“B’Oyinbo nlo nlu, a su s’aga” [A fleeing expatriate defecates on his seat] — Yoruba saying
Almost like yesterday, the 16 April 2011 presidential election. “It takes patience to get Goodluck,” punned a voter in the scorching sun, in a Lagos voting precinct.
Neither Patience nor Goodluck now appears worth all that trouble!
Not long after the deed, Goodluck Jonathan having romped to victory, it was standard fare to crow, not without a mighty sense of pride and fulfilment: “We voted Jonathan, not PDP”.
Again, neither Jonathan nor PDP has proved a good deal!
Why, not a few back then christened their new-borns Goodluck! It was the sunny and halcyon days of Goodluck Jonathan, the adored president of the Federal Republic.
Not anymore!
Ripples wished he could swagger and say, “I told you so!”
But that would be insensitive — not after Chibok and the missing 219; and Buni-Yadi and the doomed 29: school girls and boys consumed by terror, while the commander-in-chief practically dosed; the ill-fated Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) 16, youths that perished in legitimate search of jobs, because the sitting government could not curtail soulless racketeering; and civil servants nationwide, federal and state, now tasting the bitter novelty of salary yo-yo, because the Jonathan Presidency could not account for Nigeria’s oil receipts. That has led to astronomical slashes in states’ monthly Federation Account takings, without any cogent reason.
Still, yours truly saw through President Jonathan, even when he was Prince Charming — and raised alarm.
Late 2010 in New York, the new President Jonathan was asked: will you contest in 2011 [given the circumstances of President Umaru Yar’Adua’s exit and the North’s bitterness about its loss of power]?
Simple question. But Jonathan launched into a rigmarole: well, I might still contest as vice-president; I might contest as president; I might just conclude Yar’Adua’s tenure and quit; in fact, I’ve not really thought about it — I’m still busy with my current assignment!
Ripples saw through the sophistry; spotted a devious power schemer and raised an alarm. Even when people were celebrating Jonathan’s “pan-Nigeria mandate”, Ripples declared it was no more than a regional gang-up, which conspiracy produced a “pan-Nigeria mandate of Southern Nigeria and the Middle Belt.”
Indeed, Lagosians and other southerners now howling about a disastrous Jonathan should own up to their own share of the mass conspiracy that created him. By, for southern solidarity, acquiescing to the expedient scrapping of electoral zoning, they joyfully created the monster that would later gobble them.
Glorious irony: former President Olusegun Obasanjo, chief and happy cheer-leader of that expediency, despite himself being a zoning beneficiary, has become the bitter jeer-leader of Jonathan!
But just as Gen. Obasanjo, in 1979, handed Second Republic President, Alhaji Shehu Shagari, a legitimacy grave in the twelve-two-thirds controversy, which Chief Richard Akinjide, SAN, baked, Chief Obasanjo handed Jonathan a serious legitimacy crisis in the zoning controversy, with a cheated core North screaming blue murder.
Still, the Jonathan debacle was at best a blissful marriage between the duplicity of the power elite and Jonathan’s own crass opportunism.
Because he had a legitimacy baggage — the guilty are afraid, after all! — Jonathan fretted and lingered, while Boko Haram made hay, thinking he was appeasing the North. That way, he thoroughly demystified the once and supremely proud Nigerian military. A commander-in-chief never ended a more tragic fall guy!
In terms of concrete-and-mortar, Jonathan never achieved much, never mind all the crowing about antiquated coaches and pre-historic rail tracks, that his lobby credits him with.
But it is in the area of intangibles, democratic, normative and lawful, that Jonathan has proved an unmitigated disaster, almost without any redemptive value.
Indeed, in both governance and politics, Jonathan brought the Presidency to nadirs unimagined; and manically worked — and is still working — a divided Nigeria; and wilfully creating mutually loathing Nigerians, along explosive religious and ethnic lines; more than any other government in Nigeria’s painful history.
