That the Jonathan presidential court is deep in the sewers, when it should epitomise rarefied refinement, is underscored by the crude electioneering outbursts by First Lady, Patience Jonathan.
It is damning symbolism, showing how low the high office of the Nigerian president has sunk under President Goodluck Jonathan.
In a clearly unprecedented fashion, Mrs. Jonathan claimed Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential standard bearer and her husband’s top challenger in the March 28 presidential election, was “brain-dead”.
True, the context of the statement, the giddiness of the campaign stump, was not quite as clinical and as foreboding as it appears in cold print. Besides, the First Lady is notorious for her lexical challenges.
So, beyond demonstrable bad grace and undisguised spite, she might not have fully understood the full impact of her blurting.
Still, what offence, beyond legitimately running for president, has Gen. Buhari committed to earn personal insults from Mrs Jonathan? Or is the Nigerian presidency the exclusive preserve of the Jonathan clan?
Thank God she didn’t — and, from her conduct and comportment thus far, she could not have. But what if Mrs Aishat Buhari, the General’s wife, had responded, tit-for-tat? So, Nigerians would have witnessed the unflattering sight of, if Gen. Buhari wins, an in-coming First Lady trading insults with the outgoing one? What lessons would that have taught the Nigerian youth?
Aside, Mrs Jonathan was also quoted to have told Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) supporters to “stone” whoever shouted, to their hearing, Change, the APC electoral slogan; apart from thoroughly insulting the North, saying some families over there produce more children than they could ever care for.
So, would the insulted trot to the polls on March 28 and happily gift her husband the vote, for which she was campaigning?
When a First Lady, who ought to be the quintessence of poise, dignity and grace, perennially embodies unrepentant coarseness, to the captive cheer of her unfortunate aides, then something fundamental is wrong!
Meanwhile, mum is the word, from her husband, for whose cause she unleashed such unmitigated crudeness. The president, the quintessential gentleman, sees no evil, hears no evil!
Still, if Nigeria is organised on the basis of families — as indeed, it is — there is something notoriously amiss with a man who seems unwilling or unable — or both! — to control his family, on which his spouse is perched, asking to lead 160 million Nigerians made up of composite families.
Still, if Mrs Jonathan could plead campaign giddiness, what might Femi Fani-Kayode, the president’s chief campaign spokesperson plead, by insisting that, indeed, Buhari was “brain-dead”? It was additional evidence, if any were required, to confirm that President Jonathan’s campaign messages came brewed in the gutter!
Mr. Fani-Kayode, is well and truly quixotic, in his bid to sell a winning campaign with a tongue that sears, a voice that barks and a mouth that mocks and lies — all on overdrive from a mind that merrily libels. But he is only the most grotesque face of a hugely cynical, devil-may-care, campaign din: Doyin Okupe, Olisa Metuh, Asari Dokubo and Ayo Fayose — he, the perfect living example of how not to be a governor.
Add Pa Edwin Kiagbodo Clark to this list, and you won’t be wrong. Even an otherwise classy Reuben Abati appears thoroughly enjoying his first sweet lessons in vulgar abuse — judging from the memorable echoes of his latest letter, challenging the APC candidate to a presidential debate.
After lustily orchestrating a certificate non-issue, proudly announcing political opponents with bad breath and bawling about another allegedly wearing pampers, Mr. Fani-Kayode, the Don Quixote of the Jonathan presidential campaign, is now pushing, full gallop, for war reparations against Candidate Buhari, for his anti-Biafra exploits in the Nigerian Civil War! It is his latest elixir to further warehouse Igbo votes!
The others in the din ensemble have not be idle, either. Dr. Okupe, ever charging, ever growling, ever battering, has barked at anyone who cares to listen: mark my words, he growled, Muhammadu Buhari is not electable!
Mr. Metuh, fresh from the crushing success of christening the APC opposition an “Islamic party”, has rushed post-haste to declare the INEC card reader (no friend of his party, for no mysterious reason) an irredeemable failure, even if concrete evidence suggests otherwise
Asari has been a bit quiet, since declaring war against the rest of Nigeria, should they make the fatal mistake of not re-electing his Ijaw kinsman.
Elder Clark is still quite sprightly. Still at the ferocious war front, of the sack Jega campaign, this respected Nigerian patriot and alter ego of the commander-in-chief, is already belting out a diktat: no matter what the law says, soldiers would be used for election duties, to the raucous applause of trillions of PDP members nationwide!
Ayodele Fayose? That one does nothing at half-measures! With the prodigious gift of treading where angels dread, he has hollered, what the hell: sack Jega, and heavens won’t fall! It is the final declaration of the self-named Irunmale (spirit) that snacks on jollof rice! Fayose has spoken! Which unfortunate law of the land dares demur?
Still, the in-the-sewers-we-trust orchestra is not limited to middle-level officers alone, in the Jonathan presidential army. Vice President Namadi Sambo too would trade his proud place for no one!
After rejecting Olisa Metuh’s branding, and repositioning PDP as “Islamic party” in the North (because Alhaji Namadi is Muslim and is a northerner) but “Christian party” in the South (because President Jonathan is Christian and a southerner), he now flails and wails against the odious idea of a 72-year old becoming president. That is the latest sagacity from the ultra-loyal deputy, even if it is un-African to mock old age.
President Jonathan? He is the proverbial grand masquerade that claims the final flourish!
After, for Christian votes, posing in churches nationwide (most latterly in the South) as perhaps more Christian than any other; swaggering out, as all-conquering commander-in-chief in the victorious Baga road show (to convince the troops he is more general than General Buhari that quit the army some 28 years ago, and perhaps make a sweepstakes of barrack votes nationwide), the president, at the weekend, scaled new heights: the sporty president is sportier than any other — so, the Nigerian sporting universe must reward him with their grateful votes!
If the blessed president made a good campaign surge of politicising churches (never mind that religion is dangerous tinder), shows off the army as one in which he is especially well pleased (even if it is a collective bastion that must never suffer politicisation), why should he not claim sports at his exclusive, partisan ally (even if sports is Nigeria’s most unifier, defying any partisan affiliation)?
Well, for holier-than-thou Christians who have developed dissonance at the president’s latest harvest of traditional blessing from a section of Yoruba Obas from Nigeria’s South West, it is the realpolitik of hardball electioneering: the end justifies the meanness, apologies to Prof. Wole Soyinka!
