Tag: ambush

President Goodluck Jonathan once had a father. His name is Olusegun Obasanjo, aka Owu Chief. Father was so good to him that he schemed for him, imposed him on others, defended him against a weak and wizened man he made an elder brother to Jonathan. Predictably the elder brother passed on.

Eventually, father did Goodluck the ultimate favour. He perched him on power. Son showed gratitude to father. Father gloated openly over the triumph of son. He loved the son because he seemed pliant, obeying his every caprice.

With time, however, Goodluck did not have a good relationship with father. He looked at the reign of Obasanjo and saw how independent he was, how he flexed his taut and crackling political muscles. He wanted to be like him. But he discovered that they had different traits. He could not perform the press-ups and other political regimens exercises like father. Father is a bull, bullying, hectoring and riding roughshod. He is of a different breed. If father is bull, he loves another kind of creature, the one that does not shout or snarl, that leaves no mark where it inflicts damages, the feline, subterranean, slithering, sinuous, singeing masterpiece of the bush. The snake, that is.

He had to have another father. Quietly he divorced his father, and adopted another one, from the past. His name is Maradona. The difference though is that the Maradona he wanted to adopt was a colourful man, a soldier who had quotable quotes like “we should use what we have to get what we want,” which was a code for corruption. Or that he is “the evil genius.” He also had an elegant wife, even if many thought her a beautiful shrew.

Goodluck does not have the panache, that dramatic flair. His marries a woman without any of the attributes of elegance or taste or refined breeding. His speeches are droll, quotable only for their lack of insights and puerility. For instance, he says, “Boko Haram will go away someday” or “I am not Pharaoh…” Or “I don’t give a damn.”

But he loved the essentials of the man Maradona. He loved the art of deception, which is what snakes have in common with generals. IBB was a general who basked in deception until he deceived himself out of power. When you bring deception to governance, you go very far like the snake though.

The Owu Chief sulked quietly in his Ota farm before he started writing letters in his usual flourish and showing openly that storm brewed in the once halcyon family, and father and son no longer hugged or backslapped. Scowls now reigned where smiles bloomed.

Perhaps that explained why he visited his father recently. He wanted to hone the skills of deception from the father-master. The father rejoiced in his Minna mansion at the visit of the son. He played his Maradona game, by first adopting Jonathan, then renouncing him by saying his corruption makes mincemeat of his own fabled rottenness in office. Later he seemed to adopt the son again. It is credit to his Maradona majesty that no one can say for sure if he backs Jonathan or not. In the last Council of States meeting, he pitched his tents against Jonathan’s generals who said they did not want Jega to go ahead with the polls. Maradona father knows how to tread without footprints.

But Jonathan has been playing true to his new father. In the now contentious issue of postponed elections, he began by playing the game like his new father. He met with United States Secretary of State John Kerry who suggested that it was not proper to postpone the polls. Jonathan the faithful Maradona did not say he disagreed about election date. He simply said he would hand over on May 29. Just then, his National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki, trotted to Chatham House in London where our governors and sundry politicians like to flaunt their credentials. He, a national security adviser, did not speak about security issues in the upcoming polls. He lamented over Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) that were not in enough hands for the elections. The presidency still said they were going to the polls on February 14. INEC chief Attahiru Jega assured the nation that he was ready for the polls and that 96 per cent of the PVCs had been sent to the states, while at least 66 per cent had been delivered to prospective voters.

When the PVC debate slipped out of the hands of the PDP, they began to shift the debate to security. Elements from the PDP began to suggest that February 14 was unrealistic. We should put it off. Reason: insecurity in the Northeast. Jega said most of the Northeast was not in the hands of Boko Haram. Even though the national average of persons with PVCs was 66 per cent, the average in the Northeast was over 70 per cent in Gombe, Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states.

In the Council of States meeting, only the service chiefs and Jonathan and the PDP governors did not want the elections. Former heads of state and chief justices and APC governors wanted it to go ahead. The whitlow of the west was singled out as pro-Jonathan, anti-election, anti-people henchman in the meeting. His name is Olusegun Mimiko, otherwise known as the quisling governor of Ondo State.

Insistent, the president sent out his mouthpiece, the voluble Doyin Okupe, – who was recently disgraced in a church – who showed that the president was afraid of the polls. He said one area was outside the powers of INEC: security. So the trump card was eventually in the open. When a snake wants to strike it will show itself since it is not a spirit. This newspaper reported on Saturday that the President demanded a six-week postponement from Jega. That very day, Jega announced that he was putting the polls off by six weeks. The witch cried last night and the child died this morning. Who does not know the connection?

In times of crisis, people show their true colours. We know the president cannot hide his false meekness. He can go to as many churches as he pleases and tell the Christians that he does not want to campaign as though he is talking to fools. We know the president was afraid of the polls all along. We know wolves in sheep clothing.

He has come out, like autumnal leaves, in true colours.

We should realise that Jega was coerced to change the polls dates, no matter what the INEC chief says. Jonathan withdrew security by letting his collaborating cowards of service chiefs declare they cannot work for the elections. Jonathan is the commander-in-chief. He it is who has abdicated his first duty to the citizens. The service chiefs only played along.

Jega could not answer the question as to whether he could guarantee that the elections would take place on March 28. He alluded to the constitution, which mandates an election a month before May 29. Nigeria is, apparently, relying on Chad and Cameroun who have turned the giant of Africa’s army into a dwarf of cowardice in battle. Smaller neighbours have become the Samson and David of the war on terror. Does that guarantee that they will sweep Boko Haram out by March 28? The Americans with all their sophistication have said it will take years to defeat Islamic State in the Middle East. Jonathan says six weeks. I foresee a constitutional quagmire that will bring the nation to brinkmanship, if not to its knees. When in March Jonathan and his men still know they are headed for a defeat, they would still raise the spectre of insecurity. They would invoke the doctrine of necessity and say that they want the constitution changed so that we can get more time to prepare for elections. May 29 will no longer be sacrosanct. I foresee a Jega resignation or ouster of some kind, and a struggle between those who want the constitution and those who don’t.

