CAVEAT: Not for lazy readers

President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan

with Eddy Odivwri


In twenty days time, President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan will step down as Nigeria’s 14th leader. He would have served for six years as the nation’s president.
Many, including this writer had commended him greatly for his uncommon sportsmanship spirit in quickly conceding defeat, which is why there is a pervading atmosphere of peace in the country after the presidential election of March 28.
But those who believe in the power of the tongue say that the outcome of the election is as Jonathan himself had wished when he swore on several occasions, that he wont stay in office beyond 2015.
In February 2011, in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, President Jonathan came very clear on his desire not to seek re-election.
“If I’m voted into power within the next four years, the issue of power will become a thing of the past. Four years is enough for anyone in power to make significant improvement and if I can’t improve on power within this period, it then means I cannot do anything even if I am there for the next four years,” he said.
His next statement was even more definite: “Nigerians in the Diaspora will not vote, but I will work towards it by 2015, even though I will not be running for election.”
But in the build up to the 2015 elections, and after the boastful threats by Jonathan’s kinsmen led by Edwin Clark and Mojaheed Asari Dokubo, daring him to refuse to recontest, since it is his constitutional right, Mr President began to recant, reframe and modify his promise. At the end of the day, he contested, but lost.
But why did an incumbent lose an election with all the paraphernalia of government at his disposal? Was it just because he had fore-ordained it inadvertently or because Nigerians were not impressed with his six years report sheet? Perhaps, the latter is it.
A lot must have happened in six years. It is thus difficult to chronicle everything in one short article as this. But in all, I think Jonathan lost more because of his queer politics than his overall poor performance.

