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Tag: Goodluck Ebele Jonathan

Snipers: Jonathan reports Obasanjo to Rights Panel

Presidency seeks probe of allegations

The Presidency has taken its case against ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC).

It asked the commission to investigate the allegation of keeping over 1,000 people on a political watch list and training snipers.

Jonathan made the demand in a letter to the Executive Secretary of the NHRC, Prof Bem Angwe.

A source in the commission, who confirmed the receipt of the December 23, 2013 letter, said Obasanjo may be invited for interaction on his allegation.

The Presidency asked the NHRC to “investigate the allegations bothering on the human rights violations contained on pages 9-10 of the letter dated 2nd December 2013, written by former President Olusegun Obasanjo (GCFR) to President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan (GCFR) attached to the memorandum under reference.

“In order to properly delineate the issues within your sphere of competence, particularly as other issues raised in the letter are being investigated by appropriate agencies of government.”

The letter cited two offensive paragraphs in Obasanjo’s letter for investigation by the NHRC.

The paragraphs are:

“Allegation of keeping over 1,000 people on political watch list rather than criminal or security watch list and training snipers and other armed personnel secretly and clandestinely acquiring weapons to match for political purposes like Abacha, and training them where Abacha trained his own killers, if it is true, cannot augur well for the initiator, the government and the people of Nigeria. Here again, there is the lesson of history to learn from for anybody who cares to learn from history. Mr. President would always remember that he was elected to maintain security for all Nigerians and protect them. And no one should prepare to kill or maim Nigerians for personal or political ambition or interest of anyone. The Yoruba adage says, ‘The man with whose head the coconut is broken may not live to savour the taste of the succulent fruit’. Those who advise you to go hard on those who oppose you are your worst enemies. Democratic politics admits and is permissive of supporters and opponents. When the consequences come, those who have wrongly advised you will not be there to help carry the can. Egypt must teach some lesson.

“Presidential assistance for a murderer to evade justice and presidential delegation to welcome him home can only be in bad taste generally, but particularly to the family of his victim. Assisting criminals to evade justice cannot be part of the job of the Presidency. Or, as it is viewed in some quarters, is he being recruited to do for you what he had done for Abacha in the past? Hopefully, he should have learned his lesson. Let us continue to watch.”

The Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) and Minister of Justice, Mohammed Adoke (SAN) in a memo to the Executive Secretary, National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), Professor Bem Angwe, dated, December 23 to which he attached a copy of Obasanjo’s letter, directed Angwe to investigate allegations relating to human rights violations.

Specifically, Adoke requested Angwe to investigate allegations bothering on the human rights violations contained in pages 9 and 10 of the letter by ex-President Obasanjo.

The memo marked: HAGF/NHRC2013/Vol2/5, titled: “Re: Before it is to late,” a copy of which The Nation sighted yesterday, reads: “May I draw your attention to the above and the attached State House Memorandum dated December 23rd 2013 in respect of the above subject matter.

“I am to request you to investigate the allegations bothering on the human rights violations contained on pages 9-10 of the latter dated December 2, 2013, written by former President Olusegun Obasanjo, GCFR to President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, GCFR attached to the memorandum under reference.

“In order to properly delineate the issues within your sphere of competence particularly as other issues raised in the letter are being investigated by appropriate agencies of government, I have decided to reproduce the relevant paragraphs below,” Adoke said.

A source in the NHRC said: “We have received the letter and a memorandum attached to it. With the issues raised in the letter, we may invite ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo for interaction.

“The question of being on political watch list raises some human rights issues. What I can assure you of is that we will be fair to all sides.”

Responding to a question, the source said the demand of the Presidency was within the mandate of the NHRC.

He cited Section 5(b) of the 2010 (Amendment Act) of the commission.

The section reads in part: The Commission shall- (a) deal with all matters relating to the protection of human rights as guaranteed by the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999, the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and other International Treaties on human rights to which Nigeria is a signatory;

“(b) monitor and investigate all alleged cases of human rights violation in Nigeria and make appropriate recommendation to the President for the prosecution and such other actions as it may deem expedient in each circumstance;

“(c) assist victims of human rights violation and seek appropriate redress and remedies on their behalf…”

December 25, 2013
Between OBJ and GEJ and others in-between (I)

Last weekend, Leadership (December 21) published a story in which it quoted former president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, (OBJ) as saying on his Facebook wall on December 20 that, following his controversial December 2 letter to President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan (GEJ) which he ominously titled “Before it is too late”, it was time Nigerians turned on the heat in the polity so that only the best party should win the next general elections in 2015.

