekwueme’s naïve campaign did not hold fast to Port Harcourt as the venue of the party’s convention.
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Bulging with so much confidence, straddling all over the Jos metropolis, led by an armada of luxurious buses amid “Nzogbu Nzogbu enyimba enyi…” the Igbo took over town. The jubilation was filtering into the stadium, when the Generals fired their first salvo!. From Bauchi, Abuja, Kaduna (the Crocodile City), etc, the Generals took over the Nigerian Railways and, by dusk, the Generals had made their choice after landing in their logistics. In broad daylight, the delegates started speaking in tongues and, from the shocked and surprised Ekwueme, the
Enyimba riotous, celebrating, street parade, the Generals’ last-minute embrace of their ‘Prisoner’ colleague knocked down and into pieces the salient ambitions of the leading NPN candidate.
Last week, and in Port Harcourt, the Generals, like in Jos, struck again at the last minute. With the Governor of Sokoto State already leading the pack, the Generals this time before dawn sent in General Aliyu Gusau and ordered the delegates: “Atiku, Atiku Atiku, is our choice,” and the earth started to walk and the orders went around and it came to pass! Now we can understand all those unending political pilgrimages to Minna over the past few months.
With the emergence of the Turaki as the anointed hand of the Generals, is it now a done deal for the former Vice-President? If these aging Generals are still in power, or they are about handing over as it was in the case of General Obasanjo and Ekwueme, I would tell the former Vice President to go ahead and rejoice, and change his wardrobe, preparatory to walking the Aso Rock corridors of power.
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If these Generals were still very young and could be seen with all gusto working the campaigns and mobilising the impending tortuous presidential rallies for their anointed, I would dare say that the road is clear for the former Vice President. On the other hand, the sitting President, since his inauguration, seems to have benefitted from the Generals who supported him against Jonathan.
But he was never in their circle and from his activities right from the Civil War, he was a loner and the military top command ruled he had from time to time clashed with these Generals. Former President Babangida referred to them as the military wing of the PDP. He is aware he had lost their support and if you wonder why his most appointments have gone to core northerners, you will agree with me that it is a deliberate counter-move against the Generals. Suddenly, the North is the Decider of the next presidential election. Whoever wins the North with a sure alliance from the South-West wins the election. There was a time the monolithic North under one suzerain or under one influential party or military Generals controlled Nigeria. Recently, General Obasanjo, a relative political benefactor of that military fiat, debased and destabilised that authoritative northern military influence.
In his four years of presidency, General Buhari has diligently built up a new military-cum-Armed Forces, intelligence fortress of support. The emergence of Atiku flying the flag of the old, very rich Generals against the Buhari government, controlling a new Green-shirted machine would decide where the pendulum swings first in the north. Out of these two formidable tendencies, the party taking over the politics of the north would win the Presidency, 2019.
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