Jonathan enjoys freak revival

By Idowu Akinlotan

Rumours of Goodluck Jonathan revival began to run rife recently when some northern politicians suggested that the former president could be drafted to run for the presidency in 2023 on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC). Proponents of the idea, nearly all of them northern irredentists and hegemonists, were said to have calculated that a second Jonathan presidency would limit the time the North would be out of power after 2023, if the region must relinquish office. The calculations were of course too far-fetched to gain traction or currency, and too few people were converted to that heresy. In 2023, zoning or no zoning, southern unity or no southern unity, the North could not hope to hang on to power without recognising the incalculable cost of doing so. Northern and southern powermongers are not so stupid as not to know the cost of sustaining hegemonic hold on power, especially in a federation, and at a time when President Muhammadu Buhari has shown both the possibilities and limitations of nepotism.

Few believed the rumours about a Jonathan political resurgence or second attempt at the presidency. They believe instead that the APC would try to court his support to keep the ruling party in office in 2023 rather than keep the North in power. Dr Jonathan’s resurgence may in fact be completely unrelated to keeping the North in power or mounting the stool himself a second time. In any case, the rumours have died down, probably permanently discredited, regardless of the praise songs many politicians have composed about him in the past three weeks or so. But he is nevertheless enjoying resurgence, whichever way it is viewed. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, says the Roman poet, Sextus Propertius, in Elegies. And in the face of a ruthless and inscrutable hegemonist sitting regally and detachedly in office in Abuja, many more political hearts are likely to grow much fonder in the distressing and apocalyptic months ahead. Accordingly, opinions about the value of the Jonathan presidency are likely to ebb and flow in contradistinction to the manner and vigour President Buhari practices his political sorcery in Abuja.

Two examples of how some Nigerians are rethinking the Jonathan presidency may be fairly representative. There may be no substance to their laudation, but as sentimental as they are, Dr Jonathan’s praise singers give the impression of how superficial and gullible politicians are, and just how deeply unpopular and ineffective the Buhari presidency has become. Apart from the APC delegation that visited the former president at his Abuja residence during his 63 birthday celebration in November, the public presentation of a book written in his honour by Bonaventure Melah, a former Managing Editor of Daily Times, afforded a number of public officials the opportunity to rhapsodise about his leadership qualities. Two of those rhapsodies are particularly evocative, one from the glib and comical Dino Melaye, a senator in the 8th Senate, and Governor Abdullahi Ganduje of Kano State, the sometimes immoderate and controversial Kano politician who suffers no remorse in calling a spade a spade.

Senator Melaye may not be taken seriously, especially going by the infantile skits and dithyrambs his prolific mind inspires him to compose from time to time, and his constant buffoonery, but he rarely can be accused of being outrightly mendacious. Frivolous, a little fib now and again, given to hyperbole and insensible, undiscriminating selection of political battles, not to say his private and public lack of morality, he nevertheless retains an obsession with country that is in tandem with his private obsession with luxury. That obsession with country sometimes leads him to objective conclusions on issues and political personalities. This is where Dr Jonathan comes in, the former president who was previously excoriated by Sen Melaye in trenchant prose and phrases. The easily excitable senator was also at the book launch, leaving the public to guess whether it was a freak of nature to have him say all he said about the ex-president, or whether the book presenters were privy to his change of mind on Dr Jonathan.

In any case, he gave an agreeable remark on the ex-president on December 15. Said he: “I Senator Dino Melaye, I want to  say openly here that after many things that have happened and events that have unfolded in recent times, I want to say openly here that once I was blind, now I can see. In 2017, I was arrested eighteen times — there were more times in 2018 — and between then and now, I have been taken to court on twelve different cases, and out of those cases, we have won eleven of them.  And that only one that borders on attempted suicide.  I wonder how someone like me who likes cars and love life so well would want to kill himself.  President Goodluck Jonathan, I want to say that on behalf of all of us who shot blindly, we are sorry. The one that I later wondered why you did was that phone call. I sometimes wondered that if you had not made that call, we would not be where we are today. But after I saw what is happening in America, where President Trump is saying I no go gree (I won’t agree), I can now see the reason for that call. There are very few people like you.I pray for that anointing…” Sen Melaye probably took a number of people by surprise with what he had to say, but what he said undoubtedly resonated with many Nigerians. The Kankara, Katsina State, teenage schoolboys had just been abducted and were still in captivity, and many northern chiefs and politicians were delivering scathing rebuke of President Buhari’s style and policies. The South was also still in a lather over the galling manner the president had alienated them from the decision-making process, not to say the overpowering manner the administration’s ineffectiveness was endangering the polity, making life miserable for everyone, and predisposing the country to either anarchy or revolution. It doesn’t need half the intensity of Sen Melaye’s rebuke of President Buhari to be convinced that the administration had lost direction in a way its predecessor never dared. Dr Jonathan never prosecuted the war against Boko Haram with the suavity of a great leader, and had even resorted to the use of mercenaries, but on the same problem, President Buhari has been chaotic, complacent, gloating and less effective. And, as the senator concluded, despite the president’s consistent reiteration of his democratic credentials, his administration had been the most cynical, abrasive and dictatorial since 1999.

