During last Thursday’s Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) family dinner in Abuja, President Goodluck Jonathan finally laid to rest any speculation about his determination to wrest control of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) from the hands of his enemies, or failing that, to destroy it. Not only did he reportedly refer to Governor Jonah Jang of Plateau State as chairman of the NGF, he also indirectly gave notice which side he supports and how ready he is to help bury the group. That singular but unpresidential act showed the frailty and fecklessness of our leading politicians. But it isn’t only the character of the governors that has been weighed and found wanting; by publicly and casually embracing the Jang faction of the NGF, the president gave indication that any morality he had pretended to since his assumption of office was simple a hoax.
It is true the president has not come out clearly to endorse the Jang faction. But what is his word worth anyway? Is it not recalled that he also denounced those who suggested he had any vested interest in the NGF election before it held on May 24? But whether in the case of the post-election endorsement or pre-election interest in the NGF chairmanship, the president had pretended to be uninterested. No one is fooled. More, it is doubtful whether he would be able to fool anyone again as to his bona fides, let alone his nobility of purpose and values. It is now as clear as day that Dr Jonathan is more than anything else a practical politician unruffled by the contradictions that encase his politics and disfigure his worldview. More worrisomely, he is not even really anxious about how his Machiavellian sentiments war against his proudly publicised religious principles. For to embrace an election loser is one thing; but to embrace an election loser who lives in denial of his defeat is quite another.
There had been times when the president attempted philosophising about life, religion, God and Nigeria’s manifest destiny. To be sure, his philosophy never went beyond the practical and commonsensical perspectives of those long castrated by the dulling atmosphere of the countryside, and the bucolic wisecracks of the village teacher; but at least he made some efforts to be deep, detached and, like Caesar’s wife, above suspicion. If only such accoutrements had been brought to bear on his political morality! What worries the average Nigerian is not Mr Jang’s quixotic chairmanship of the NGF, as the president and his aides must have known by now, but the president’s bravura display of political brinkmanship. The disturbing thing about Dr Jonathan’s endorsement of Mr Jang, obvious from his meeting with the losers last Friday, is how the president so insouciantly subordinated the entire Nigerian presidency to the childish intransigence of the 16 governors in his camp.
There’s more than one way to skin a cat, it is said. The president and his governor friends could admit defeat in the NGF election but refuse to respond to any call for meeting. They could even decide they would be satisfied with associating only within the purview of the PDP Governors’ Forum. Or they could refuse any further association of the 36 governors altogether. But to insist they won an election which they unequivocally lost, and for the president, who fails to understand the weight and pricelessness of the office he occupies, to lend the highest office in the land to that shocking piece of chicanery is both to denigrate all that Nigeria ever aspired to be and to set a dangerous and dispiriting example for the coming generations. It would have been better if Dr Jonathan kept to his untruth of not being interested in the NGF election.
