Wole Soyinka’s Jero plays, Trials of Brother Jero and Jero’s Metamorphosis, are world famous. The two plays are a satire of how a prophet, a beach hustler, really, upped his act. Jero himself would appear a grand symbol of free-wheeling hustling in Nigeria’s power universe.
“After all, it’s the fashion these days to be a desk general!”, was Jero’s last mischievous blurt in Jero’s Metamorphosis. It was the era of military rule, where by the grace of coup-making, people, just like that, became desk generals!
But Hardball, this morning, is not discussing literature or even military rule, that best-forgotten era of Nigerian public life. It is rather intrigued by the sudden metamorphosis of President Goodluck Jonathan, less than six weeks to an election he correctly gauged he would have woefully lost, had it held on its original date of February 14.
Indeed, there is a bit of the Jero in our Jonathan. If Jero pimped and hustled for survival, using religious trickery, Jona too jumps and hustles for re-election, turning 360 degrees from a Boko Haram dove scared stiff even to visit grieving Chibok parents, whose 278 daughters were carted away by Boko Haram, to a hawk glad-handing the troops at the fronts. Why, our new beloved General-Field Marshal even did a dramatic stick-sit, just like the original! God, drama would never end!
Whatever has stampeded our president into this act of emergency general, even if in truth, he were ceremonial commander-in-chief of the armed forces? Fear of — indeed, blind panic about — woeful electoral defeat!
Still, it is interesting to see our president grandstanding as a compassionate general, who cares about his troops. Maybe he does. The problem though is that he is showing it too late in the day, and too close to election to suggest that he only cares about the vote that he hopes the drama would harvest. Well, no crime, even if well and truly annoying. But it is only fair the new general is put on notice that Hardball is not fooled by his latter-day theatrics — neither would most Nigerians.
By the way, the Jonathan presidential campaign, during the unfortunate Buhari certificate saga that never was, gave the impression Gen. Buhari was an “illiterate” who had “no school certificate” result. Though he rose to be a Major-General, what they hinted at was that military education was worthless. Yet, the commander-in-chief was all too happy scrambling into a camo for his battle front drama. As a PhD holder and sound academic, he ought to have donned his academic gown and mortarboard before diving for the front! So, military education is not useless, after all?
Another irony: it is amazing how Jonathan so much grandstands to be a general in charge, even though he be a civilian, and how Buhari remains supremely proud of his military past while being comfy with his current civies. If you call it the titanic imagery of perception, you won’t be wrong. But again, our folk know which of the two is fake and which one is real.
Still, the president would have averted all the panic had he done what he was paid and feted to do. Instead he virtually slept, for some five years, only to jerk awake! A Rip Van Winkle once slept for 20 years, only to jerk awake to see everyone had left him behind.
President Jonathan tells himself he is no Rip Van Winkle. But we’ll see about that on March 28!