“It is now time,” the newspaper quoted him as saying, “to turn up the heat. May the best party win.” In the light of his letter in which he admonished his estranged benefactor and godson to shape up or ship out, Obasanjo’s call for Nigerians to turn on the heat was clearly his coded way of asking Nigerians to throw out the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) at the next elections, the very party that gave him the platform to rule the country as its first elected president since 1985 and a party which he once boasted will rule Nigeria for a long, long time, if not forever.

His call for Nigerians to turn up the heat also looked, at least to me, like a call on the select Nigerian leaders – Generals Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, Abdulsalami Abubakar and Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma and Dr Alex Ekwueme with whom he said he had shared the content of his letter and who he also said shared his concerns – to speak out in his support.

So far none has and it’s highly unlikely that anyone of them will. Up till now the only one among them who has said anything about the letter is General Danjuma and he has categorically said he will not criticise GEJ in the open. “I have complete and unimpeded access to the president,” he said in a goodwill message to the 6th Abuja Festival of Praise on the night of December 20 in response to what he said have been repeated calls by the press for him to say something about the letter, “and if I have anything to say to him, I will do so face to face. These are difficult times and we must be careful, especially as leaders on what we say in public.”

The general’s argument of unimpeded access to the president precluding his speaking out does not look quite tenable; in November 2003 he spoke out against Obasanjo as a president that he said he found out was under the spell of a cult-like clique. At that time he had just left Obasanjo’s administration as the defense minister and he had complete and unimpeded access to the Obasanjo.

Five years later, he said even more terrible things about his former friend and boss. In an interview with The Guardian (February 17, 2008) marking his 70th birthday he condemned Obasanjo as “the most toxic leader that Nigeria has produced so far.” The country, he said, “took him out of jail and made him a president; he abused Nigeria, he deceived Nigeria and he deserves a second term in prison and we will make sure he ends up there.”

By then Obasanjo was, of course, no longer president but, on General Danjuma’s own contention, his friend still ruled Nigeria by proxy “through Yar’Adua, his puppet.” At the time Danjuma still had complete and unimpeded access to his friend and to President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua.

So if the general has rejected calls for him to speak out on Obasanjo’s letter, it would not be because you speak truth to power only when you do not have complete and unimpeded access to those in power.

In any case his attack on Obasanjo back in 2003 would not be the first time he’s spoken out against those in power even when they were completely accessible to him. There has to be other reasons for his reticence this time, probably foremost of which is his well publicised falling out with Obasanjo over the former president’s successful move to partially take away the oil well the general had been allocated by the late military head of state, General Sani Abacha, an oil well which has since proved one of the most lucrative in the country.

As for Generals Babangida and Abubakar and Chief Ekwueme, they too, like General Danjuma, are more likely than not to maintain strategic silence, strategic because while they know much of what Obasanjo said in his letter is true, as we shall see next week, God willing, they do not want to offend or embarrass President Jonathan with whose government they’ve been doing good and brisk business in many sectors of the economy.

Their strategic silence is also probably because they believe Obasanjo lacks the moral authority to condemn the president for all the offences he has charged the president with, not least of all the charges of bad faith and divisiveness. For, make no mistake about it, before Jonathan came along, Obasanjo was the most divisive president we’ve had in this country and someone whose word you took to your bank at your own peril, as I have tried to show in innumerable articles I have written about the man on these pages and elsewhere, one of which I shall reproduce on these pages in two weeks time, God willing, for its relevance to the ongoing controversy about his letter even though mine was written eleven years ago.

The point of all this is that clearly Obasanjo is on his own in this letter writing business as a strategy of wrong footing President Jonathan. Worse for him, it seems the heat he wants President Jonathan and the PDP to be subjected to has been turned on him, first, from a quarter he – and probably most Nigerians, including this reporter – least expected and, second, from the reply to his letter by his erstwhile godson.

Once upon a time, Mr. Femi Fani-Kayode, before he became arguably the most trenchant defender of President Obasanjo during his second term, described him as a Mr. Know-It-All and a stooge of not only the much maligned “Fulani caliphate.” Fani-Kayode said Obasanjo was also a stooge of “his Western European backers…and his friends at the IMF and the World Bank.” The man, he concluded, in that clearly malicious article in The Comet (March 18, 2001), since rested, “may end in utter disaster and shame.”

