Fola Ojo
FORMER President Goodluck Jonathan may be revving up his political engine in a daring dash back to Aso Rock he vacated in 2015. Jonathan is now reportedly ‘consulting’ with all manner of power blocks. When politicians tell you they are ‘consulting,’ it’s as sure as death that their minds are made up.
This time, Patience’s husband will not be firing shots from an adversarial positioning against retired Major General Muhammadu Buhari. He’ll be launching out from the president’s political-party vehicle with the general as the conductor-driver. The same vehicle he trashed as ‘bad for Nigeria’ just a few years ago. And side-by-side he will sit with the same conductor-driver he assuredly told us was going to jail everybody in political opposition. Politicians are shameless! Who wants more of Jonathan’s goodluck?
For the sake of those whose memories have faltered a tiny bit, allow me to offer a booster-shot of reminisce about the activities of Nigeria’s former President Jonathan of Otuoke in Bayelsa State. The role of vice president was best described by American John Adams, the first person in the US to hold the position, “It is the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived.” Every VP serves at the pleasure of the president whose voice alone must be heard. VPs carry the cup of water for the president. Alongside his principal, Musa Yar’Adua, Jonathan was ushered into Aso-Rock Villa as VP in 2007.
He was the most maligned, most marginalised, most trashed and thrashed VP in history. There were insults, assaults and utter disrespect for this man who never lobbied to become VP. There were certain places Jonathan couldn’t access. There were meetings he couldn’t attend. But he kept his cool as if he had heard from God to do so. Suddenly, President Yar’Adua was afflicted by a strange illness. Those who worked closely with the president enveloped the health challenge in secrecy, cabalistic cover-ups and sinister shields. Yar’Adua later passed on.
Pastors from both orthodox and pentecostal hues used his compelling life story as sermon illustrations. Mothers named their babies after Goodluck, which means, “You encounter good fortunes, especially by chance.” In his life’s story, he has recorded a fleet of good luck since the days he had no shoes on his feet. An assistant senior prefect in secondary school who, we were told, became the senior prefect. Deputy governor who later became governor. Vice president who became president. Baba Olusegun Obasanjo sold Jonathan to the North and they accepted him. Acceptance was easier in the South-West. The Yoruba believed the system was unfair to Jonathan and they rallied around him. The South-East didn’t have a qualm. His name is Azikiwe with Igbo blood flowing in his anatomy, which made the presidency closer to Igboland than it had been in decades. To those in Delta, Edo, Rivers and the rest of that region, Goodluck is a son.
Toward the end of his tenure as president, his administration became like a bad movie Nigerians had to stop watching. Charles Soludo, a former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria and now Governor of Anambra State, wrote in a treatise about Jonathan, “…His greatest challenge is how to save himself from the stranglehold of his largely provincial palace jesters who tell him he has done better than God…. ”Under Goodluck in 2013; Nigeria’s external reserves declined from $47 billion to $29 billion in 2015 straight through the conduits of corruption. Savings depleted from $21 billion in 2010 to $2 billion in 2015. The US government found out that about $9 billion was stolen by 50 people in that dispensation. Another $20 billion was missing from the treasury. A whopping sum of N11 trillion had been pumped into the power sector since 1999 without any result to show for it till today. Government was a big pork of corruption.
Under Goodluck, the Federal Government borrowed $2 billion to pay workers’ salaries. Nigeria’s stack of debt had been cleared by the Obasanjo administration; but as of September 2010 (just six months after President Jonathan ascended to power), debt was $4.53 billion. Later it ballooned to $66.99 billion. In May 2011, Nigeria’s debt was N2.5 trillion and the oil price was $110 per barrel. By May 2015, debt had risen to N12 trillion even with more revenue from crude oil. Under Jonathan, over 200 Chibok schoolgirls were yanked off from their bunk-beds one night. Many of them are still missing till date. Some may have been killed. Nigeria as a country is an unloved orphan. Unfortunately, the woes recorded under Jonathan are still with us today. I will stop dishing out the woes under Goodluck. I am sure there are experts waiting to do a better job when he finally declares his intention to become president again.
Jonathan has been made to believe that he still has some mileages on his presidential SkyMiles. Maybe he does, we will find out. But somebody should remind him that he is constitutionally barred from running again as a president. Section 137 (3) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (4th alteration, No.16), Act of 2017 signed into law by the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) on June 11, 2018, states, “A person who was sworn-in to complete the term for which another person was elected as president, shall not be elected to such office for more than a single term.” That is the position of the law today except it changes.
Somebody somewhere has assured Goodluck that he will become president in 2023; as somebody somewhere has assured others running that they too will wear the crown. By the time the process is done; they will know that somebody somewhere has lied to somebody. Politics? What a game of many wicked liars! Self-serving voices urging Jonathan to run need to read between the lines before running this gentleman crazy in a wild goose chase of a mirage mission. Jonathan has had his time. And he had a good time as president. Why can’t they urge him this time to rally support for a candidate from the South-South or the South-East if he doesn’t feel comfortable with any from the South-West? In 2015, he conceded a close election before the official announcement. That was a big patriotic move that Nigerians will never forget. Today Jonathan is perceived in good light home and abroad than he ever was. This is a status money cannot buy. I wish Goodluck; good luck!
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