What we see today is a president who is running away from a time. But he cannot run away from time. He is running away from the people also. But both time and people will catch up with him. Maradona did same, postponed election after election and handover dates after handover dates. Eventually, the inviolate voice of the people spoke. Time always overthrows tyrants.

The idea of an ambush is military. It connotes surprise, and the executor of the ambush assumes the position of the superior, being the aggressor. President Goodluck Jonathan played the ambush man when he propounded the idea of a national conference. He seemed to have ambushed everybody. He set up a committee, sprinkled it with some progressives while also ladling it with his advocates and marionettes.

President Jonathan had turned his about-face into virtue. He who pooh-poohed the concept as subversive and unnecessary turned into the spearhead. The imitator had become the originator. He was not the author of the story, but he had become the narrator, the protagonist and the omniscient raconteur. He understood the power of surprise in a story, especially the modern novel. He acted as if he read Ian Watt, who theorised on the novel as a genre premised on surprise as weapon. He imposed surprise on the narrative and it caught everyone, especially the progressives, with their pants at the knee.

Other than that, he seemed to have read Harold Bloom, the author of the concept known as the anxiety of influence. That concept says the imitator so well emulates the original that the originator appears as the imitator. It is the ultimate fraud of identity. While it lasted, Jonathan was having the time of his opponents’ lives.

So, in starting off his national conference, the president wore two hats, one of a literary genius and the other of a military strategist. He was at once a Napoleon and a Dickens. He thought so for a few days and his men basked in the new intellectual and political glory. Even many progressives, who had thought that the Nigerian moment had come to talk itself out of its age-old illusions, found themselves pitching their tents with the helmsman of Aso Rock.

He turned out to be wearing false hats, an impostor in political fashion. The matter turned awry when he said the conference would report to the National Assembly. Suddenly, it became clear to many that the president alone understood what he meant by a national conference. The progressives abided the illusion of a sovereign conference. They thought that once the process began they would take the initiative from the president and his PDP viceroys, and Jonathan would lose control. They probably had history in mind, like the French Revolution when a mere meeting of the legislature turned into a conflagration of mass protests that torpedoed the system. Some groups had started unveiling their terms, and others started gearing to write their memorandums and positions. This was another ambush. They thought Jonathan, whom they often wrongly call clueless, would fall piteously into their traps.

How wrong! Jonathan did not know that the victim of the ambush would be none other than Jonathan himself. By saying that the conference would report to the National Assembly, he committed a grave error. He assumed that those who had supported him would just tag along like a sheep. He did not know that many would suddenly realise that he did not know that he could not fool us.

You can fool some of the people some of the time, crooned Abraham Lincoln, but you cannot fool all the people all the time. Some who supported him retraced their steps and started telling him, “sorry, no cigar.”

That is the story. What those who understand the concept of the national conference want its decision to be binding on everyone and every institution, including the National Assembly and the president. When such a parley begins, the people take charge of the nation. That is why it is a national conference. The progressives have often called it sovereign because they feel that every topic will be on the table, including the very survival of Nigeria as a nation. In fact, that would be the very first topic because on it hinges every other deliberation. The Jonathan administration set a trap by saying everything is on the table. How false. If everything is on the table, it will not be subjected to the wisdom of the National Assembly.

If the national Assembly would have to ratify the proceedings, then the legislature would assume that it (the National Assembly) is not a topic for deliberation. But the conference would have decided also how the legislature would work, how its members are elected, how the constituencies are delimited, what powers they should wield, their terms of office, and their sources of funding. If such a matter gets to the assembly, the report would be subjected to a committee. That committee of a few men would now impose its ideas and distortions on the submissions of persons elected all over the country. Again, they could be at the receiving end of lobbyists from different political, ethnic groups as well as business moguls. At the end of it, the result will be a shadow of what the people’s representatives decided. It would look like the story of the Christian Reformation in Europe. The Reformation was mocked by historians who noted that Erasmus laid the egg but Martin Luther hatched it. But Erasmus said the colour of the bird was different from what he intended.

Yet, once the National Assembly completes the job, the president must give his assent. The president and the lawmakers will become judges in their own causes. The presidency will also be a subject of the conference’s work. What if they curtail the president’s powers, what if they say the states will have more money than the centre and the police will no longer be at the beck and call of the centre? Ideally, once the conference begins sitting, all institutions, including the presidency must cede authority to the leadership of the conference. The president and governors become a little better than ciphers. That is how fundamental such a conference is.

So, President Jonathan exposed the philosophical vacuity of his conference. So what it means is that he does not really intend this to be a groundbreaking affair, but just a conference to keep us silent and divert attention.

Yet on the flipside, one cannot assume that convoking a conference will be easy. We cannot assume that voting the people into the conference may not be rigged or controversial. One cannot assume that the deliberations would not hit deadlocks or whether even after the conference has finished its work, the referendum would not be swindled out of the people with a fraudulent vote counting. These will be challenges. But we need to give it a try, and see if the people will insist on their own sovereignty and reclaim their mandate if the referendum is rigged. The great Yale scholar and philosopher, Robert Hutchins said, “the death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.”

If soveriengn conference fails, then we can say the people ambushed themselves. But that will be a terminal ambush. We shall have assured ourselves that we have decided to rig ourselves as a people out of a future of progress. That is better than a rigmarole and cosmetic dance that Jonathan has placed on the Nigerian stage.