At the time Fani-Kayode wrote those words not even he in his wildest thoughts could have imagined that the former president’s “disaster and shame” would come in the shape of a daughter who seemed to have benefitted most from being an Obasanjo, namely, Iyabo, a veterinary doctor and a PhD in public health.

Iyabo is not the first to visit opprobrium upon her father; years ago Gbenga, her brother from the same mother, accused his old man of sleeping with his wife in a sworn affidavit. Being a man apparently with a crocodile skin, the accusation did not appear to “shake his coat”, as we say in local parlance.

Iyabo’s charge against her father in a letter that was indeed a “red hot exclusive”, as the editors of Vanguard which published it on December 18 described it, must have rattled the man no end. Inspired, as she herself said, by her father’s 18-page letter to President Jonathan, she wrote her old man an 11-page letter dated December 16 in which she accused him of being “a liar, manipulator, a two-faced hypocrite” and a cruel and criminally negligent father and husband. Disaster and shame don’t come any worse than someone your own loins sired and who most people thought was your favourite, saying such unprintable things about you to the whole world, especially at a time you’d picked to fight a critical battle of your life.

It was a sign of how much he was rattled that he called her while he was visiting in the US where she is now resident to confirm if she could indeed pen such blasphemy. Equally, it was a sign how much shame she must have known she has brought unto her family that she initially denied writing it.

Feedback

Re: The persecution of Governor Lamido

Two weeks ago I promised to publish a very thoughtful reaction to my piece on the subject above last week but didn’t. My apologies. Below is a shortened and edited version of the reaction.

Sir,

I am yet to see people from the North call out their leaders to account. But instead what we have seen is people demonising Jonathan. I am not saying ‘don’t question Jonathan.’ All I’m saying is, let’s question from home first.

I am a Muslim and from your name you seem to be one also. So let me use the religion angle.

Tribal leaders in the desert and outside the Arabian Peninsula came to Prophet Muhammad (SAW) and gave their allegiance to Islam and the Prophet himself agreeing to be ruled by him. Many people say that Islam was spread by the sword. But it only happened because of the leadership of the Prophet and the justice that reigned in Islam. Today many in the West are beginning to understand how Islam was spread.

If the Prophet was seeking justice outside his kingdom without firstly, trying to clean up his own house, do you think Islam as we know it would have existed? But of course if you are a Muslim you most likely already know all of these. I hope we can do what is right. May God make it easy (for us all).

Abdul’Aziz ibn Ibrahim

Sir,

I’m neither your fan nor apologist because I can’t stand your ethno-religious irredentism. But those who attacked you because of Lamido’s article should, if they can read English, read where you said, “This does NOT, of course, mean Lamido’s sons should not be prosecuted & their father exposed as….a hypocrite…”

Myk Aiyemo – Abuja

+2348052355655

December 25, 2013
ASUU strike as subversion?

At the end of a very bad week, politically, for Mr. President, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan made matters worse when he described the on-going strike action by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), as an act of subversion.

The president’s comment came on the heels of an order by the supervising Minister of Education, Nyesom Wike that university teachers must resume work tomorrow or consider themselves sacked. While calling on the management of the universities to re-open the schools, Wike had accused ASUU of intransigence and sabotage.

Sabotage, subversion, these are strong words that are often associated with military governments or dictatorships, and the usage of such words by a supposedly democratic government for a mere industrial action by aggrieved workers does suggest a hardening of position by a government that is either jittery or losing control and wants to reassert its authority by the use of force.

The ASUU strike now in its 6th month has divided Nigerians down the middle. While one half is sympathetic, the other seems to harbor no sympathy at all for the university teachers. I belong to the latter group, but the way and manner the Federal Government has been handling the issue of negotiation with the union, especially the crude words of Wike and the unguarded (unfortunately) comment of Mr. President has sharply swung the pendulum of sympathy in favour of ASUU.

The lecturers have suddenly emerged as heroes fighting for a better higher education system in Nigeria as against (in the belief of some) fatter remunerations, and the Jonathan administration as a bunch of unreliable negotiating partners.

Failure on the part of government to implement the 2009 agreement it had with ASUU led the lecturers to go on strike on 1st of July and after another round of negotiation on how to implement the 2009 agreement, this time involving Mr. President, the lecturers are saying they have not seen anything to suggest government was committed to this new agreement and therefore would not return to work. But the Jonathan’s camp is saying it has done enough to convince the striking university teachers that the government is serious this time around and should on the strength of Mr. President’s words/assurances, have gone back to work.

