Goodluck Jonathan: The Ruler Whose Name Will Not Be Forgotten

By Kola Johnson

“The King whose rule has ushered peace and prosperity his name will not be forgotten, while the king whose rule has heralded bad times; his name will also not be forgotten” – is an age-old word-on-the-marble of the Yoruba.

In Rome for instance, Octavia, a grand nephew of Caesar who became the emperor in the year 27 BC and ruled till 14 AD, will forever be remembered for his rule which enabled the Roman empire to enjoy peace for a salutarily long span of about 200 years, often described today, by historical chroniclers as Pax Romana (Paks-roh-Mann-ux) or Roman Peace.

Just as Octavia remains indelible in memory, Emperior Nero, who ruled between 54 to 68 AD will forever be remembered, not only for his unbridled tyranny, but more popularly as the emperor who fiddled while Rome burnt.

Jonathan’s epoch will go down in history, for its Neronian notoriety as the era of the most horrendous bloodshed in Nigerian history; beating the conflagration and blood bath of the June 12 and wild, wild West to distant back waters only surpassed by the conflagration of the civil war.

As the socio-political hemisphere of the Nigerian Rome burnt with contagious fury, Jonathan has continued with greater intensity than ever before, to relish in the fiddle binge.  Under him, corruption attained the apotheosis of popular universal obloquy and opprobrium.

Who indeed is Jonathan? Dr. Ebele Goodluck Jonathan, the sitting Nigerian President, rode in on the beguiling wing of humble cun, to become the Deputy-Governor of Riverine Bayelsa.

From Deputy-Governorship, the cursed fumbled malfeasance of Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, the then substantive governor and his boss, became unto him a blessing, and the enabling ladder to executive gubernatorial authority.

Obasanjo’s beneficience availed in not-so distant time – tickled by the same affectation of humble cun, coupled – whether rightly conjectured or not – with a deliberate desire – also on Obasanjo’s part – which perhaps finds a similarity of purpose in an equally divine scheme of compensation arising from the celebrated marginalization of the Riverine natives of the Niger Delta – endorsed as popularly known, his positioning as number two man to Alhaji Umaru Yar’Adua, the then substantive president. As the spectre of death stared at Yar’Adua, world focus immediately shifted in full wattage on the Bayelsa–born Vice-President.

The portentous augury that history might soon repeat itself in another bout of succession – this time around, the succession of all successions – the ultimate presidential succession, was such that excited global humanity.

They basked in the illuminating glow and ambience of that possibility; they romanticized it, even as the inner circuit minions and families of Yar’Adua dramatised his bill of health with disingenuous cocktail of deceptive misinformation, disinformation and malinformation – holding the world in bated-breadth suspense.

With no place again to hide, the palace custodian eventually announced him dead. Jonathan mounted the throne in a development triggering an orgy of celebration, encapsulating the global space.

With Goodluck Jonathan as president, expectation was predictably high. But what in return, would we have? In vain, Jonathan wobbled and toddled, with practically nothing to show, except breasting the tenurial finishing tape of Yar’Adua’s presidency.

Yet, as if entrapped in collective mass hypnotism, the world was befogged to the calamity of Jonathan’s parlous incompetence and his staple mediocre  showing.

Thus at the time the north whipped all hue and cry, yells and threats that Jonathan inched into the extra territorial geo-zonal allotment of the tenurial northern slots, with regards to presidency – the gale of clamour, despite its massive expression, would cut no dice amidst popular massive apathy for the pro-northern proclamation, subsumed as it were amidst the mounting current of pro-Jonathan sentiment.

To be sure, some happenstance coincidences at times do occur at the point that converge to stir an enigma and of course weave a mythical imagery. From Deputy-Governor to substantive governor; substantive governor to Vice-President, Vice-President to acting president and from acting president to president – not surprisingly, the unfolding symmetry in curiously bizarre coincidence, seemed quite accordingly, to have conferred on the Bayelsa–born political upstart, an auric myth and enigma of a sort. Yes. Divine enigma if you may say – as popular universal impression began to converge on the Jonathan persona, the specially beloved and anointed of God – and the messiah, with the repository Divine mandate and panacea to herald the ship of state to the Canaan of ultimate destiny.

It was as if the article of covenant at that point in time, was see no bad about Jonathan, and hear no bad about him.

Jonathan on a mischievously hypocritical initiative, also sought to reinforce the popular messianic imagery with the usual hypocritical piety of “the love of God”, and the submissive make belief of being a tool in the hand of God, whose unseen hand navigates the boat of his elevated destiny.

Indeed by the time the cunning Jonathan would come up with his popular tale of the shoeless schoolboy – the world was entirely swept off feet. Everybody wanted to be like  Jonathan; to have a child that would be like Jonathan. Jonathan became the fad; the vogue; the theme; the craze the idol of collective national focus and attention and about the only thing happening across the national space.

