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Tag: Mama Peace

  • Hail the latest victim, Mama Peace!

    Folks, the latest  victim in town sniggers — they are persecuting me, sniff-sniff, because of my vigorous support for my husband.  Big deal!  Will any rigour ever come out of the House of Jonathan?

    In a media statement just released, spokesperson for Dame Patience Jonathan, former Nigerian First Lady (what a blight on that honorific office!), rolled out the latest jeremiad from the House of Jonathan.

    Patience is being “persecuted” by Ibrahim Magu, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) czar, claimed Belema Meshack-Hart, her spokesperson, because of her doughty support for former President Goodluck Jonathan’s presidential cause.

    “One thing is clear:”, Meshack-Hart wept, on behalf of principal. “No matter what they do to Mrs. Jonathan, she will continue to stand by her husband, the father of her children, even if it means paying the supreme price with her life.”

    How sweet and heroic!

    Still, is someone seriously lexically challenged here?  Yeah right — Patience supported her husband to the hilt.

    But only in the sense of Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth, driving her tragic husband, the otherwise goodly Macbeth, first to commit regicide, then to destroy himself, en route to the evil Lady Macbeth herself running amock!

    Support indeed!  If there indeed was a single person accountable for Jonathan’s presidential doom, the person was Patience, his bombastically uncouth wife.

    Nigerians still recoil at her physical and lexical savagery, at the dawn of the Chibok girls kidnap tragedy.  Her Imperial Majesty, Dame Jonathan would rather go on an empty ego trip, instead of showing compassion, or even empathy, for the hurt Chibok mothers.

    Then the little issue of Bayelsa “permanent secretary”!  That was a national record in infamy, sitting Abuja-based First Lady as Bayelsa “permanent secretary” — and proudly in absentia too!  What do you call that — (un)presidential browbeating?

    Well, her husband, the president, was too weak and effete to say no.  He merrily — though gutlessly — framed his presidency as that of “anything goes”, as someone said of the Nigerian Army of the Babangida era. Then the rubbish she spewed during 2015 electioneering!  It was an electioneering equivalent of suicide bombing!  Little wonder: that effectively bombed her husband out of office, the  first president of Nigeria to be thus electorally ousted — good riddance!

    And the alleged graft and sleaze thereafter, attached to her person!  That was a fitting climax in infamy!  And to think, from media reports, she had even flirted with outlawry, reportedly cleaning off EFCC marks on some frozen property — the law and dire sanctions be damned!

    Hardball thinks Dame Jonathan can do better to draw pity to herself and her doomed cause.  Victim indeed!

    If there indeed are victims here, they are the millions of the Niger Delta disinherited and dispossessed, driven into further penury by the recklessness of the Jonathan Presidency.

    But the gravest evil of it all is the satanic grandstanding of “persecution”!  Again, if there is any persecution, the victims are the Niger Delta poor — and they should know their real traducers!

    Something is terribly wrong with the Nigerian DNA — to tolerate this level of brainless cant.  Havoc-wreakers of Jonathan era should be cooling their heals in the can, not appealing to dumb pity.

    Victim, indeed!

  • If only Mama Peace remembers… (2)

    By the way, there is no law that says your husband must remain in office for two terms if the electorates think otherwise. In a democracy, the power is in the thumb and not in the wishful thinking of any candidate regardless of whether such person is an incumbent. And so, it beggars belief that you were quoted as insisting that nothing would stop your “moving train” from completing “our two terms in office.” As usual, you quoted the constitution out of context by insisting at the Benin rally that: “Everybody is staying there for eight years. Now it’s our turn. We must complete our eight years. It is in the constitution of this country. Two,  two terms. We will complete our two terms and hand over.” Ha! I bet you wouldn’t have babbled this vomit if you had paused for a while to reflect on the likely consequences if the wife of the late President Umaru Yar’Adua had insisted on the implementation of this your queer interpretation of the Nigerian Constitution. Fact is: you missed he point Madam. That power your husband holds in trust for the people can be withdrawn and given to another person in the general election. Of course, he is entitled to contest for another term but his fate to remain in the office for another term lies squarely in the thumb of every eligible voter. The Nigerian electorate alone reserves the right to determine whose ‘turn’ it is to occupy Aso Villa and that’s a legitimate route to oust a moving train!