It is the rejection by ASUU of these mere verbal promises/assurances by the president that the minister is calling sabotage and Jonathan is describing as subversion. Now tell me where is the sabotage or subversion here? Once beaten as they say, twice shy. The Federal Government had promised ASUU in the past and failed, even with signed agreements, so what makes this verbal agreement different from previous ones? Was it because Jonathan was involved?

If President Jonathan had wanted his words to be taken serious by ASUU, considering the recent history of failed promises to the union by government, he should have matched his words with immediate action and now leave ASUU with no other option than to call off the strike. But with a Federal Government that is lacking in integrity, nobody will take the president’s words to the bank.

Worse still, we don’t even know the full details of the 13-hour meeting the president had with ASUU, so blaming the union and calling its action subversive is not the issue. Besides, such a hard line position by the government and the unguarded utterances of both the minister and (unfortunately) Mr. President show a poor understanding of the issues involved and the enormity of the problem(s) at hand.

By ordering the authority at the universities to sack any lecturer that failed to resume work by the December 4 deadline, does the minister, Nyesom Wike know the number of people that are likely to be involved? If he sacks them where is he going to get their replacement from? Does he even know the number of academic staff in Nigerian universities? What is the position of the law on sacking and rehiring? Is it true that if you sack and rehire one or more, you must rehire all? I think the supervising minister of Education, a lawyer, should go and read the position of the law well on this his sack and rehire order and should also try and understand the limits of his powers.

When you give the job of a carpenter to a tailor this is what you get. It is easier to blame the minister for his motor park approach to the ASUU strike, but when the president is speaking the same way as his minister on a matter as sensitive as getting our universities back and running, then you know the kind of thinking that goes on in the inner circles of government.

Note that Wike’s argument after lambasting the lecturers was that after meeting for 13 hours with the president, the union still couldn’t take his words as enough assurance/guarantee of government’s commitment to implement all the agreement reached. “I have never seen anywhere in any country where you sit down with Mr. President (to negotiate). That is the highest level of discussion. If you cannot believe Mr. President, then who else will you believe?” He said.

This comment was somehow echoed by the president in Yenagoa last Friday when he said ASUU leadership had shown utter contempt for his person and office (by their refusal to call off the strike), noting that never in the history of Nigeria has the president sat through a labour dispute meeting, the type of which he had with the lecturers’ union.

Now you can smell ego and pride here, and to some extent, a bit of arrogance. That the minister said it first and it was reechoed by the president was an indication that that was the talking point agreed at their caucus meeting. Now you can imagine the quality of discussion at that level and the caliber of people that lurk around the corridor of power in Abuja.

Well, maybe it is not right for the president to sit through such a meeting, since whatever was agreed at a lower level of authority, say ministerial, with ASUU will still come to his table for approval. But having decided to drag his person and office into that negotiation with ASUU, he should have known that failure to implement agreement reached immediately or as and when due will rubbish both his person and office. He should not be offended but he called for it. If he had given effect to the agreement reached immediately, the blame would have been on ASUU now if the strike was not called off immediately.

Labour is by nature supposed to be selfish, so, if ASUU is being selfish, then it is just behaving true to type. It is not lack of respect for the president or his office, it is just the way trade unions are, always careful with and distrustful of authorities, especially in negotiations, irrespective of who is on the other side of the negotiation. They would only believe when they see agreements being implemented.

The president, being a member of ASUU at one time, though not a unionist should have known that threat is the last thing you issue to unionists, it makes them stronger. So the threat of sack of lecturers as directed by Wike will not work, it will only make ASUU more popular. President Goodluck Jonathan should stop listening to the Wikes of this world, they are his worst enemies. The Gulaqs, the Ogiadhomes, he knows them, they are misleading him. ASUU is not subversive. Even though I don’t often agree with them, the lecturers are no saboteurs. They are patriots, looking at Nigeria from a myopic point of view.

December 3, 2013
This way to Nigeria’s rebirth

It is the season of football glory, with the November 8 Golden Eaglets’ fourth triumph at the FIFA U-17 World Cup at UAE 2013; and Super Eagles’ fifth qualification, beating Ethiopia, to the FIFA World Cup in Brazil 2014.

So, a bit of football imagery is apposite.

Right now, there is a hat trick of coincidences: a weakened presidency, a ruling party in disarray and a “North” in political retreat, despite all grandstanding to the contrary.

These coincidences look like setbacks – great setbacks, almost tragedies – for critical segments of the Nigerian state. Yet these setbacks, if well handled, could well earn Nigeria a rebirth from its unending season of anomie; and halt its perennial crisis of nationhood.

