Desire for power is a kind of greed indulged by the unfulfilled
Many have expected former President Goodluck Jonathan to be forthright and unqualified in reacting to his name being dropped in some quarters as a hopeful for the Aso Rock in 2023. Instead, he has given open-ended answers that leave room for speculation.
By Dr Jonathan’s answers in the public domain, the Otuoke-born politician might be dreaming of returning to high office. After all, we are encouraged to dream as if we are going to live forever. “‘No matter where you come from, your dreams are valid,” says a Kenyan actress, Lupita Nyong’o.
In Nigeria, even the bizarre is possible in politics because political players tend to reason selfishly when it comes to domiciling political power. Dr Jonathan’s reputation soared since 2015 when he enabled a peaceful transfer of power to the opposition, having lost the presidency to General Muhammadu Buhari of All Progressives Congress. His famous quote–“my political ambition is not worth the blood of any Nigerian”–became a mantra and gave him a pride of place on a continent where sit-tightism ruled the waves and was once a credo.
For doing this, many in Nigeria and indeed the global community doffed their hats for him. He became an instant celebrity, a goodwill ambassador of sorts. If the United Nations is not sending him on a democratic errand, African Union or the Economic Community of West African States, is knocking on his door for one assignment or the other to the envy of other Nigerian leaders.
Recall during the election result counting in 2015, how Jonathan’s ally Godsday Orubebe ran riot, disrupting the result collation expecting to get support from the C-in-C. While Orubebe became the villain, Jonathan fished on the incident and became the hero. Jonathan’s integrity peaked so much that efforts made by APC and the regime in power to diminish it through corruption allegations against him failed woefully.
Lately, Dr Jonathan has been at the centre of the discourse about a replacement for the man in Aso Rock. Adept readers of our political barometer had thought that nothing would make Jonathan to want to dent his envious image of an international statesman and ambassador plenipotentiary.
Not a few initially saw the Jonathan name dropping as a move to destroy and bring him down his current pedestal. If Jonathan could resist the temptations of power when he had the wherewithal, why now? Jonathan should have bluntly dismissed the poisoned carrot and in his new statesmanlike position talk elegantly on the need to have the presidency go where it has not been before for the sake of peace and stability.
Rather than do that Dr Jonathan, when confronted, shocked Nigerians when he said that it’s too early to talk. His refusal to dismiss it outrightly has aided those pushing the ill-conceived agenda. Just last week at a public forum in Abuja, Jonathan, the newfound friend of the Northern elite, was non-committal about 2023 and he even went further to speak the language of the region’s elites on the restructuring of the polity.
Discerning minds who watched Jonathan speak last week agree that he was trying to appease his newfound friends when he said that restructuring is not the only problem of the country. To Jonathan, Nigeria will not work unless and until issues dividing us are resolved.
“We cannot restructure without solving issues that polarize us; nepotism, ethnic, and religious differences and lack of patriotism,” he said.
Pundits are not in agreement with Dr Jonathan who had set up a National Conference in 2014 principally to tinker with the current political structure. Some water may have passed under the bridge for the heavy twist in the tongue which ostensibly is intended to appeal to certain northern sentiments. Something must have happened for him to be dinning with the same people who ganged up and threw him away, could it be that he is the man who will do their bidding now or they are setting him up for the usual use and dump?
Undoubtedly, Jonathan’s current position is being influenced by his strange dream of returning to power in 2023 and needed to find himself on the same side with his new partners.
Nothing can be more heartbreaking than knowing that your country is in a hole and still digging. It is so disgusting and disheartening that President Jonathan’s administration was so underwhelming in performance to the extent that Nigerians wanted anything but him. See who is now the political bride. Recall that it was in the process of trying to avoid him at all costs that the country ran into a Buhari whose military-era antecedents were nothing to take home.
Voters preferred him anyway to Jonathan. Ahead of 2023, the year for an inevitable change of guard in the Presidency, the same clique who plotted his ouster are touting the same Jonathan to return. Not that they have seen any fresh evidence of the man’s competences but that he is perhaps the only Southerner who can enter the office and not stay beyond four years on the strength of his constitutional limitations having served out his first term.
We should be worried that for a deteriorating nation like Nigeria, the concern is not to be searching for a game-changer who will think outside the box to pull this country out of the woods but instead you have people preoccupied with a blind interest of retaining power at all costs.
What does it show? That those manipulating our political process are less concerned about competence and how to confront the nation’s myriad of problems by putting round pegs in round holes, but about retaining power by installing weaklings whose dance must agree with their drumming?
The state of this nation today does not need Jonathan or his ilk. This country should look out for a tested hand who can take this country to the next level.
When the nation clamoured for a change from Jonathan to Buhari, the thinking was that a strong leader with a military background was needed to steady the ship of state and move forward.
By his 1984 antecedent, Buhari was never an economic wizard but was highly rated as a no-nonsense man who had demonstrated it as the GOC of the army’s third division in the 1980s. His rating on corruption was also high then as that vice was seen as a huge cog in our desire to experience good governance.
Five years down the line going to six, the story is a sour one of what Nigeria has become under Buhari. Rather than sincerely go in search of numerous good heads who can halt our drift out of the dyke, some selfish persons are thinking Jonathan. To come and do what?
It’s wicked after watching the decomposition going on in our land, some people are thinking of a short road to returning power to the North in 2027 instead of how we can join the forward-looking progressive democracies like Rwanda to move up.
As we speak today, Buhari’s administration has successfully regenerated ethnic warlords instead of patriotic nationalists. Nnamdi Kanu is a hero of the Igbos, created by Buhari, Miyetti Allah has become the unique political powerhouse in the country almost with an omnipotent influence under Buhari. The new wave in the Southwest Sunday Igboho is also a Buhari creation emerging from the provocation of the Fulani herdsmen whose arrogance activated every other ethnic champion across the country.
Those routing for Jonathan knows as a fact that he could not turn this nation away from drifting. Jonathan’s international statesmanship can better be harnessed if he remained in the glory of relinquishing power to an opposition. If I were Jonathan, I would resist anything that would lure me out of the current enviable status as a champion of democracy. Greed is a heart issue and like lust, it is more gullible than innocence. God help Nigeria!
