By Joe Ezuma

The experiences of many reporters since the commencement of campaigning for the 2011 general elections range from the funny to the ridiculous.
Youth support groups and others that have mushroomed in the Niger Delta - over 50 of them - and other parts of the country for the aspirants, especially President Goodluck Jonathan, experience has shown, are there not out of conviction or pure altruism. Most of them are made up of fortune hunters, chasing money. My experience as a correspondent in Rivers state has taught me the damage unemployment has done to, not only our youths, but also our elder statesmen at local, state and federal levels.   
There was by  way of example one the early birds that rushed to form support groups known as the South-South youth vanguard who initially approached the reporter for advice and to help mobilize reporters to give them publicity for their publicity after they had printed and displayed poster supporting Jonathan presidency, vests and caps.
On the day of the scheduled event, they were not forthcoming. Surprisingly, the leader informed the reporter that they were considering thinking switch support to IBB. That was pre-Northern consensus candidate period. Asked why the turnaround especially as they are from the South-South, the leader said he thinks IBB would splash more money than others “what we are looking is cash not politics,” he told the bewildered correspondent.
He was however smart enough to make another u-turn immediately and said his body would continue with Jonathan. This was after he and his officers ( they always appoint officer as soon as they form such bodies on the basis of loyalty to the leader who sponsored the first meetings) and they put heads together in conferment. “I just remembered  my friend and I has a contract bid yet to be approved by the NDDC and should we switch our support to IBB, the commission would not approve the job since Jonathan is from the South-South,” was   another stunning explanation for another change of focus.
Yet another experience. On November 19, another group, that is more broad-based, with notable figures as their leaders, held a meeting at the popular Rachel Hotel in down town Port Harcourt during which they invited the press. Apparently they did not receive the money they expected at the end of the occasion.
The Executive Director of the Body which goes by the name Goodluck Jonathan World Wide Network after learning that the correspondent’s paper carried the event he called for ten copies but was given  nine but he was fiddling with his rummaging in his pockets for money to pay for papers and was pleading with the reporter to leave the papers to be paid after the group had their post-mortem meeting. He said that the group did not get the fund it was expecting.
While the argument was going on because the reporter told him that the paper belonged to the company and not him, three of the members strolled in and expecting to find their story in it bought three copies while my friend paid for three, leaving three copies to be paid for. Since then, I am yet to recover the N450 for the remaining three copies despite several trips to his office.
The prevailing experience is that the crowd of Jonathan’s support groups had thinned down drastically since money is not forthcoming while those for presidential aspirants who lost out to Atiku Abubakar via consensus politics, have virtually disappeared. The remaining groups are the credible ones that are controlled by from outside the state. We are still watching the politics landscape.