    Also, there is something about your split image that unnerves the spirit—the way you cuddle peace with the cold comfort of a warrior! You crave peace with the biting pellets of hate on the campaign tuft. Aside the hate messages filtering from the embittered mouth of the man you gloriously called your ‘junior husband’, Governor Ayo Fayose of Ekiti State, no other Nigerian has physically unleashed terrifyingly annoying language to malign the person of General Buhari than you. If you were not calling Buhari a spent force on diapers at 70 like some person’s mother, you would be busy diagnosing him as brain dead. If you were not indicting him for spending “donkey years” in office as a military Head of State for less than 20 months, you would be regaling in the assumption that your husband was contesting with an ‘expired drug.’ If you were not casting aspersions on a tribe as ‘born troway’, you would be somewhere encouraging people to stone anyone that dared to chant the word ‘change.’

    Mama Peace, here was what you said about peace: “I am a peaceful person and I preach peace anywhere I go. They are looking for a fight; they are looking for war. They are troublesome people. That is why they went and took expired drugs. Now they are crying. They are the people stoning people and nobody talked.”

    Peace, as Albert Einstein puts it, “is not merely the absence of war but the presence of justice, of law, of order —in short, of government.” As a woman who never gets tired of describing herself as “good” with the belief that your husband has given Nigerians all they ever wanted in a democracy, there should be no need for the veiled threats and outright abuse of power. Or could it be that you opened yourself to the corrupt nature of power which corrupts absolutely? For a man who has given a good account of himself as far as good governance is concerned, people really didn’t understand why Mama Peace was nursing an eternally disturbing phobia that her husband may end up in jail should he fail to make it back to Aso Villa. They ask: What scares Patience Jonathan? Why does she think she may have to be taking food to a good man in prison when no court of competent jurisdiction has indicted her husband?

    Well, I am the least qualified to answer their questions. All I can offer, Madam, is my One Kobo advice: when next you go on the campaign train on behalf of your husband, employ the simplest of language to drum home your points. Stop the posturing, whining over inanities that trigger comical laughter even within the hired crowd. Just beseech them to vote for your husband because he is a good husband that overlooks the laughable excesses of a loving wife just that peace would prevail! No more forays into uncharted territories that continue to serve as veritable raw materials for stand-up comedians please!

    Sadly, with the latest development, this is no longer a joke for stand-up comedians. The chicken perches on a tiny strand of rope and none is comfortable. Now, that old saying about a broken egg ought to make sense. Does it?

  • Sale of national assets: Ohanaeze kicks, advises FG on Patience Jonathan

    The Ohanaeze Ndigbo Youth Council (OYC)  has advised the Federal Government  against the planned sale of national assets.

    In a statement signed by the National President, Mazi Okechukwu Isiguzoro, the group also called for caution in the probe of former First Lady, Patience Jonathan, insisting that due process must be strictly followed.

    The statement reads in part: “Our national assets belong to all Nigerians, and on no account should it be a bazaar for rapacious elite, foreign imperialists and insensitive capitalists vultures waiting to benefit from this national rape.

    “We are presently suffering the effects of past privatisations of our commonwealth by few rapacious elite in Nigeria who did not use the assets cheaply acquired to create wealth and better the lot of Nigerians. Nigerians should resist a replay of this elite conspiracy again.

    ”On the Patience Goodluck bank saga, we call for caution and due process to be followed .While we do not  condone any form of corrupt practices or enrichment, we insist that due process always be followed to get to the root of the matter.

    “Besides, other past first ladies at national and state /even local government levels should also be called upon to account for monies in their bank accounts. In fact, rulers of this country and their wives from 1960 till date should be investigated and without restriction to Patience Goodluck. All the loots recovered in the past should be accounted for. Mrs. Patience Goodluck should not be singled out in this action, else, it becomes selective. It must be holistic for it to be credible.”

