They were expecting a moving elegy. Then the tears would come cascading down their chubby cheeks. They would cling to one another in a desperate search for temporary comfort and mumble those soothing words of reassurance that the darkness that had fallen upon the land would soon give way to a clear, sunny sky. After all, it was the funeral of a great man, a giant whose deification many would not contest.
President Goodluck Jonathan disappointed them all. He chose the occasion of the funeral service for the late Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, anti-apartheid icon, lawyer and former South African President, to lash out last Sunday at his fellow politicians at the Aso Villa Chapel.
Many were restless in their seats as His Excellency spoke strongly on the virtues of a good politician, particularly the ABC of communication. It was a long extemporaneous speech, dripping with bile and vile, drawing images from the holy book –”it will be easy for a politician to be great than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle” – and analysis of “greatness”. Vitriol? Not quite, but so close.
The speech was delivered with the fury of a pentecostal preacher, the gesticulations and drama of a Nollywood star and the magisterial postulations of a judge. Who and what provoked such diatribe? In the audience were respected men and women, lawmakers and lawbreakers hiding under the umbrella – sorry, dear reader, no prize for guessing whose umbrella this is – contractors and detractors as well as palace jesters and pranksters.
“If you listen to those of us who are politicians… some of us speak as if Nigeria is their personal bedrooms that they have control over,” Dr Jonathan said, adding: “Read the papers, listen to the radio… and see how politicians talk; we intimidate, we threaten, show force in our communication. This, definitely, is not the virtue of great men. They are certainly the vices of tiny men.”
No. Not quite right sir. Politicians talk according to the dictates of the events in the polity. They also study the body language – how they love the phrase – of the leadership and comment accordingly. If elections are rigged, will politicians not deploy the foulest of language to condemn the malfeasance? They will.
Besides, to me, what the President may have seen as bad communication may not really be. I, like many others, enjoy the creativity and oratory of some of our leaders. The repartee. The sardonic humour. They really know how to choose their words and use them to the fullest effect. Precision.
The other day in Dutse, Jigawa State, when former Head of State Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar came visiting, Governor Sule Lamido spoke on the crisis in the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Party Chairman Bamanga Tukur “is worse than polio virus”, Lamido said. Can you beat that?
I take it, dear reader, that you know what polio is, its devastating exploits in Nigeria, particularly in the North, and the seemingly endless controversial battle to stop the virus that cripples its victims right from birth.
When five PDP governors quit the party to join the All Progressives Congress (APC), one of them, Adamawa’s Murtala Nyako, got a tumultuous welcome from his supporters. He reflected on his days in the ruling party and said: “We were like Israelites under the Pharaoh.” The similitude is so striking. It says a lot about the workings of the ruling party.
After the defection of the five governors, the chairman of the New PDP, Alhaji Kawu Baraje, advised Jonathan to start writing his handover notes. That common expression, which is like a yellow card in soccer, sparked an uncommon debate about the import of the advice. What will such notes contain? Who will draft the all-important document, the cerebral Dr Reuben Abati or the garrulous Ahmed Gulak or the rumbustious Dr Doyin Okupe?
What will such notes contain? The Under-17 World Cup victory? The Super Eagles triumph at the African Cup of Nations? Privatisation of the power sector? Free and fair elections, as in Ondo State and, most recently, in Anambra State? The well fought anti-corruption battle?
A committee set up to probe the N255m cars scandal successfully did the job and submitted a report – a feat that would have been impossible if the Jonathan presidency had not vowed to keep its anti-graft war on track, against all odds. Another administration would have simply looked the other way. Not this. Now, the report is safe, filed away in the inner recess of the Villa where no saboteur can tamper with it.
How about the fight against Boko Haram? If not for the government’s ingenuity, wouldn’t the sect have taken over more states? And SURE-P, the anti-poverty elixir that has become the toast of the country, especially among the multitudes who have been snatched away from the jaws of hunger and swept into eternal prosperity, which is well assured by their pepper grinding machines, okada motorcycles, Keke NAPEP tricycles and donkeys, the very symptoms of the disease that the programme set out to fight. Never mind those critics of the highly successful, but widely maligned programme who say some N500billion of its fortune is missing.
The Anambra State governorship election sparked a big row. All attempts by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to patch it up ended in more cracks. Despite the popular outcry for the cancellation of the exercise, INEC Chairman Prof Attahiru Jega went on to conduct a supplementary election. In other words, rather than apologise, he repeated the offence. An angry politician remarked that with the Anambra election, Jega had become jagajaga – an onomatopoeic contraption of Jega’s name, signifying an irredeemable confusion. Isn’t that great?
When the university lecturers’ strike defied all solutions, including an all-night meeting at the Villa, the President came up with a great idea – thanks to his fecund imagination. Why not brand the stubborn fellows with a terrible name and turn the table against them? He called them subversives.
For long, Niger State Governor Babangida Aliyu shouted that Jonathan signed an agreement to spend one term in office. One term he must spend, he insisted. Asked to produce the agreement, he at first said he would not entertain any question on the matter. Later, he said the paper was with a Southsouth governor. Now Aliyu is no longer talking about that. Neither is he still threatening to defect to the APC – remember he was the leader of the G7, which gave birth to the G-5 after he and Lamido jumped ship. So much for shakara leadership.
Jonathan, at the service aforementioned, recalled that Mandela refused to yield to pressure to go for a second term. A cheeky fellow, one of the ardent readers of this newspaper whose name I won’t mention so as not to expose him to charges of subversion or a more serious crime in these inventive days, remarked derisively: “See who is talking. Why don’t you, Jonathan, do one term, paint your name on the canvass of greatness and give us some peace? We all talk about 2015 with trepidation? C’mon, you too can be a Mandela.”
Another fellow recalled that the last time a Nigerian leader was asked to follow Mandela’s example, he did not only reject the unsolicited advice, but he went after the bearer of such a treasonable idea, seized him by the throat and stifled him politically. He then went on to do a second term. He fought a do-or-die battle for a third term, but his well funded design was doomed to fail. It failed.
Jonathan spoke about Mandela’s spirit of forgiveness. The disgruntled fellow who I had earlier referred to sniggered and said derisively: “Nowadays, we are wiser. We don’t let people commit offences and go through the painful act of forgiveness; we stop them so that when there is no offence, there is no need for forgiveness. Meetings, even of governors, are smashed up and anti-corruption seminars are invaded by the police.
“And when people go to jail for corruption, we pardon them. So much for forgiveness.”
Jonathan probably forgot to talk about Mandela’s humility, perhaps the most important of his virtues. From humility flows forgiveness and patience, courage and the kind of stoicism required to endure 27 years incarceration and come out of it all smiling.
May God give us humble leaders.
Obasanjo writes Jonathan
Just as I was writing the last line of this article last night, I got a copy of former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s bitter letter to President Goodluck Jonathan. It is so far the most draconian picture of the Jonathan presidency, a knife driven deep into its heart.
It will not be wrong to say this is why Jonathan launched into that diatribe on Sunday. He is said to be preparing his response to those huge allegations. I can’t wait to read it.