I will cite some examples
It was a government that was full of impunity. It was almost like a government of anything goes. The body language of a leader, in this case, the president, determines a lot of things. President Jonathan didn’t appear strong on anything. His aides and other appointees took huge advantage of this to ruin-run the government. The perfidy was legendary.
The allegation of spending N10 billion to hire private jets, for instance, by his Petroleum minister, Diezani Allison-Maduekwe was deftly defended by the president. The minister not only refused to appear before the National Assembly for investigation, she went ahead to procure a court order to tie the hands of the lawmakers. Before the court order came, Mr President had complained, during one of the Presidential media chats, that the lawmakers were harassing Diezani with incessant invitations.
For crying out loud, what are legislators meant to do if not to oversee what the executive are doing or have done? Do lawmakers not have the right to invite whoever for explanation and clarifications? Was the Finance minister, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, not summoned several times? Why did Mr President help to elevate Diezani above the law?
If the Queen of England still flies British Airways, why would a minister feel too big to fly public planes, so much that she could incur the whopping cost of N10 billion! And a president feels cool with that?
Yes, Mr President eventually fired Stella Oduah, former Aviation minister, but it was not so much because of the misdemeanour of purchasing bullet proof cars worth N255m, it was more because of the internal wrangling (perhaps contest) between Oduah and Diezani within the cabinet. Oduah only became a victim of high-octave presidential manipulation.
Jonathan’s inability to tame the gross excesses of his wife robbed off heavily on his capacity as an effective administrator. The First Lady literally operated like a lose canon all through, even with her obvious limited grip of social and complex issues of governance. No First Lady, in the history of Nigeria, had affronted public order and decency like she did. In the same vein, no First Lady had ever received the amount of comic mockeries she harvested. She, Governor Ayo Fayose of Ekiti, Femi Fani-Kayode, Doyin Okupe, orchestrated the bitterest hate-speech campaign that helped to pull Jonathan down. And nobody, not even Mr President could call them to order. All such presidential negligence counted strongly against Jonathan among the more discerning voting public.
I cannot but mention the Governor Rotimi Amaechi phenomenon. He was one governor that Mr President took like enemy number one and so exerted so much of his presidential powers to deal shrewdly with him. Yes, Amaechi, with his extrovertial tendencies may have also overdone a few things, but the presidential sledge hammer released against him was phenomenally egregious. I will cite just three instances: the grounding of the state government’s aircraft. Here was a plane that had been used for nearly seven months in the country before the disagreement between Amaechi and Jonathan started. And suddenly the Aviation ministry claimed that the documentation of the aircraft was faulty and so can no longer be allowed to fly in the country. This was just as Gov Godswill Akpabio’s own plane (owned by Akwa Ibom State) had everything the Amaechi plane had. But while Akapbio’s could fly unhindered, Amaechi’s couldn’t, all because Akpabio was in Jonathan’s good books and Amaechi is not. The fact that the plane was eventually released without any additional documentation clearly shows that the institutions of government were being used to prosecute narrow political wars by Mr President.
Then the vexatious issue of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF). Jonathan felt that Amaechi’s headship of that body will mean more troubles for him. So he weighed in, uninvited, and did everything to make Amaechi lose the small election among 36 governors. At last, Amaechi polled 19 votes against Jonah Jang’s 16, but in a curious and warped Arithmetical misrepresentation, the Jonathan-led presidency said Jang won the election and was addressed as the NGF Chairman. Jonathan went ahead to create PDP Governors’ Forum headed by his lackey, Akpabio; all in a bid to shatter the NGF force. He succeeded, as that queer politics sounded the knell of the NGF till date. But it was like cutting the nose to spite the face. Jonathan’s wrong and vindictive handling of that issue eventually led to the decampment of five state governors from the PDP to the then rival APC. It was a huge loss of political territory. That marked the beginning of the degradation of the PDP. But they behaved like they didn’t care.
It couldn’t have been without consequence. Except in Rivers where raw and brute force was used to torpedo the outcome of the elections (which is being challenged in the election tribunal), the PDP lost in all other four states where their governors decamped from the PDP.
Those who begrudge Amaechi for supporting Buhari against his kinsman (Jonathan) conveniently forget that the same Jonathan had denied Amaechi his rightfully won crown in the NGF.
The last example is that of the then Rivers State Commissioner of Police, Mbu Joseph Mbu who literally used the instruments of state to terrorise an elected governor, all with the publicly undeclared support of the president and strangely, his wife. Having tried many things to throw Amaechi out of power without success, Mbu became the dragon and willing tool unleashed on Amaechi such that even the National Assembly had to intervene to no avail. The Mbu was to boast later in an interview, after he was eventually posted out and promoted, that he was “the lion who tamed the Leopard of Port Harcourt”. Such a cheeky unprofessional declaration!
All of the above have been issues of atypical politics. But let me cite just an instance on infrastructure deficiency: the East-West road. Five years ago, I had written that, “the Jews came and abandoned the East-West Road, the Gentiles came and abandoned the East-West road“. And asked, “now that the native has come, will he also abandon the East-West road”? Alas, he did! Jonathan is leaving office without doing the littlest expectation of perfectly completing the East West road, the same road he will henceforth drive through to connect his Otuoke homestead.
Is it not said that charity begins from home? But where is the real time charity Jonathan brought to the people of his Niger Delta at the end of the day? It can hardly be the Amnesty programme for the erstwhile agitators of the region? The late President Umaru Yar’adua initiated it.
The president established nine universities in 2011. Six of them are in the north, only three in the south. And the only slot in the Niger Delta ended up in his land-locked community of Otuoke. So much for charity beginning from home!
A lot had been said about Jonathan’s hesitant response to the security issue in northern Nigeria which culminated in the abduction of the over 200 Chibok girls. It took over 14 days after the abduction before government made the first statement about it. Even after that, nothing concrete seemed to have been done. It took the coming of 17-year old Malala Yousafzai, four months after the kidnap, for President Jonathan to arrange a meeting with the beleaguered parents of the Chibok girls.
It is however remarkable that his government’s latter day efforts have achieved tremendous success, as the Boko Haram terror gang have been manifestly routed. But it was a martial swag that came too late to save his seat.
All said, the Jonathan administration, made remarkable achievements in the area of Agriculture and Commerce and Industry. The two ministries headed by Dr Akinwunmi Adesina and Segun Aganga respectively, did marvelous works to uplift Nigeria. Some of the policies they enunciated are still in the maturing process. Even then, the two ministries stand out as the poster ministries that tried to