  • The world, according to Mama Peace

    The world, according to Mama Peace

    A tear for Mama Peace. No, not a jeer. She owes us that much. Let our faces break up and tears course down in winding, tortured rivulets of sorrow. Or that’s what I feel. The former first lady does not see it that way, though. That is the power of the irony. She thinks herself in a sort of messianic light, not for society, but for Mama Peace. She feels wronged, she feels purloined, she feels betrayed. However, nothing will sway her or dilute her resolve.

    How come her $31 million was taken away from her, and no one understands her right to fight back. Others will call her naïve, and say let others take the fall on her behalf. But she says, no, it’s her money and the Magu-led EFCC must return it to her nest.

    Patience Jonathan is a naïve woman, and she flops about with a sort of dangerous innocence. She thinks it was right for her to open a dollar account, or dollar accounts and ply them with humongous sums of money.  Never mind she was only a permanent secretary and a first lady in those years, and no one could make a fraction of $31 million without raising a highbrow. She was high brow, she must have thought as first lady. So she was entitled to money that could raise highbrows. That is innocence, Mama Peace style.

    When she pleaded on the hustings in 2015 that she did not want to visit her husband in jail, she was as sincere as when she mocked Wole Soyinka’s regal beard. No one could be more sincere when she said, “there is God O! or when she insisted that she was husbandless in “my fellow widows.” Or when she asked a photographer “are you taking us alive?”

    Mama Peace had never bothered about her illiteracy. She has not tried to restrain herself, or attempted a lesson in civility or public etiquette. She had no need for it. She was perfect in her native ‘beauty.’ Some may have seen her as a hippo or anthropoid, or the unrelieved maritime shrew. But she saw herself as okay. We might say Patience was brash, bolshie, bashing, but she was never bashful or dashing.

     That is why we must feel sorry for her. She might have gone away with her money, if she was subtle, cunning and carted away the money in guises as others did, so that the EFCC would not discover or let them discover it at her boon companion’s peril. She would not.

    Her innocence is rare to see in history or literature, a fellow who is naïve enough to give herself away, unless we look at characters like Okonkwo or Oedipus, who saw disaster and pranced towards it. Critic Killam called it “insistent fatality.” But those are majestic figures, otherwise not naïve. But merely fated by their higher gifts to ignore their special follies, or what dramatists call “fatal flaws.”

    Was it not the same thing that propelled former Kano State Governor Barkin Zuwo to roar that he kept government money in government house? Was it not the same temperament that made Marie Antionette to wonder why the protestors on French streets would not take cake if they did not have bread? Or the shoe fetish of Imelda Marcos who made a potential museum and industry out her foot comfort.

    She was the opposite of what anthropologists and philosophers call the holy or saintly fools. They dedicate themselves to causes higher than themselves and play dumb in execution, and austere in their sartorial devotions, in their spare words, in the economy of their smiles and disdain for material splendour, in their sacrifices for the joy of others, in their recoil from personal happiness. Simeon in the Bible has been cited as one, as some Roman Catholic Popes, this present one looking like a modern-day version, or Mother Theresa. We also have them in the Buddhist tradition like Buddha himself as fictionalized by Nobel laureate Herman Hesse in his novel Siddhartha. Russian and French writers from Dostoyevsky to Victor Hugo have fed on it. In one of them, Hugo’s  The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Quasimodo – the hunchback – organises a festival of fools and he is called the Pope of fools. He exposes an age of sanctimony and moral desuetude.

    But Mama Peace’s story only exposes herself. Her revelations tell us two things, among others. One, she unveiled how people in high places take away money in stealth, except that she is not prepared to hide because she believes it is her money.

    Two, that her husband was not able to tame the wife.  She is the shrew that got away. An English newspaper once wrote that President Jonathan lacked the ability to control his wife. Jonathan could not play the tamer in Shakespeare’s the Taming of the Shrew where Catherina is made from a wild woman into a model of obedience, a play that modern stage directors and feminist rage have turned into a rebuke of the author’s misogyny.

    Humans like Patience Jonathan never have the skills of high office. She never acted, and never knew it was important to play roles when in such exalted positions. She was herself, and she was a happy woman. She spoke her mind, hurt people, humoured a nation, created traffic bedlam in Lagos and never saw a reason to apologise. She said she took the money to heal herself. May no one wish to spend such money in a hospital.