Never in history, perhaps, has the Nigerian Presidency been so weakened; and the Nigerian president so vulnerable to political pressure.

In 2011, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, Nigeria’s first president from a minority bloc, rode to stunning pan-Nigeria presidency. But two years down the line, due to presidential commission or omission, grafted with stark contradictions in the polity, the presidency is looking increasingly frail.

Presidential royalists continue to kid themselves the president is all-powerful. But it is clear that office is, right now, far from the constitutional Leviathan power romantics claim it is.

Linked to that presidential meltdown is the meltdown of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the federal ruling party.

In Jonathan’s emergence, and by violently abrogating its own zoning principle, PDP overreached itself, even by its own accustomed impunity. The ensuing bitterness, from a “North” that felt cheated, is the basis of cascading bricks in the PDP house.

Of course, the “North”! It is central to the present distemper. As that Yoruba saying goes, the consummate executioner finds no mirth in someone fumbling with a sword near his neck!

A region versed in power dominance, if not outright domination, certainly finds it extremely reprehensible to feel dominated! So, it screams, it yells, it bawls; warning at the apocalypse to come, should such a situation continue.

That would appear the chief driver of the North’s bid for power in 2015, aside from its not illegitimate growl of being cheated of its due in 2011, with the abandonment of PDP’s zoning formula, simply because President Umaru Yar’ Adua died in office.

As it happens, therefore, there is a hat trick of angst, sweeping through the ruling office, the ruling party and, if not chastened by current developments, a region by its power log in Nigeria, that could easily have regarded itself as the ruling region!

That is just as well!

A hitherto Leviathan presidency is feeling the blues of impotence, particularly when the subject is influence (aka ‘soft power’), to change things; and not the near-brutal presidency that Olusegun Obasanjo bequeathed. Those who misinterpret Jonathan’s fascist bent for power are grandly mistaken: a dog barks out of fright, not out of power.

A hitherto impregnable PDP is feeling real threats of collapse, simply because having rigged things against others for too long, it is now rigging things against itself and, by so doing, rigging itself out of cohesion. The ensuing schism is well and truly earned!

And a hitherto all-conquering “North” – in any case, the tiny cabal that commits political murder in its name now endures the bitterness of feeling dominated!

Not unlike the Achebe tortoise in Things Fall Apart, that renamed itself “All of you” to corner everything, leaving its shocked benefactors in the lurch, this power cabal raised political domination to a sickly art, while leaving their impoverished people with an empty illusion of might. Now that the chips are down, this same cabal is screaming “northern domination”!

So now, what? A bitter fight to the end, even if Nigeria goes kaput? Or a reasonable retreat to reason, to rework Frederick Lugard’s unworkable contraption, even in the run-up to the final month of its centenary?

There lies the way from the hat trick of present chaos to the hat trick of future opportunities.

Indeed, in a troubled federation battered by decades of military rule, and labouring under an emerging democracy, the presidency as unquestioned and unquestionable Leviathan is as much a danger to itself as it is to the democratic republic.

The highest office in the land, therefore, needs a tactical pare-down to ensure its strategic relevance. For Nigeria to survive despite its present challenges, a key demand is a federalism-compliant presidency. A polity reconfigured on strict federal principles holds the ace to future development and prosperity from the present retardation and chaos. A sovereign national conference could fix this nicely, if only Nigeria’s power blocs would stop playing games!

The PDP meltdown is a metaphor for the rotten party system. That is a clear and present danger to Nigerian democracy. Parties are key drivers of democracy. So, a democracy with sick parties is itself sick, by simple logical extension.

The hubris now consuming PDP must impress it on its members the limits of a ruling party, no matter how powerful or invincible it once felt it was. But that message is as valid for the PDP as it is for new parties hoping to kick it out of power. It would be a tragedy, indeed, to kick out the PDP and replace it with PDP with another name.

The message for the North’s political elite, so gung-ho about 2015, is clear. The North once dominated. Now, it is being dominated, at least going by its shrill complaints. So, domination is bad for everyone. Every country should be erected on an equal-opportunity ethos, fired by equity, fair play and justice.

So, while it is legitimate for northern lobbies to fancy their chances by 2015, it is imperative to drum it loud that the pre-12 June 1993 Nigeria, in which some miscreants, acting in the name of the “North” to cancel a valid presidential election, and sustain that high treason, is gone and gone forever. Any attempt to dream such subversive encore could well sound the death knell for the country.

