Jonathan To “Bribe” Opponents With National Honours

Jonathan confering a merit award last July

Naija News Desk has learned that Goodluck Jonathan has told associates he plans to include some of his high-profile political opponents in the roster of recipients of national honors for 2011 as a way of neutralizing the opposition.

“President Jonathan wants to use the award of national honors to secure the support of dissenting members of his fractious party,” said one source. In pursuit of this goal, Mr. Jonathan has instructed the minister of special duties to forward a list of "worthy Nigerians" to be endowed with national honors before the end of March.

A directive from the presidency, which was seen by Naija News Desk, asked the minister of special duties to expedite the process of granting national awards to ensure that Mr. Jonathan can bestow the honors by the end of March 2011.
The directive was issued to enable Jonathan to use the discredited national awards to woo some of his adversaries.

 “The president is especially interested in using the instrument of national honors to pacify prominent Northern political elders with whom he has engaged in negotiation in recent days,” said a source close to Jonathan and the deal.


Our source said some of Jonathan’s northern advisors had proposed that he use the bestowal of national awards as part of his bargaining chips with disaffected party opponents.

In recent days, some of Jonathan’s aides have accused Abubakar Atiku, who lost to Mr. Jonathan in a contentious party primary, of grandstanding. They claimed that Mr. Atiku was asking Jonathan for oil concessions before he can fully declare support for him.

A senior campaign staffer to Jonathan said the president was panicked over recently released voter's registration figures which show that the northwest section of Nigeria, where Muhammad Buhari (rtd), is extremely popular, and the southwest, where the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) party holds sway, have the largest number of registered voters.

A political analyst said Mr. Jonathan “can only count on carrying some south-south and southeastern states.” The analyst noted that Mr. Jonathan’s popularity in the south south, which has approximately 8 million registered voters, is undercut by his poor electoral prospects in Edo State, which has 2 million voters. In addition, the analyst said that Mr. Jonathan remains unpopular in parts of Rivers State.