    The other lesson is the “Baboon dey chop, monkey dey work” syndrome. Just like we saw in the confessions of Dasukigate, people had easy access to public funds without labour. That is the primitive splendour of capitalism. They wanted to turn lazy hours into wealth. We have many of them. They are finding it hard these days because Buhari’s era does not reward the grandiose indolence of the Jonathan era. They are like the characters in Ben Jonson’s classic The Alchemist, where the landlord leaves the home to his servant to avoid a plague. But before he returns the servant has made a huge fortune from trickery, including by lying he could turn metal into gold, and had a pretty wench to boot. The master returns and inherits everything without a sweat. The play, ironically, was written before capitalism. So were the words of Christ, “For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.”

    Mama Peace lived that world, and has not yet relieved herself.

  • If only Mama Peace remembers… (1)

    Our elders say words are like eggs and once broken, the pieces cannot be gathered into a whole again. Sometimes on March 21, 2015, I had cautioned the then flamboyant First Lady of Nigeria to be wary of the consequences of actions or inaction. Today, and I couldn’t but revisit the piece titled, “For Mama Peace, a speech advisory.” If only she had applied the brakes, then. If only. The piece reads…

    Mama Nigeria or whatever the eternal lickspittle sycophants in the corridors of power chose to label you Ma, let’s just say this is not the right time to embark on such frivolities like that self-delusory courtesies of first ladyship. No disrespect to that office which you are committed to continue holding for yet more years anyway. As the Nigerian Nobel Laureate in Literature, Prof. Wole Soyinka, recently observed, every lady needs to first learn what it means to be a lady before being elevated to the position of a First Lady. That office, though manifestly unconstitutional, is a privilege enjoyed by wives of certain personalities in our warped political arrangement. It’s an unpalatable pill that an ever-docile populace has decided to swallow with tepid equanimity in spite of the persistent abuse of such privileges by previous and present occupiers of that illegal post. And so, it is safe to say that you are not the first and probably won’t be the last to wield a power that was never reposed in you beyond your due recognition as the wife of the President. I hate to use the word domestic appendage because that would be pedestrian. Be that as it may, the least the society expects from you is the deployment of your feminine wit in the physical, emotional and psychological balancing at the home front as the fate of millions of Nigerians hangs on the lean shoulders of your husband, President Goodluck Jonathan.

    In most cases, the wife of the man of power, especially one with the kind of unrestrained power that the Constitution confers on the Nigerian president, is expected to be the moral compass that ought to temper the likely temptation of an abuse. I want to assume that you are conversant with the elementary theory of power to wit: it is said to be held in trust for the good governance of the people. It is also my belief that you must have heard the time-worn saying that “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Now, I need not stress your wit by asking you to discuss the fundamental ideology behind that statement. We all know that John Dalberg-Acton constructed that masterpiece, right? Generally, power is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it intoxicates. On the other, it is temporal. This means no one wields power ad-infinitum. It must end one day and that is why common sense dictates that it should be exercised with utmost caution.

    Madam, do not get it twisted. We are not unmindful of the fact that your husband would, once in a while, attempt to wield power crudely. Such is the ruinous allure of power. For someone who should ordinarily redirect her husband from treading that path of infamy, it is shocking that you have comfortably adjusted yourself to the situation with cold ease. If the bootlickers in and around the seat of power relish telling the President only what he wants to hear, it is your responsibility to pull his nose down the reality lane. You are to help him in keeping his head straight and focused. Unfortunately, you have hardly displayed any of these attributes in words and in deed. You are a direct opposite of what you say you are. As they say it in the creeks, ‘you don fall ya Oga hand, no be small.’ How? You asked. I will explain.