As earlier expressed, which perhaps bears emphatic restatement – it was as if the article of covenant at that time was see no bad about Jonathan, and hear no bad about him.

It was for this reason that they will neither see nor hear any bad; of Jonathan’s uninspiring lack–lustre commission as executive governor of Bayelsa State and his equally abysmal incompetence as custodian of the hand-over baton for completion of Yar’Adua’s tenure.

Thus with solidarous massive support, he clinched the leviathan presidency. A visibly appreciative Jonathan sought ways to reward the teeming mass of supporters and well-wishers, personifying the successful enterprise of his unanimous presidential endorsement. He found one and pronto, this famed exponent of the popular tale of the shoeless school boy – I mean Jonathan the meek; the messiah, the saviour, and God-send; the quintessential saint, dove and angel – slammed the draconian yoke of fuel hike on their miserable lean neck – dragging them to the slaughter slab of full-cup misery – shaking and running over and over – leaving the general run of stupefied observers reeling on the canvass in January 2012.

When initially he announced the fuel hike, it sounded like a fairy tale from the blues, only fit for the marines: “No, it cannot happen; I trust him; he only tried to fly a kite; was it not Jonathan the shoeless school boy. Jonathan who cannot hurt a fly; who had seen suffering and therefore knows where it pinches; Jonathan, the meek, the messiah, God-send, Saviour, Saint and Angel?                 

Little if at all, did they know that they dwelt in the illusive fools paradise, AS Jonathan threw all reasons, fairness, level-headedness and empathy to the wind.

Thus right from the very day one; Jonathan fumbled, fumbled and fumbled, missing every step; missing everything; never getting a single thing right. It was not even motion without movement, because no visible sign of motion in the first instance; let alone movement. His administration is not even one of stagnancy per se; it was worse than stagnancy. It was a tragic dynamics from stagnancy to regression; an ignoble showing of crass incompetence, demented brainlessness, rudderlessly befogged vision and at best gimcrack welfarist pretension, rhetorical affectation of trumpery devotion to government business, which at best are sheer meretricious trumpery.

No wonder therefore, that under Jonathan, every indices pointing to beneficial growth and progress has atrophied beyond zero to graver deficit minus. Corruption ballooned at an all time high, waxing into monstrously  behemoth immensity as institutionalised impunity and licentiousness, unconscionable brigandage and vandalisation of the commonwealth held a supreme sway.

Thus, as the Abdulrasheed Mainas looted a multi-billion naira pension of senior citizens of the nation, meant to cushion them against the vagaries of old age – the best Jonathan could do, was to shift gaze the other way, until the main culprit, Maina was eased out of the country to cool down somewhere in the Middle East.

At the height of the frequently repeated air crashes which attained a high water mark, under Stella Oduah the ex-minister of aviation and which in the first place, should have earned her an outright sack, the same minister of Aviation had the effrontery to purchase an official car for a whopping sum of over 250 million naira – but Jonathan would see no wrong in that, even in spite of popular opprobrium elicited as a consequence. Also competing for privileged space in this saga of presidential infamy, was the twenty billion US dollars worth of oil money the NNPC never remitted into the federal account – as revealed by no less an authoritative source, than Sanusi, the ex-CBN governor, now the emir of Kano.

Under the same infantile incompetence of the Bayelsa–born president, 400,000 barrels of oil are stolen every day; just as hunger, poverty, misery squalor and unemployment attained an unprecedented fame and ubiquity.

Of course, the mammoth turn out of applicants for immigration job filling the equally mammoth Abuja stadium to the brim and the 19 lost in a stampede on that occasion, serves in ample proportion as a supportive evidence.

I remember not so long ago, when the tragedy of the kidnapped Chibok girls greeted the scene, the seismic devastation on the general Nigerian psyche was total and unmistakable. This was so, particularly with the parents of the unfortunate schoolgirls, whose world was literally grounded to a halt.

There is a word in the English grammatical lexicon known as empathy. It connotes the power of entering into another’s personality, and imaginatively experiencing his experiences. As this seven-lettered word was coming into being, it would appear as if the creative spirit behind it never had Jonathan in mind, even in the remotest fringes of its imagination.

How did I know? Not only I, not even Nigerians only, but the entire world were stunned, when the next moment, immediately after the Chibok tragedy – when the pathos of mourning and lamentation towered at an all-time high – Jonathan was sighted in Kano, sweating it out soul, body and spirit, in a hilarious gig that puts to shame, the famous pyrothecnical break dance maffick of Michael Jackson of blessed memory.   

It’s therefore surprising, given the unfolding scenario, that Jonathan could be so unabashed as to throw all scruples of shame to the wind, to ever nurture the idea of a shot at another tenure, let alone acting it out. Second term for what!