“I wish Atiku, Goodluck”.

That was the reaction of this writer to the deluge of negative reactions from the North, that trailed the verdict of the Northern Political Leaders Forum (NPLF) which chose former Vice President Atiku Abubakar as the North’s consensus candidate for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

The ire of the North is not just the credibility and viability of the Adamawa state-born maverick politician but the locus standi of the Adamu Ciroma-Ied NPLF, an assemblage of Northern elders, some from other political parties, to select a presidential candidate for the PDP.

Indeed, it is a case in which you can imagine a Barrister- at- Law urging the presiding judge in court thus:  “My lord, the plaintiff (NPLF) is a meddlesome interloper who has no locus standi in the choice of a PDP presidential aspirant”.

This point was aptly canvassed by the effervescent and radical youth wing of the PDP which also rejected the NPLF choice.

National Vice Chairman of the PDP National Youth Vanguard, Rilwan Abdullahi had said in his reaction to the choice of Atiku as the North’s consensus candidate, that since NPLF was made up of both PDP and non-PDP members, it lacked locus standi to speak for PDP in the North.

“We, the PDP National Youth Vanguard, as an umbrella body of all youth members of the PDP therefore reject the nomination of the former Vice President as the consensus candidate and whole heartedly endorse the candidacy of President Goodluck Jonathan and Architect Namadi Sambo for the PDP presidential ticket”, Abdullahi said.

Another pointed rejection of the self-appointed assignment of NPLF came from the PDP in the North Central geo-political zone.  It’s Vice Chairman, Alhaji Yusuf Ayilogo in rejecting Atiku said the former Vice President is not the preferred candidate of his zone nor of the whole of the North.

Ayilogo described the NPLF as a personal venture of Alhaji Adamu Ciroma that was neither spearheaded by the North nor the PDP in the North. The North, he said, did not give any mandate to the nine NPLF members that decided on the consensus candidate.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) whose chairman, the cerebral, radical and distinguished Prof Attahiru Jega had sworn to give Nigeria a credible election, in the din caused by the NPLF choice, also made its position clear.

It’s Acting Director, Political Party Monitoring and Liaison, Regina Omo-Agege said INEC would not accept any consensus candidate that emerged through undemocratic arrangements within political parties and which failed to garner the support of all the aspirants involved.

It is therefore arguable whether Atiku, the product of NPLF’s screening for the PDP in the North, met the INEC standards.

Atiku was chosen by the nine NPLF wise men from three other contestants including the Maradonic former Military President, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (Rtd), Former National Security Adviser, General Aliyu Gusau (Rtd) and Kwara State governor Dr. Bukola Saraki.

The former Vice President was a founding member of the PDP who, desperate to actualise his presidential ambition, abandoned the party to found the Action Congress (now Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) after a controversial eight year relationship with his boss-former President Olusegun Obasanjo.

Atiku’s return to the PDP after years of no-holds-barred war of attrition against Obasanjo and the PDP, confounded political analysts and the party stalwarts.

But it was also obvious that he returned to PDP which until the last few months when ACN reclaimed most of the South-West states, had no opposition-to pursue afresh, his presidential ambition.

His maverick nature, his record as a cantankerous and disloyal Vice President and plot to destroy PDP while in the AC had apparently made party men cautious and circumspect in their relationship with him, which may have informed the difficulty Atiku encountered in getting the PDP waiver which came his way on September 15, 2010 and qualified him to contest elections in the party.

The reported acceptance of the other three Northern aspirants of Atiku as the consensus candidate and the collapse of their campaign structures into that of the former Vice President may give the false impression of a battle between the North and the South, represented by President Goodluck Jonathan.

Jonathan, it would be recalled, sparked off the crusade for a Northern presidential candidate spearheaded by Ciroma, when he, taking advantage of the Nigeria and PDP constitution as well as the party’s clarification that he was eligible to contest, declared his interest in the party’s presidential primaries.

Ciroma, on the other hand, declared his opposition to President Jonathan when, following the 1st October 2010 twin car bombings in Abuja, called on him to resign within one week, failing which he called on the National Assembly to impeach him for allegedly plotting to frame-up Northerners in the tragedy.

However, it is obvious that Ciroma’s NPLF cannot change the direction and momentum of progressive Northern elements who believe that, for a truly united Nigeria to evolve, the South-South geo-political zone which bears the burden and hazards of providing the oil revenue that runs the nation and which is grossly marginalised, deserves to produce the President in 2011.

Indeed, from the day Ciroma began his campaign for zoning the Presidency to the North, the Arewa Youth Forum said: “We are not in support of zoning and therefore appeal to all advocates of zoning that they should be guided by the letters of the constitution and jettison any unconstitutional methods in their quest to grab power, they should apologise to Nigerians for criminally decentralising our Presidency in their own concept of reform and class consideration”.

The umbrella Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) whose mission and vision is the promotion of North’s socio-political interests was measured, albeit being disappointed with the emergence of Atiku.

A source close to the  ACF said the body would have preferred a stronger Northerner with the capacity to square up with Jonathan at the primaries.

The consolation of the Niger Delta region should however, be in the massive support Jonathan is enjoying in the North as a candidate with a divine mandate to be Nigeria’s President for unification, come 2011.

Kaduna State governor, Mr. Patrick Yakowa captured the mood of the well-meaning North when he said those behind the consensus candidate should respect the zoning arrangement that providence has imposed on the country which is the candidacy of President Goodluck Jonathan.

Those agitating that Nigeria’s next President should come from the North, Yakowa said, should stop dissipating energy on a matter God himself had already decided.

Need Jonathan and the South-South fear any meddlesome interloper?