    The problem really has nothing to do with your refusal to remain an ordinary domestic appendage in Aso Rock. I doubt if it is even about your outlandish comical showmanship. Most Nigerians are used to such executive comic relief in an economically challenged environment. They could even forgive the occasional flailing and railing. After all, you are human too and blood, we assume, flows in your motherly vein. What is difficult to stomach, our dear Madam Peace, is the violence and murderous intent embedded in your grammatically wonderful speeches, especially in the bid to get votes for the President who happens to be your husband. They worry not just because of the bare-knuckle punches you unleash on the use of Mama Charlie’s language. Instead, they marvel at the utter discourteousness and sheer baloney in your speech. Rather than wooing the electorate on the strength of your convictions, you tend to be convicting your husband in the court of public opinion. Painfully, and mercifully so, your speechmaking is a disaster to the art of oratory and many parents must have real fears about the likely future of children who dutifully follow or learn your mis-command of the English language.

    Take, for example, your latest attempt at wowing the crowd in Ado Ekiti the other day. As usual, it was a bad copy of what electoral marketing is all about. Simply put, you were a bundle of contradictions. So, you knew right from the onset that you were an illegal occupant of a non-existent Office of the First Lady and that you were just a wife of the President? Wonderful! Question is: why the persistent abuse of the privileges as a wife of President Jonathan? Each time you stepped out to market your husband as a presidential product, you ended up raising doubts about his competence to continue on that seat with the kind of questions you posed.

     

  • Jonathan, Patience leave for Otuoke

    Jonathan, Patience leave for Otuoke

    Former President Goodluck Jonathan Friday left the Nnamdi Azikwe International Airport, Abuja for his home town Otuoke in Bayelsa State.
    He took off on Nigerian Air Force Aircraft, flight 5N-FGW at about 12.03 pm
    He left in company of his wife, Dame Patience Jonathan , his Aide-De- Camp (ADC) Colonel Ojogbane Adegbe, his escort and some of security personnel.
    Some of those who bade him farewell at the Presidential wing of the airport are some members of his cabinet.
    They were led by the former President, Arch. Namadi Sambo, Attorney General of the Federation Mohammed Adoke, the Aviation Minister, Osita Chidoka, FCT Minister Bala Mohammed and other members of his cabinet
  • The complete works of Patience Jonathan

    The complete works of Patience Jonathan

    Involvement of the First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan, in politics and governance since the emergence of her husband as Nigeria’s president has made her a subject of unending controversy. In this report, Associate Editor, Sam Egburonu, attempts a deconstruction of Mrs. Jonathan’s sensibilities and offers a concise presentation of what we may call her complete works.

    She is a woman only few people can ignore. Full of activity, ever visible and never ready to keep silent even if the issue at stake would be considered by many in her position as too delicate, Dame Patience Jonathan, wife of Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan, has, perhaps, because of her directness, become one of the deepest puzzles in Nigeria’s political discourse.

    Already, her resolve not to hide this character trait, which had evidently attracted unending criticisms from opponents, is considered the reason for the depth of criticism she receives from her opponents.

    Her admirers however say she is being criticized unfairly as most of the alleged unsavory utterances are born out of deep love for her husband and her passionate sensibilities.

    Perhaps, the first major occasion for that contradiction, was the height of the controversy over the kidnap of the Chibok girls by Boko Haram insurgents last year’s May.  Then, the opposition was making a mince meat of her husband, President Goodluck Jonathan, for failing to believe the reality of the national tragedy, and Mrs. Jonathan, in a passionate effort to help the matter, convened a meeting with some of the relevant personalities in the Chibok matter, including the parents. In that meeting, the Nigeria’s First Lady, showed so much emotions to help counter opposition’s allegation of insensitivity when she broke down in tears.

    At a meeting with wives of the governors of Nasarawa, Zamfara, Kaduna, Katsina, Kogi, Gombe, Benue, Abia and Akwa Ibom States in Aso Rock, she also expressed worry at the attitude of the wife of the Borno State Governor Mrs. Nana Shettimah, towards the missing Chibok school girls.

    The meeting and the expression of concern, which were generally acknowledged then and praised however became a subject of controversy when the First Lady flayed Shettima’s wife for allegedly being “unconcerned over the girls’ abduction.”

    It was a rare drama as Mrs. Jonathan suddenly burst into tears, saying repeatedly “God is watching oo,” adding, “Before all these killings, I called and told the First Lady of Borno State to let us come together. She answered me yes, but when the kidnap happened, I called her, she did not answer me. I invited her, she did not turn up even up till today. No woman will fold her arms when her house is on fire. Today, my house is on fire.

