In the run up to the presidential
election on March 28, 2015,
figures obtained from the
protocol
department of the Presidential
Villa indicated that more than two thousand visitors visited
President Goodluck Jonathan on
the average in a week. This
figures do not include visitors
that met with the president in
his official residence in the Villa. Neither do they include those
he met outside the official
residence but within the
precincts of the Presidential Villa.
It was
perhaps the number and quality of people who thronged to the
Villa on daily basis and the
assurances they gave the
president during the run up to
the presidential election that
informed the confidence he displayed as
the election drew nearer that
he was going to win.
But on the Sunday after the
presidential election when
collation of votes had begun and it
appeared that the Peoples
Democratic Party (PDP) was not
doing well and was, in fact,
trailing
behind the All Progressives Congress at the polls, less than
30 persons, apart from some
security personnel and aides of
the president, attended the Aso
Rock Chapel which had
hitherto been a beehive of activities every Sunday.
The above scenarios represent
the reality at the Presidential
Villa since Jonathan lost the
presidential election to the
candidate of the APC, General Muhammadu Buhari. Although
official engagements of the
president are expected to slow
down as he prepares to hand
over
to the incoming government, what many observers find very
curious is the sudden
abandonment of Jonathan by
people who, some months ago,
were frequent visitors to the
Villa and some even reportedly vowed to swim and sink with the
president.
But there are precedents to this
kind of swift switch of loyalty.
Shortly after General Sani
Abacha died in mysterious circumstance in 1998, many of
those who dressed him in the
robe
of infallibility and urged him on to
transmute from a military ruler
to a civilian leader did a 360 degree turn around and
condemned him in the harshest
of terms.
So, though Jonathan was said to
have been stung by the sudden
abandonment of people he had considered his friends, he
was said to have recovered from
the betrayal and accepted his
fate with stoicism. One of the
earliest callers to the Villa
shortly after the president made the
telephone call to Buhari to
concede defeat told Sunday
Vanguard that, at that moment,
the
president appeared downcast. “When former Head of State,
General Abdulsalami Abubakar,
led a delegation from the
National
Peace Committee on the
presidential election to visit President Jonathan shortly after
he called
General Buhari, the president
the committee members met was
not someone who was pained
by his defeat but he was more devastated by the betrayal of
the people whom he called
friends. He kept making
reference to how treacherous
human beings are and vowed
that, as a zoologist, may be he would go
and study animals more and see
whether they have the same
level of treachery as human
beings. He was so passionate
about it so much so that a member
of the Peace Committee was led
to tears”, a member of the
committee in attendance at the
meeting told Sunday Vanguard.
Having overcome the shock of the betrayal, Jonathan set the
ball rolling with the task of
winding down his administration.
At the first Federal Executive
Council meeting after his defeat
at the polls, the tension that enveloped the Council Chambers
could be sliced with a knife. The
president, who was used to
wearing a smile on his face
almost perpetually, carried a
very serious mien comparable only to
the day he assumed office as
Acting President following the
long absence of the late
President Umaru Yar’Adua. The
conviviality that pervaded the Council
Chambers was absent. It was one
Council meeting that no member
was seen with smile on his
face and no banter was
exchanged. Sack out of the blues
But Jonathan’s shrinking
presidency is not without some
actions. Against all expectations,
the
president sacked Inspector General of Police Suleiman Abbas
without any slight hint that such
action was coming. Though no
reason was given for the
removal of the Inspector General
of Police, it may not be
unconnected with the IGP’s
unabashed switch of loyalty to
the president-
elect when he led other
policemen to provide security at the occasion by the Independent
National Electoral Commission to
provide certificate of return to
the APC candidate. The
explanation by the president
during last Tuesday’s Council of State meeting when he told
members that the former IGP
had tolerated indiscipline within
the force may have been a
subtle way of confirming this
allegation that had been in the public domain.
Though the government of
Jonathan is gradually winding
down, the gale of sack of high
government officials has
continued. On March 28, the president announced the sack of
the
Managing Director of the
Nigerian Ports Authority, Alhaji
Habib Abdullahi, while replacing
him with Alhaji Sanusi Lamido Ado
Bayero, the first son of the late
Emir of Kano, Alhaji Ado
Bayero. Perhaps as a way of
rewarding one of his ministers,
the president also appointed Mrs Asabe Asmau Ahmed as the
Executive Secretary of the
Petroleum Equalisation Funds.