So, as political alignments are afoot, two crucial messages must be clear. One, the North, if it is really interested in Nigeria’s survival, must shun any penchant to dominate. It has enjoyed and endured domination; and can tell the honey and gall of both!

And two, whoever are negotiating with the northern lobby must never surrender the long-term chore of building a just, fair and equitable Nigeria to the immediate gravy of winning federal power. The North must not dominate. But it must not be dominated either.

That template should apply to every part of the country. Indeed, after walking in the wilderness for nearly 100 years (53 years of this under flag independence), with the Lugard contraption always threatening to abort, that should be the template on which sustainable Nigeria must be erected.

Any other way would be tempting fate. If the regnant power folly continues, the tip-over point cannot be far away!

November 19, 2013
Presidential ill-grace

The Amaechi-led NGF chose the high road to avoid a crude power show from Aso Rock

The so-called coincidence of meetings presaged a showdown. The President, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, had scheduled a dinner to hold at the time the Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF) had set its inaugural meeting after the election that reaffirmed Rivers State Governor Rotimi Amaechi as the chairman.

It set off a hubbub of a partisan flavour. Who was going to attend the meeting called by the governor and who was going to honour the President’s invitation? But it turned out to be a non-event to the extent that the expected clash of schedules was nullified by the attendance of some governors who met briefly and decided to honour the President’s invitation to a dinner.

If it was a non-event because the clash did not generate headline, it told a loftier story. The governors of the forum chose the high road. They decided to deprive the president the low gloating of a fight. The governors were not invited to the dinner until about two days to the event whereas the event had long been planned. Foreign guests like the Malawian President Joyce Banda and Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, attended. It is obvious those foreign dignitaries were not served their invitation a fortnight before the event the way the governors were served via text messages. Why were they served an invitation after the governors had set a date for their meeting? No such collision of schedule happened when Governor Jonah Jang called his team of renegade losers for a meeting.

It is obvious the clash was choreographed by the president and his team as a show of power. This is patently unpresidential. Secondly, it continues the malicious saga of the president in his role in the clash already going on in the NGF between governors loyal to the president and the others who are clearly sticking to the independence of the body.

We also learned on good authority that when the so-called opposition governors arrived, they did not have seats waiting for them. They had to search for seats. Some of the top officers of the Jonathan presidency vacated their seats in embarrassed fashion for the governors. More embarrassing was that some of them sat in the back row with journalists. Obviously, the presidency did not expect the governors to attend.

We know now that the invitation of governors to the dinner was an afterthought emanating from an obnoxious desire to display presidential brawn. The president has been showing in vicarious fashion his displeasure with the Governor of Rivers State. Only last week, his wife, Dame Patience Jonathan, defied all decorum and acted like an officer of state when she visited Port Harcourt, and breached the governor’s protocol in a show of unconstitutional power. She played the impostor. She also attended a wedding that she converted into a platform for uncouth mouthing and vituperations of an elected governor. It reinforces the lack of class that the president has displayed since the face-off with the Rivers State Governor started.

It is the same lack of grace that encouraged the commissioner of police, Mbu Joseph Mbu, to bar local leaders from paying visits to the governor. It was a crude behaviour that defies all decorum and principles of the rule of law. We cannot defend the president for not calling both his wife and the commissioner of police to order. This shows that the president has embraced this lack of finesse and his presidential actions and inactions have endorsed them.

For instance, his spokesmen said they did not take sides in the recently concluded NGF election. But the president, never one with the subtlety to disguise his mischief, endorsed Governor Jang, the renegade leader of the forum. This shameless contradiction has become a staple of a presidency now crippled by a lack of moral high ground.

When the governors showed up at the dinner, Governor Amaechi decided, out of courtesy, to walk for a handshake with President Jonathan. He received a curt rebuff from his security aides. The reason? It was out of sync with protocol. Since when was it out of protocol to say hello to the president at a public event? This has happened several times. Lesser mortals have been shown on national television to go through the so-called impregnable protocol wall with the chief security officer and ADC to pump hands with the head of state. We have seen governors do that as well. Why was it different in the story of Amaechi?

The president has failed to recognise that the office, once elections are over, is not a partisan haven. It is the seat of the nation’s integrity. The higher spirits of the land – pride, honour, truth, fairness, balance, justice, empathy – should exude from its cathedral pores.

Rather, what we have seen is a serial disregard for justice and even the rudiments of dignity. We commend the governors for lightening the tension by putting off their meeting to another day. But the president needs to be cautioned against turning the same body that buoyed him to power into a theatre of division, fuss, malicious ill-grace and vengeance.

June 30, 2013