25th February, 2015
By Kola Johnson
The tragedy of Jonathan is best summarised in a comment by David West, ex-petroleum Minister, who seeing the mammoth turn-out of crowd at Buhari’s opening rally in Rivers State, a border state to Jonathan’s Bayelsa State, and Mrs. Dame Jonathan’s native state, could not help but construe it as a signal mark of popular rejection of the ex-idol of the people.
You do not need a penetrating insight – because a mere casual observation would suffice – to behold, the rejected and unpopular president in the solipsism of his isolated mass desertion. This truth could be grasped in poignantly bold relief in the ever receding followers hubbing around the president and whoa even at that, identifies at best only in sheer physical presence, devoid of the empathic synergy of the mind and spirit.
For a sitting president with the commanding clout of incumbency, nothing could have been more tragic. Stupefied at the spectre of imminent defeat, Jonathan and his men, have braced up with the most stinking roforofo or call it bolekaja variant of the most savage extremism finding poignant expression in the armada of noxious advertorials notorious for their banal irrelevance, tragi-comic senselessness and utter sadism.
Fact is that these mass of obscene stuff are simply incapable of affecting even the weightless–less-than-ant, let alone of swaying any inch, the infinitesimally unweighable real ant – even as the same farrago of lunatic effusions evoke against them, in inconsequentially ineffectual terms, a visceral blacklash of popular public mockery and ridicule, in directly incidental proportion – of progressive intensity – to its frequency on the media dish.
Nigerians are just simply tired, bored and fatigued about Jonathan and are therefore desperate to spew him off like a bad vomit.
To be sure, from Balewa to Ironsi; Obasanjo, Shagari, Ibrahim Babangida, Shonekan, Sani Abacha, Abdulsalami Abubakar and Jonathan – Nigeria and its people had been blighted with the serio-comic tragedy of disastrously infantile leadership, unable to comprehend the most rudimentary feature in the relief of leadership.
The gravity latent in the foregoing becomes vividly manifest in view of the pellucidly vivid cognition of the elephantine frame of Nigeria as the greatest geo-political agglomeration of blacks in Africa.
However, while successive unit figures starring the dramaturgy of political leadership might admit of the attenuating prerogative of pardon – such for Jonathan would certainly be far from apposite – for reasons of his egregiousy serial fiasco; his multifaceted all round fumbling for which he emerges worse off amongst the pack – thereby attenuating the failings of his forbears in political leadership to pardonable reductionism of mere child’s play, despite his pedigree as the first Ph.D holder to preside over the Nigerian federation – a syndrome that puts to question, the utilitarian pragmatism of the educational system and an IQ genius so dour, as to be unamenable to the mental and intellectual drill and rigours entailed in the acquisition of such elevated intellectual certification – and the supposedly beneficial vista of exposure and experiential maturation naturally consequent to his elevated portals of presidential power.
Yet this is a man, who would stop at nothing, in sustained and viciously intensified vitriol against a Buhari, whose academic profile is bereft of the desideratum of basic secondary school certificate – forgetting or failing to grasp in their malignant naivety, the strong forte of exposure endemic in his antecedent as a colleague of Enoch Powell at the same War College in the U.S. Remember Powell? The universally celebrated figure, who commanded the U.S. army at the Gulf War in the 90s, and also ex-Vice-President of the U.S.
But assuming this as true – which of course is apparently far from so – what bravuric confidence could Jonathan muster as a vantage edge with mere cosmetic paraphernalia of a vacuously superficial doctorate?
Should Jonathan again have his way, this time around, then Nigerians can be sure they have none else to blame; no God to blame, except themselves. This point is deliberately spelt in cognizance of the pathological propensity endemic in our collective mental run, for frenzied invocation of God! God! and God!, in an illusive fantasy that expects the supreme deity above to negotiate a bizarre somersault from heaven to earth, in miraculous physical glare and personally wrestle power from Jonathan – discounting the age-old dictum that heaven helps those who help themselves.
If by any stroke of ill-luck Jonathan and his men happen to seize the buck by any manipulative chicanery whatsoever then Nigerians should better forget it. It would well be easier for the camel to pass through the eye of the needle than expect any miraculous rectification of its eternally truncated destiny. Has the Lord not spoken once; have we not twice heard his words; that obedience is better than sacrifice?
Jonathan who rode in on the popular good will of the people, only to clamp on them, the draconian yoke of fuel hike, among other indices of full yoke suffering – Jonathan who in connivance with some gangerist filipiotestic militant buccaneers amongst sundry official and unofficial depredators of all sorts, for a rapaciously unbridled larceny on the national till, knowing full well his intention to go for a second term and yet exuded no signal mark of commendable impression on the popular mind – what alchemy does his Leopard avail for a dramatic change of spot this last lap finale of presidential political governance, when nothing for him is left at stake, whether or not he rules well – given that he is voted in again.
This is a man whose career had transpired among several others, as a minister. Not just a minister, but Minister of Petroleum for that matter. He served as military Head of State and Chairman P.T.F. Yet, he was only barely comfortable, with practically nothing to show in terms of wealth. No contract, no oil-block; nothing practically to flaunt or chest-thump in terms of wealth, – except a hard earned wealth of integrity, probity, equity, and several sterling qualities converging towards a strength of character.
These for any reasonable perception, may well suffice in sheer value appraisal as an appealing point of persuasion, subsuming the impertinent trivial of tyranny being the accusative cliché which the jaded sitting but fast losing potentates in power are desperately adept in clutching on to – in a last ditch gambit for survivalist power perpetuation – which recede of course in dysfunctional irrelevance to the teratogenic scale of mammoth corruption in the minting mill of malfeasance of Jonathan presidency.
•Johnson is a writer and journalist.