2015: Pressure mounts on Jonathan to overhaul cabinet

Apparently worried by threats of massive electoral misfortune in the 2015 elections, some key stakeholders in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) have been mounting pressure on President Goodluck Jonathan to overhaul his cabinet.

The sources viewed majority of members of the cabinet as apolitical and a good number of them with little electoral value. This, they said, could whittle down the influence of the party and its electoral fortunes.

Also, the stakeholders have impressed it on the president, the need for surgical operation on the present leadership of the PDP.

This is with the view to taking precautionary steps to avert legal entanglements in which some members of the party’s National Working Committee (NWC) have found themselves ahead of nominations for the 2015 poll.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had questioned the process through which eight members of the party’s NWC emerged at the party’s March 2012 convention.

INEC had withdrawn recognition from the eight officials who emerged through affirmation rather than election, a development that has put a question mark of the eligibility of the officials for their various positions.

Some aggrieved members of the party have taken the PDP to court to challenge the continued retention of the eight officials in the party’s NWC.

The implication of this is that candidature of contestants, emerging from conventions presided over by these officials could be voided should the aggrieved members have their way with the court process.

A source in the hierarchy of the PDP who spoke with our correspondent on condition of anonymity at the weekend, said it’s high time the president identified what he described as the friends and enemies within the party.

According to him, “the president and PDP need to define their friends and identify their enemies. The debacle in the Governors’ Forum may not be bad for Jonathan after all. Now he knows who he can trust, who can deliver and those who can fight him till the end.

“Even in identifying these enemies, the president needs to be careful so that he does not alienate potential friends and further dwindle his opinion poll rating in the process of rooting them out the enemies”, the source added.

Also of great concern to the stakeholders is the challenge posed by the emerging All Progressives Alliance (APC) that is gaining ground in the Southwest and the Northwest geopolitical zones.

The current face-off between President Jonathan and some PDP governors in the Northwest has similarly been identified as a major setback for the ruling party, a fallout of which the opposition APC could make a political capital of.

Source: The Nation