Jonathan opens new wound at home
By Sam Omatseye

President Goodluck Jonathan had an opportunity a few years back when he picked up the nomination as vice presidential candidate for the People’s Democratic Party: to broaden his national outlook. He was no longer the Bayelsa politician. He was to turn himself into the nation’s number two citizen. He was to become a statesman. That meant he had to look at the world from a wider point of view, to build a big and generous tent, to enrich his vision and point of view.

He has been in the saddle for a while. First he was vice president, where he walked timorously under the shadow of the late President Umaru Yar’Adua. He became acting president when across the country – including this column – where furious battles were waged against the so-called kitchen cabinet. They were the cabal who exercised proprietary arrogance to the nation, those who thought Jonathan’s pedigree and humble roots did not qualify him to step in the shoes of his ailing and practically lifeless boss. I wrote several columns in his defence then.

That was an opportunity for him to understand that he was being vaulted onto the national stage. He was no longer the insular leader, even though by temperament and by self-assertion he had never really acquitted himself as a leader. All politics, they say, is local. In spite of his national position, he cannot be asked to ignore his home state. That is where he comes from. But once he became the nation’s leader, even his attitude to his home state should be more avuncular, like an uncle removed from the squabbles, acrimonies, dogfights and petty rages of the cousins and siblings. He should not be seen to play partial when all he needs to do is to live above the fray.

That is what is going on now in Bayelsa State, where reports show that he is fishing in a new pond of trouble at home. Newspaper reports say that he is throwing his weight behind some of his political cronies from the state who operate in Abuja, who are bristling with ambition to be governor in the next round of elections. First, there is nothing wrong with anyone who wants to play politics, and wants to edge out an incumbent. It is a constitutional right.

But for the president to ignore the mammoth problems of the centre to pursue the insular politics of Bayelsa State makes one wonder whether the president understands the enormity of the task at hand. The scourge of Boko Haram reared itself in an ugly fashion on October 1 independence celebration when he turned himself into the president of Aso Rock rather of the nation. He turned coy from Boko Haram. His supporters said it was better that way. Better a cowardly president than one where people died in the city. Maybe that is why he said he was no lion. He lacks the bravery and gumption to lead Nigeria. He bowed and trembled before Boko Haram. He told the nation exactly that by playing coy in the State House. He admitted that terror was stronger than he. He admitted that his intelligence forces were not reliable. He allowed Boko Haram to defeat our way of life.

When terrorists attacked the United States on September 11, 2001, I was in San Diego at a conference, and I had to drive for two days with my journalist colleagues to Denver because the airlines were shut down. I had wondered whether life in America was going to be shut down in the country. The conference was cancelled, businesses shut down, just like the airlines. George W. Bush, the then president, earned the respect of political leaders and most Americans when he said the purpose of the terrorist was to destroy the American way of life. So he urged everyone to go about their normal businesses. Not long after that he was invited to New York to throw the first pitch of the World Series, the final of an American sport called baseball. The game was played with vintage American verve, the basketball season and hockey season had begun, and Americans went about their fruitful lives while the intelligence forces focused on protecting their citizens.

In Nigeria, October 1 became our symbol of surrender. Yet that is not the only problem. We see arbitrariness everywhere. The man who could not show leadership against Boko Haram is bustling with aggressive rage against higher matters. He appended his signature to the ouster of Justice Salami whereas the matter was still in court. He has not come out to explain himself in any clear and logical matter why he defied the law and process so blatantly.

The issue of oil subsidy still rankles. I believe the so-called subsidy is unfair and props the lifestyles of a clique of indolent leeches in the system. But to remove the subsidy, he must focus on protection for the poor and vulnerable among us, and build refineries. Doing all of these requires vision.

Nigeria churns out youths daily who have no jobs, our hospitals are in a mess, the roads and bridges are in decay and much of the country cries of plethora of roads and bridges. We are at our most illiterate in our history.

So, this is the time for President Jonathan to play statesman, to look at the country from a broad view, and not be enmeshed in the politics of Bayelsa State. He is the president of all of Nigeria, of Nasarawa, of Lagos, of Kano, of Imo, of Sokoto, of Delta. He is the president of Nigeria. He is not the president of Bayelsa State.

The information is already rife that he is trying to back candidates. His petroleum minister, Diezani Allison-Madueke’s name came up but she has denied it. It had better be so. She is one of the failures of this political dispensation, and not a good representative for women in politics. We cannot forget when she wept at the Ore-Benin road, and created the impression that she was going to work. Rather the tears still belong to the ordinary Nigerians who ply that road daily. After failing as the works minister, she failed as solid mineral minister and failed in her first try as oil minister. At her second coming as Nigeria’s liquid lady as oil minister, she is failing again. I wonder what sort of political romance is brewing that makes her such a Teflon power player in Abuja. How can such a person take such daunting credential of failure to run for governor? Other candidates have come up for mention, like House of Representatives member Seriaki Dickson and Chief Johnny Turner, both close associates of the President.

Jonathan should focus on the matter on ground in the centre. We need him as president of Nigeria. It is true that home is where the heart is. The German poet and playwright Goethe wrote: “Be he king and peasant, he is happiest who finds peace at home.” He should not open new front and expand the frontiers of battles. His heart should now be Nigeria. That is why he ran to be president. As president, he should decide where the primary home is now, Bayelsa or the bigger Nigeria.

When he is done in the centre, he can now decide to go parochial if he chooses to shrink a national image.


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