Besides, though he boasts a PhD, his grasp of issues is pitiably childish and pedestrian. The president parrots, in 2015, his e-payment anti-corruption “achievement”. But e-payment, for the Lagos State government, has been standard fare since 2002!
The less said about Dame Patience Faka, the presidential spouse, the better. Suffice it to say she has brought that usually classy office to great disrepute by her gross insensitivity, galloping lexical challenge and unapologetic vulgarity. All these will return, with a vengeance, to wreck her husband on March 28.
In presidential imaging, Jonathan also plumbed new lows. Proof? Just listen to his reckless presidential canvassers, sounding off like all-muscle-no-brain bouncers: Edwin Clark, Ayodele Fayose, Doyin Okupe, Femi Fani-Kayode, Olisa Metuh, Fredrick Fasehun, Gani Adams and Dame the Game, herself! Now, garnish all that with Jonathan’s atavistic crusaders: MASSOB, OPC and Niger Delta militants. Pray, how can a president sworn to law and order, court so much anarchy, for wishful electoral gains?
Mention institutional wrecks, and Hurricane Jona has been hyper-active, starting with his ruling Peoples Democratic Party. Despite the bluff and bluster, a hugely divided PDP goes into the polls — and even that is a rump, following the split and exit of the Governors-5. Even then, a paranoid Jonathan still subverted his party’s nomination process: PDP claimed, even after aspirants had paid the due fees, that it only printed one presidential nomination form — and the president had got it!
What other areas has Jonathan’s locusts not eaten: respect for electoral laws — which Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria (TAN) brazenly breached, organising pro-Jonathan rallies, thus undermining INEC?
Or, the PDP shameful campaign to prematurely sack Prof. Attahiru Jega, the INEC chair, for having the temerity to insist on innovations like permanent voter cards (PVC) and smart card readers, to authenticate genuine voters?
Or, Jonathan as author and finisher of hate campaigns, in lieu of hardly any concrete achievements, erected on brutal demonization of political opponents, and explosive Christian-Muslim, North-South and petty ethnic divides, all served in the most incendiary, hateful and vulgar of languages — not to mention the cavalier ploy to politicise the security and armed forces!
Lest we forget: the unprecedented Police invasion of the House of Representatives, all in a bid to forcefully change the Speaker, after Aminu Tambuwal’s defection to the opposition APC! It is tribute to the triumph of reason over brute force that both the Police and DSS have eaten crow and restored the Speaker’s full security, after an initial shameful romance with state outlawry.
Jonathan’s supporters, just like his opposers, have their democratic right. But four days to the presidential election, it is clear which of the two are upbeat, and which are downcast.
Take the media. The pro-Jonathan This Day deviated from its tradition of electoral mapping to predict putative winners and losers. Could it be that This Day editors have seen the handwriting on the wall; and instead, settled for an advert form of a Richard Grenell Armageddon scarecrow, written for Washington Times, suggesting should Buhari win, Nigeria risks Islamization? But why is no one surprised at the green Mr. Grenell? Didn’t Islamization scare run through the Jonathan campaign?
O, Sunday Vanguard too, on March 22, ran a front-page advert predicting Jonathan’s “victory”. But even a casual look at it shows the parameters are highly suspect. But maybe they tell Jonathan what he wants to hear!
In contrast, The Nation (pro-Buhari) and Sunday Punch (neither friend nor foe) ran a electoral map that tilted towards Buhari, with accompanying detailed analyses. Well, it is all in voters’ hands now!
In Ripples’ view however, it would take a most egregious rigging for Jonathan to prevail in this election. That is clear from the geopolitical balance of numbers and spread.
That is why INEC must stand firm and do its duty to motherland: credible, free, fair and transparent election. The security forces too must resisit any partisan temptations, that runs contrary to their oaths of service.
So long, Mr. President. One just wished your outgoing activities would not earn the portraiture of the exiting white man that soils his high seat, just because he is skipping town!