Dr Ganduje may not be as robust and melodramatic as Sen Melaye in reappraising Dr Jonathan, but he was no less effusive and evocative in his remarks on the same day. “I agree with those who call you an angel for conceding defeat,” he began extravagantly. “I salute you for that. You have made a name not just for yourself, but also for Nigeria, Africa, all developing countries, and for democracy. So, I salute you.” Still inspired, the Kano governor zeroed in on a few salient leadership subjects and remarked the far-sightedness of Dr Jonathan. Said he: “Boko Haram succeeded because they had the almajirai base for easy recruitment and indoctrination. But we salute you for what you did in that regard. We are multiplying the new model of almajiri schools in Kano. That is an important legacy you left for us. The removal of Sanusi Lamido Sanusi is another legacy you left, but it created bad blood in Kano. I personally felt he should have spoken to you privately about the issue of the missing public funds he reportedly discovered so that you could look into the matter without alerting the looters or creating unnecessary public outrage…However… when a familiar scenario began to play out in Kano… I applied the ‘Jonathan medicine’ (sacking from office) for a similar purpose, on the same ‘disease’ and on the same ‘patient’.” Dr Ganduje came under blistering attack for his sarcastic dismissal of the deposed emir, and for what some described as his tasteless put-down of a fallen traditional ruler, but he was simply lauding the ex-president more than he was characterising Emir Sanusi.

Hearing first-hand the boisterous recantation of his former critics and opponents, and having also read in recent months the comparisons between his administration and that of his successor, much of it in his favour, Dr Jonathan, in his response, began buoyantly to declaim on the rubrics of leadership with a passion and insight few people ever associated with his administration. According to him, “The best way to assess a leader is to look at the philosophy behind his leadership. For elected people, political parties are supposed to have ideologies, but even within that persuasion, leaders must have their individual visions. I always don’t think about leadership at the level of a President or Governor based on infrastructure alone. Anybody who has money and is not a big thief would definitely provide that for the people. Apart from that, how else do you assess a leader, his thinking, his vision for leadership? My interest was to change the society through education. No matter what we do to elevate Nigeria, without education the society would find it difficult to change. That was my personal view. That was also why I intervened in the almajirai case. We needed to elevate them above that level, because of the many social problems they were causing. I strongly believe that if there must be a change in Nigeria, we must be competent scientifically and technologically, because technology rules the world today.”

It may be uncharacteristic of Dr Jonathan to philosophise in the manner he did at the book presentation, seeing of course how little of such intellectual trimmings he displayed during his presidency; but he is absolutely right that the impact of leaders must go beyond building bridges and roads. Neither Caesar Augustus nor Napoleon Bonaparte is today remembered for the roads and hospitals they built, but for their grand ideas, and how inexorably they influenced the thinking and way of life of their people, changing and impacting them for generations. President Buhari has spent the better part of his presidency demolishing or undermining the institutions that should safeguard Nigerian democracy and reorient and reinvigorate the people’s confidence in the system going into the future; it will, therefore, be impossible for him to talk of a legacy except in the narrow, deprecative sense of empowering a section of the people to lord it over the rest. The Nigerian system is inchoate. It began to be developed haphazardly by ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo in 1999, but he was too undisciplined to solidify and strengthen the system or make it endure. Until Dr Jonathan alluded to it in his remarks two Tuesdays ago, few knew he even understood such leadership nuances. But perhaps he merely failed to articulate what he knew, and refused to surround himself with the right people to help him enunciate and promote his leadership ideals. President Buhari has not pretended to know what philosophy Dr Jonathan preached, and won’t be bothered to even try.

Nigerians have a sense of general incompleteness when they assess Dr Jonathan. He always seemed capable of propounding and projecting the highest or even complex ideals, such as his concession call after the 2015 president poll, but he also appears capable of the most engaging submission to the gravest error and fantasy. He was the most educated Nigerian president ever, a contrast President Buhari’s disinterest in education has painted in graphic, humbling and tragic colours. But the strength of character the ex-president was unable to show in office, even though he seemed to understand and idolise it, cost him, his legacy and administration dearly. He will always be better than his successor, in gamesmanship, tolerance, appreciation of democracy and how a system works, and for his humanity and empathy, but any revival of his attributes will only be temporary because it will be inextricably linked to and underscored by his successor’s corresponding lack of depth and potential. Dr Jonathan enjoys some sort of revival now; this can only be because President Buhari is wilting in a vacuum as he leads a headless presidency that is beginning to unravel, a presidency which politicians with an eye on 2023 will and must increasingly ignore if the republic is to be saved.