    “Before last Friday, I called her and she promised to attend the Friday’s meeting here. But to our greatest surprise, she sent her commissioner for women affairs. Also today, she sent her commissioner for women affairs. She is the mother of Borno State. She is the first mother of these missing girls. I am their grandmother. She is not coming out. All Nigerian women are calling her. If she is not concerned and she says she doesn’t want her people to be safe, then it is left to her. If you tell us you are not crying, why should I cry more than the bereaved. If I cry more than the bereaved, the world would ask me a question.

    “If after today, Borno women say we should not help them, then Nigerian women, don’t demonstrate again. If you demonstrate and police do you anything, you are on your own. Borno women are playing game. Nigerian women should not go out for demonstration. Don’t use school children for demonstration again. Borno women are not ready for cooperation”, she said.

    The First Lady added, “People are dying. How can you play politics when you see your fellow human beings dying? Nigerian women, I beg you to support me. Why we will join our husbands to kill others. We want the killings to stop. If we don’t get to know the whereabouts of our daughters, the next thing is they (Boko Haram) will get to us. I am not accusing anybody. My own is let us stop killings and kidnapping. Let us say a stop to these.

    “We don’t know what might happen. We don’t wear bullet-proofs. I am not exempting myself or my husband. If I am found guilty, let me go instead of blood to flow. If our constitution is the problem, let them amend it. Today’s meeting will not end because the abducted children are still not out. If you say I should go and sleep, I would go and sleep. But if you say we should move forward to see the end of this, we would go forward”, she said.

    Her dramatic intervention to the Chibok girls’ saga has since then remained a subject of ridicule and criticism even as every of her public comments have also exposed her to more criticisms.

    The stoning saga:

    Perhaps, the latest utterance of Dame Patience Jonathan, for which she has been criticized and blamed for not helping her husband’s political fortunes is the comment she made in Calabar, where she allegedly called on her supporters to stone her husband’s political opponents. The First Lady, also called ‘Mama Peace,’ had reportedly told PDP supporters, “Anybody that tells you change, stone that person.”

    Mrs. Jonathan made this appeal to her supporters in Calabar on March 2, 2015, while campaigning for her husband, President Goodluck Jonathan.

    Patience Jonathan said: “Anybody that come and tell you change, stone that person. Anybody that come and tell you he will change, stone that person.

    ”What you did not do in …, is now that old age has caught up with you, you want to come and change? You can’t change; rather you will turn back to a baby. You will turn back to a baby. From old age nothing, so nothing like change. Rather (it) is continuity,” she further added.

    The First Lady advised the women to ensure they cast their votes in the coming elections even if they were in having labour pains.

    “Even though belle (pregnancy) is disturbing you, tell it baby, baby let me go and vote. Baby wait let me go and exercise my mandate. Baby wait let me go and do what I can use to feed you.  Baby wait for me, let me go and vote, after voting, I will come and deliver you,  and you won’t die because Goodluck has given all the safety measures.  You won’t die,” Mrs. Jonathan urged the excited crowed.

    Reactions to her utterances:

    More than in all the other instances where the utterances by the First Lady have elicited reactions, her recent call to stone all agents of change has received unprecedented reactions.

    The first to formally react to the comment was the target of the verbal attack, the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (rtd.). The retired army general and his party threatened to drag the First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan, before the International Criminal Court, ICC, for allegedly mobilizing a hate campaign against Buhari.

    Buhari in his protest said Mrs. Jonathan, whose husband is the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, asked supporters of her husband to “stone” anyone who chants the APC’s change slogan.

    The protest was made by APC Presidential Campaign Council (APCPCO) in a statement issued in a letter of complaint against the First Lady, signed by the Director General of APCPCO, Governor Rotimi Amaechi. The campaign council said the protest letter will be formerly dispatched to the ICC, the Inspector General of Police, IGP, and the National Human Rights Commission, NHRC, among relevant authorities.

