The world had expected a bitter presidential poll but Jonathan saved the day by conceding defeat early
As a journalist, I should be one of the last persons to want a Buhari presidency. I was a few months to my graduation in the Department of Mass Communication, University of Lagos, when the then Buhari/Idiagbon junta promulgated Decree 4 in 1984, under which even truth was inconsequential. But, if 31 years down the line I now find myself making a strong case for a Buhari presidency, then something must be gravely wrong with the existing order. If millions of Nigerians today find Buhari alluring, President Goodluck Jonathan is to blame. It simply tells of the rot that his government represents which, unfortunately, those in the government and their friends do not want to accept. Many people in the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) who say things are not bad under the Jonathan administration are only fooling themselves. But Nigerians who are feeling the effects of the ineptitude and massive looting in government know better.
How can any sane person say that a government that could not do much when the naira was strong will do better now that the national currency is weak? How can any sane person say that a president who until his defeat at the polls still did not believe corruption has reached a crisis dimension in the country despite the global concerns about it, will tackle corruption? How can a president who came into power partly because of people’s feeling that being once upon a time a shoeless boy, he would empathise with the poor, say there is no poverty in the country simply because a few Nigerians own private jets? Obviously, President Jonathan became disconnected with the people on getting to Aso Rock. His cause was not helped by the sycophants who surround him and are giving him the impression that all is well.
The full story of what led to the president conceding defeat to General Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC) is not yet out; but I suspect he did not consult widely before taking that decision. Otherwise, the Edwin Clarks, the Elder Godsday Orubebes, the Femi Fani-Kayodes, the Doyin Okupes, the Ayo Fayoses, the Segun Mimikos, not to forget the Akpabio Akpabios, the Tompolos, the Gani Adams, the Frederick Fasheuns, etc. would have told him not to surrender because of what they will eat. Orubebe had to mess himself up in the full glare of the world because he could not imagine that the honey pot from where they have been making money was about to be taken away just like that. So, how could such people want the president to concede defeat?
But personally, I was not surprised that President Jonathan lost. I had always told those who cared to listen that he would lose and that was obvious even in my write-ups. It could not have been otherwise for a president with the record that I have painted. Moreover, as at the time of the election, virtually all the party’s founding fathers had abandoned it. Many of its leading lights, including governors, had decamped to the opposition APC, yet, the remaining people kept deluding themselves that those who left had little or no value to add to the party’s fortune at the polls. The only surprise element for me in the defeat therefore was conceding defeat by the president, even before the result was officially announced. And that is where the spiritual dimension comes in.
Even atheists among us must be seeking explanations as to why an election that we all thought was going to be won or lost at the ‘war front’ and not at the polling booths ended on the peaceful note that it did. Many people had besieged the banks days before the election to get enough money that could last them for some time; many had done the same for foodstuffs. As a matter of fact, many of those with the means had left our shores, hoping to return after the ‘Jonathanian Wars’.
Our gratitude should go to those behind the postponement of the elections who must have thought they had done an unimpeachable job that would allow the government to rush what it had left undone for years in six weeks. But God, as usual, caught the wise in their craftiness by making them push the elections into the Lenten season. Take it or leave it, a lot of spiritual fireworks went into the elections. Even Muslim clerics did a lot of prayers in the mosques whilst the Christians did theirs alongside their annual fasting. By now, President Jonathan must have known the difference between Father Ejike Mbaka of the Adoration Ministry, Enugu, and the other men of God who might have kept telling him that he had any chance in the election. The president must have known the difference between a man of God properly so-called and people who were not called by God but who called themselves, or those who were called but derailed along the line for pecuniary gains.
One major factor President Jonathan did not reckon with is the fact that he is from a minority region. I guess that reality dawned on him when the votes from the north started coming in and most of them went to Gen Buhari. I had told my friends who had believed that the president would get so so number of votes from the north central, so so number from the north west, etc., that they would be roundly disappointed; in other words, that the average northerner would not abandon Buhari at the critical moment to vote for President Jonathan. Thrice that Gen Buhari ran a solo presidential race, he polled about 12 million votes on each occasion. With the ‘coalition forces’ now with him, it would not make sense for an average northerner to abandon him because they could never tell when another northerner would have the kind of support that Buhari had from a critical region like the south west. Performance was the other thing that could have made the average northerner prefer Jonathan to Buhari but this was missing in the Jonathan administration. Not only was the government incompetent; it was also monumentally corrupt.
It would therefore have been a disaster of equally monumental proportions if President Jonathan had won because that would have told us that the values that he and his ruling party have been inculcating in Nigerians over the years have gained ascendancy. That would have meant a general approval of impunity, of corruption, of lawlessness and what have you. That would have set Nigeria many decades back. You can imagine a Nigeria where the likes of the people I earlier mentioned would be the ones calling the shots!
Then, consider what was spent by the president on the election, especially during the six weeks. It is doubtful if President Jonathan himself can recollect how much of hard earned foreign currencies he wasted on ‘the polls. In the end, he lost. Although, in a sense, this gladdens my heart because it tells us that more Nigerians are wiser. I have always urged people whose conscience can take it to take bribes from politicians that choose to bribe rather than perform, and still vote according to their conscience. No one with good intentions would do such a thing the president did. If the president had won with the bribes, it is good governance and ultimately Nigerians that would suffer. There would not be any incentive for politicians to work hard in power if they know that everyone has a price and that once the price is right, they would always win elections.
Then, the president’s wife, Dame Patience Jonathan! She was simply an irritant and a pollutant to many Nigerians. She threw caution to the winds; and was speaking as someone campaigning for her husband in the race for the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) chairmanship. That was how low she dragged the exalted office of President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Indeed, if the president lost in Aso Rock Villa polling units, we may have to situate that within the context of the failure of the woman of the house to worm her way into the hearts of her immediate constituency. Regrettably, President Jonathan’s friends too only showed him as a shade better than his wife during the electioneering. Obviously, neither of them realised that the PDP that they went into election with had been so mortally wounded that it could no longer perform the ‘feats’ it used to perform in elections.
All said, the good thing is that President Jonathan knew when to beat a retreat and he did. It is good that he realised that should anything go wrong, he would be the main culprit. All the others are mere footnotes. The beauty of the presidential election, for me, is the fact that an incumbent president can be defeated in an election. This is the way it should be and that, as a matter of fact, is the sermon many of us have been preaching; that Nigerians should be able to fire any elected officer that is not doing well. In other words, votes must count. Gen Buhari too and the APC must be guided by this fact.
