With Jonathan’s Hat
in the Ring…
Last
week, Tuesday the 11th of November, 2014, President Goodluck Ebele
Jonathan officially declared to run for president in the oncoming 2015 general
elections for a second tenure, or third, depending on who is speaking. In spite
of his body language and every indication in that direction, he had
prevaricated stating clearly his desire to run for reasons best known to him,
but clearly political. The declaration came at the heels of a dastardly bomb
blast, at the Government Science Secondary school in Potiskum during morning
assembly which left about fifty persons dead with scores injured, barely
twenty-four hours earlier. All fingers naturally point to the Islamist
insurgents, Boko Haram, presently terrorizing the nation on the northeastern
fringes and elsewhere.
Expectedly,
the opposition, chiefly the All Progressive Congress (APC), sought political
capital out of the situation. Alh Lai Mohammed the APC spokesman was quick to
issue out a statement accusing Jonathan of insensitivity for going ahead with
the planned declaration – which in Nigeria is usually a fanfare and jamboree of
sorts – in the face of the unfortunate killing of the school children. In
politics that is not strange, especially in periods of heightened electioneering
such as the one we are now in. Political opponents will usually seek to exploit
every conceivable, and inconceivable, opportunity to make the other look bad,
and in most cases the ruling party gets the harder knocks as something will
only naturally not go well in the state and responsibility lies on such a
party’s head until it is upstaged.
Therefore,
Jonathan had two options: either to have called of the already planned event or
to have carried on, as he did. Either way would have been determined by his
“good” judgment of the prevailing circumstances as the President and
Commander-in-Chief, given the daily security briefings he receives. He decided
to carry on. After all have we not heard the presidency blame the opposition
directly and indirectly for the insurgency? Did we not hear supporters of
Jonathan claim that the attack on the Potiskum School was calculated,
twenty-four hours to their principal’s declaration, to disrupt or even stop him
from making the declaration? If anyone held such a belief, why would someone
elsewhere think that Jonathan would give detractors the pleasure of having
their way? I, personally, would not. By the way, we must get used to the
reality that if this insurgency continues the as it is going, which, by all
indication, it will, regardless of who wins the 2015 election, this nation must
be ready to defy the terrorists. What they want to do is to take away our way
of life. We must not allow them have their way.
But,
the politics of Jonathan’s declaration event aside, what should be more worrying
is the kind of divisiveness the very person of President Jonathan has come to embody
in the Nigerian polity. It was this division that brought about the
post-election crisis of 2011 and, if anything, it has festered. Definitely, it
was not Jonathan’s making ab-initio, but one cannot confidently submit that he
has not grown to enjoy it or even take advantage of it in the light of comments
that have emanated from his presidency and his supporters in the public space;
and also in the light of clear policy steps that many have seen that he should
have taken but fail or refused to.
We
must not forget the events that threw up Jonathan to the presidency from the
time Yar’adua took ill in November 2009 through to the 2011 elections. So much
bile went round as it was clear the northern political gladiators of the time
never wanted him to go on. He did go on but the north, particularly its Muslim
streets, never has been able to muster even a modicum of goodwill for him.
Thus, the cracks widened along regional and religious lines. I always argue
that many of those who gave their vote to Jonathan in 2011 did not necessarily
vote for him but voted in protest of the establishment that they perceived as
wanting to have their way and only their way in the power game of Nigeria.
Buhari and CPC then were only a collateral damage. Unfortunately, if Jonathan read
the situation well, he cannot be said to have “dazzled his opponents” with
stellar performance but rather, exploit it. The same scenario would appear to
want to play out leading up to 2015.
Today,
Nigerians do not seem to be capable of dispassionately appraising their
leadership in order to make the kind of choices that democracy affords for
progress of state and society. They seem only to be waiting for Election Day to
turn round again so that they would troop to the polls to punish their
perceived enemy. Alas, we have done ourselves in.
BLUEPRINT Newspaper; Nov. 20, 2014; p5.
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