    A statement from the campaign organisation quoted Amaechi as saying that “Change, as the entire country must know by now, is the slogan of the APC  the rallying cry of a political party that wishes to bring hope of greater and better things to come for Nigeria and Nigerians. By her statement, Mrs. Jonathan was clearly calling on PDP supporters in Calabar to attack supporters and campaigners of the APC in the state.”

    The APCPCO’s statement likened some of Dame Jonathan’s inciting comments and conduct during this political campaign season, to those of Mrs. Simone Gbagbo, wife of the former president of Cote D’Ivoire, Laurent Gbagbo, prior to that country’s 2010 election.

    The party recalled that the ICC indicted Mrs. Gbagbo for her part in planning to perpetrate brutal attacks including murder, rape, and sexual violence, on her husband’s political opponents in the wake of the 2010 election.

    APCPCO said that Mrs. Jonathan does not occupy any formal office in the Nigerian government, adding that the position of First Lady is not recognized by the Nigerian constitution.

    It further stated that Gbagbo’s case showed the ICC’s awareness of how someone beyond formal governmental and military hierarchies can be identified as responsible for serious international crimes.

    The APCPCO pointed out that, “Jonathan’s incontrovertible hate speech not only contravenes the laws of the land, but also goes completely against the Abuja Peace Accord jointly signed by the two presidential candidates, General Muhammadu Buhari and President Goodluck Jonathan as a gesture aimed at forestalling violence before, during and after the 2015 elections.

    “PDP supporters in the state who may not know better could easily yield themselves to the First Lady’s admonition and embark on a process of wanton stoning and other attacks against APC members,” Amaechi was quoted as saying.

    Since the publication of that protest letter, many Nigerians have reacted to the matter, either in defence of the First Lady or in support APC’s call to caution the First Lady.

    Mrs. Jonathan’s supporters, including the husband’s party, the PDP, argued that her comments were not enough to drag her to ICC. Other commentators however think otherwise.

    Prof Itse Sagay, for example could not hide his conviction that by her utterances, the First Lady adds no value to President Goodluck Jonathan’s re-election bid.

    Sagay reportedly said, “I feel very sad given the level of the person it is coming from. It is extremely in bad taste because it is purely abusive and insulting; it has no value because it does not add to the value of the PDP. It does not enhance the possibility of the president being re-elected. It was a very bad insult and raw abuse, which is not expected of people of the status of the First Lady. I am extremely disappointed. It is below the status of the First Lady.”

    But Dr. Olisa Agbakoba (SAN) believes ICC is made for more serious issues, not for political issues.

    “I do not know whether the ICC is the appropriate venue. The worst case is to say that Nigeria laws can deal with whatever issue that APC is making. There are two ways to do it. First is to approach our national laws on defamatory so that you can go to court and sue the person. Secondly, they can say that she is criminally inciting. My point is that the ICC is made for more serious issues and not for political issues, for God’s sake. Whatever the First Lady must have said right or wrong, the point is that there are national laws.”

    Another Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Emeka Ngige, however expressed concern that such matters can lead to anarchy. “I think anything one is doing now, once it does not conform to International Court practices, you can find yourself answerable in or outside the shores of your country. And one of the issues that are taken to ICC are matters that could lead to anarchy, like seen in Ivory Coast,” he said.

  • Mama Peace Woman of war

    Nigerians must be anxious to find out whether the country’s First Lady Patience Jonathan’s publicised change of name will make any difference not only to her public conduct but also to public perception of her personality. Perhaps under pressure from “social anxiety,” which is unsurprising in the light of her markedly unflattering public image, Mrs. Jonathan announced her new name to a probably bemused audience at the Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa, Abuja. The occasion was the December 13 launch of the Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme Maternal and Child Health (SURE –P MCH) otherwise known as MAMA Project.

    According to her, “My name is no more Patience but now Mama Peace because I believe that without peace, there will be no more women, no more children and no more health sector. Without peace, the international community will be afraid to come and invest in our country.” It looks like Mrs. Jonathan recently experienced an awakening, or what is this unaccustomed sentimentality all about? This is not the old, familiar lady of battle, and it is difficult to recognise the change.