Mrs.
Ahmed, who is currently the
Minister of State for Agriculture and Rural Development, took
over
from Sharon Adefunke Kasali,
who has been Executive
Secretary of PEF since 2007 and
whose tenure was embroiled in
controversy as some staff of
the agency alleged that she had
over
stayed her term.
The new PEF Executive Secretary hails from Niger State and holds
Bachelor’s and Master’s
Degrees from Ahmadu Bello
University, Zaria and the Nigerian
Defence Academy, Kaduna,
respectively and is seen as one of the most loyal ministers in the
Jonathan administration that
worked so hard for the success
of the president’s candidacy at
the polls in her state.
Criticism He has also appointed the
former governor of Anambra
State, Peter Obi, as the
Chairman of
Securities and Exchange
Commission. Expectedly, some of these decisions and
appointments
have elicited condemnation and
criticism; it appears to be the
president’s way of saying that
“though I may be leaving in the next few weeks, I intend to use
my presidential powers to the
very last minute of my stay in
office”.
If there was any doubt about
the president’s desire to carry out his duties to the last minute,
such doubt was put to rest,
penultimate Wednesday, when
the Minister of National Planning
and Chairman of the Technical
Committee of Jonathan’s Transition Committee, warned
the
APC against setting up a parallel
government.
Such tough talk appears to be
the spasm of an animal in the throes of death. To underscore
the fact that the desertion of
the president by people he had
not too far in the past referred
to
as friends is without any exception, one of the closest
persons to Jonathan while his
presidency lasted, a
multibillionaire businessman did
not only switch loyalty as soon
as the president lost the election, but
also sensationally pledged loyalty
to the incoming president,
declaring that his election was
an act of God. The treachery
inherent in this declaration is that
the same businessman, who was
almost on every trip with
Jonathan, had on several
occasions declared that the
president was chosen by God and any body opposed to him
was
opposed to God!.
Although the presidency had
continued to put on an air of
lack of concern at the sudden turn
of events, especially the
desertion of the president by
people he had called friends,
Jonathan
appears to have accepted his fate with equanimity and seems
to be better prepared to live
with this hard fact than some of
his lieutenants. During a
thanksgiving/farewell service
organized for the president, last Sunday, to mark the end of his
tour of duty, he publicly
revealed what has so far
remained a hushed tone
discussion among the staff of
the Villa. While speaking at the service,
Jonathan told the congregation:
“Some people come to me and
say ‘look at this person or that
person, is he not your friend
who benefited from you? Has this
person not benefited from your
government? Imagine what he is
saying’? I often tell them that
worse statements will come.
If you take certain decisions, you should know that those close to
you will even abandon you
at some point. And I tell them
that more of my so-called
friends will disappear. When FW
De Klerk took the decision to abolish
minority rule in RSA, even his
wife divorced him. I hope my
wife will not divorce me. But that
is the only decision that has
made RSA to still remain a global player by this time. If we
still had that minority rule there,
by this time, nobody will be
talking about RSA.
“If you take certain decisions, it
might be good for the generality of the people but it might
affect people differently. So for
ministers and aides who served
with me, I sympathize with
them, they will be persecuted.
And they must be ready for that persecution”.
Reality
Indeed the government of
Jonathan may be winding down.
While the number of visitors to
the president has reduced to a point
of almost non-existent two
weeks to the hand over,
Jonathan
seems to have accepted the
reality of his position and the ultimate fate that awaits him as
he
retires to Otuoke, his village in
Bayelsa State. But one aspect he
is willing to use till the final
hours is that of his presidential powers. It is one aspect that he
is ready to exercise fully to the
end of his administration. The
confirmation of the appointment
of the Acting Inspector General
of Police, Solomon Arase, is a demonstration of the fact that
though the Jonathan presidency
may be shrinking, his presidential
powers remain intact and he will
exercise same to the very
end. But as the Jonathan shrinking presidency gives way
to Buhari’s burgeoning one, the
president-elect may do well to
learn a lesson from the
Jonathan’s presidency: Not all
those who surround him and sing his
praises to high heavens mean
well for him. Perhaps if
Jonathan had known this, the
shock of the betrayal of some of
his friends would have been less.

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