    Ironically, in public consciousness Mrs. Jonathan’s background is linked with disturbance of the peace. Isn’t this the same lady who in July last year caused more than a stir upon her appointment as permanent secretary by Bayelsa State Governor Seriake Dickson, which was widely unpopular particularly by virtue of the fact that she had been on leave from the civil service for over 13 years while she played the role of a politician’s wife? Isn’t this the same lady who triggered public outrage following her moves to raise a whopping $26m (N1.4bn) for a planned “First Lady’s Mission Building” that would serve as a centre for meetings of African First Ladies?

    If these were mild manifestations of disruptive tendencies, her obviously ongoing clash with Rivers State Governor Rotimi Amaechi should provide a stronger standard for measuring her troublesomeness. Amaeachi, in an interview, defined the basis of the crisis as her overbearing attitude, saying, “She wants to have a say in the government. Just know that she wants to have a say. I don’t want to go beyond that; that will become too explicit. Just know that she wants to control the government of Rivers State, that’s all.”

    It is disturbing that, to go by developments, the people of Rivers State are apparently paying a hard price for her alleged power-lust. In this matter, it is perhaps impossible to ignore the wisdom that the first lady’s enemy is necessarily the president’s foe. This is not to say that her husband is henpecked, although that may well be the case. Such tragically inappropriate personalisation of office is deserving of unreserved condemnation.

    Interestingly, Amaechi painted a worrying picture of the people’s loss on account of the reality that he has his name written in the first family’s black book. In a recent interaction with a group of medical doctors at the Government House, Port Harcourt, the state capital, Amaeachi not only charged President Goodluck Jonathan with victimisation, he also gave distasteful details. Among other instances of Jonathan’s allegedly deliberate ill-treatment of the people arising from their frosty relationship, Amaechi highlighted the incredible case involving the provision of water. According to him, “I will start with water. We got African Development Bank (ADB) and World Bank to give us a loan, for which we will pay 0.4 per cent for 40 years, which is a wonderful loan and we planned to give Port Harcourt people water first. If everybody in Rivers State is drinking (potable) water that will reduce the number of patients that go to Briathwaite Memorial Hospital or any other hospital. World Bank agreed; ADB agreed. They said, ‘go and do due process ‘. We have finished due process. What is remaining is for the Minister of Finance to sign.” Then he dropped a bombshell, saying, “‘oh, you are quarreling with the President, we will not sign’. That is why they have not signed.”

    It is instructive that this unreasonableness antedated Amaechi’s recent defection from the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) to All Progressives Congress (APC), implying that the Jonathan administration rated personal animosity above official responsibility, even when it concerned a member of his party. In a fundamental sense, such conduct amounted to anti-party activity because it sent out an unhelpful signal to the people about the party’s delivery of essential services. A more people-friendly and politically adept leader would have taken advantage of the situation as a vote-winning opportunity. However, this revolting episode is not just about Amaechi, for it is logical to suppose that other governors possibly blacklisted by Jonathan will receive similar uncooperative reaction, probably to the detriment of society.

    Plainly, therefore, whatever might be responsible for Mrs. Jonathan’s new-found song on “peace evangelism,” it appears that she will benefit from further education on the basics of the concept. As long as cases like Amaechi’s are unfairly sustained by official ill-will, she has nothing to teach anyone about peace. Let her learn from her own words, if they were not uttered hypocritically. According to her, “Peace is from the heart and not from the tongue or lips; not what you say but what is in you. We pray for genuine peace because peace is the key to our arriving at our desired destination as a nation. We are approaching the New Year which is a year of peace, progress and so many good things to come. 2014 is going to be a year of no militancy and no Boko Haram because God will shower peace and make us take a U-turn from disaster.”

    It is unclear whether Mrs. Jonathan has formally effected her declared change of name, or whether she also has the inclination of a prophetess, which is how she sounded. While her good wishes are appreciated, they are also undeniably self-serving, betraying her concern about her husband’s political survival.

    In this year-end season, which is traditionally a time for New Year resolutions, Mrs. Jonathan’s name-change suggests that she intends to turn over a new leaf. This is heartwarming because that is the meaning of changeability, after all. If that is the case, God bless her.