President Jonathan’s last Thursday close-door meeting with David Mark, the ADC chairman in Abuja, was reported by The Nation and a couple of other newspapers. Jonathan wanted to be reassured he could secure the ADC presidential ticket before joining the party. Jonathan’s current gamble must have been encouraged by his several years of political engagement during which he has always had his palm kernel cracked for him by a benevolent spirit (apology to Chinua Achebe).
Jonathan is a man who has always had all his battles fought on his behalf. He has never been called to take responsibility even for his follies. He was minding his business as a fishery lecturer in the university when he was summoned to come and become deputy governor. Not long after, with the impeachment of his principal, he became governor by providence. Just as he was settling down in his new position, he was named vice president by Olusegun Obasanjo.
And when the Yar’Adua front led by Chief James Ibori raised the question of propriety about his becoming acting president following Yar’Adua’s illness , Pastor Tunde Bakare and a host of other civil society groups took over the street of Lagos and Abuja, forcing the National Assembly to come up with the ‘doctrine of necessity’. He became president in spite of resistance from the north because Obasanjo was on ground to carry him on his back across the north probably to assure them Jonathan would do only one term. Of course, the south rallied round him because they saw in Jonathan an underdog being bullied by an overbearing north with their usual sense of entitlement. If Jonathan made any contribution at all, it was his almost inaudible s shriek cries ‘I am a shoeless school boy from Otuoke village; I know your pains because I have been there’.
In a nation where the national question has been compounded by the dominant ethnic groups, their political parties and their politicians who insisted no one gets what they cannot get, Jonathan changed the paradigm. He secured an electoral victory without having to be adopted by any of the dominant groups. Obasanjo his godfather had little or no electoral value in his home base where he could not win in his polling booth. On their part, the owners of PDP in the north- Generals Ibrahim Babangida, Aliyu Gusau, Adamu Ciroma and Atiku Ababakar built an alliance of opposition against Jonathan on the eve of an election. Of course the age-long rivalry between the southeast and south-south affected his level of support in the two zones. Added to these challenges was PDP, Jonathan’s platform which had become more of a liability than an asset, having misgoverned the country for 12 years. There was no doubt Jonathan won the election in spite of PDP.
Unfortunately because others have always fought Jonathan’s wars, he was unable to manage victories that came his way so cheaply. His first political debacle was his appointment of secretary to government. It did not take time for his government to start taking an ethnic colouration. Even the ministry of finance office of our revered Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala was taken over by one ethnic group and when confronted, she said her people got their positions on merit.
President Jonathan unfortunately was unable to manage or confront the hijackers of his government. He could not do more than writhe his hands as Diezani Alison-Maduekwe, his minister of petroleum stole the country blind. There were institutional reports that questioned the aviation minister’s handling of the $360 subsidy to the airlines and the $500m Chinese loan out of which 30 brand new aircraft were to be bought for the ailing airlines. But to President Jonathan, Princess Stella Oduah who later accompanied him on a pilgrimage to Rome, remained untouchable.
Depending on whose figure you are adopting between President Yar’Adua, Speaker Dimeji Bankole, Power Minister Lyel Imoke, government spent between $6billion and $16billion on unbundling of PHCN. Under Jonathan administration, the unbundled companies were sold as discos to PDP stalwarts including his serving minister of power and others who knew next to nothing about electricity. A bank owner who later donated N3b to Jonathan’s presidential campaign fund bought one of the discos. Another went to a professor of Geography who had spoken for every government in power since Shehu Shagari’s 1979 presidency. He served as the head of delegation of new disco owners seeking bail-out and equity participation from a government that had just privatized the discos while setting aside $500m for support.
It is also on record that President Jonathan only paid lip service to fighting corruption. He had in fact dismissively said ‘if they have succeeded in fighting, corruption, corruption would not have been with us today’.
It is therefore not difficult to understand why James Ibori who sponsored the Yar’Adua and Jonathan’s presidential ticket in 2007 served jail terms in London for the same offence over which he secured reprieve from an Asaba High Court; why Edo governor, Lucky Igbinedion got a slap on the wrist for running the finances of Edo State aground and why a convicted felon who converted 70% of his state resources to personal use got presidential pardon in order to, in the words of Doyin Okupe ‘make more contributions to the development of his fatherland’.
Under Jonathan, KPMG’s report on NNPC; the report on fuel subsidy regime; pending cases against prominent PDP members in the banking sector, those of oil subsidy fraudsters; the $10b NNPC missing fund President Jonathan said would be unravelled through forensic inquiry and the $30b from excess crude account consistently raised by governors Adams Oshiomhole and Rotimi Amaechi remained stalled because the ‘wheel of justice according to the president grinds slowly’.
Jonathan who has always overcome challenges through luck must have taken note of all the above personal failings before convincing himself that that today, fate beckons on him as the only one who can bring back PDP years of the locust. Although all those earnestly praying for the return of President Jonathan including Bauchi governor Bala Mohammed and the embattled disco owners who for lack of technical knowhow and financial muscle, have lost their cherished discos to banks, have not denied being driven by self-interest. Jonathan however believes he is the one ordained to bring back the glory PDP lost as a result of their endless violent family dispute over the sharing of our resources.
But just as Jonathan who is now convinced he has been called upon by destiny to trade his earned status of African statesman to joining the current toxic Nigerian political environment where an unthinking mob called ‘Obidients’ threaten to visit violence on critics of their leader who daily mouth democracy without a demonstration of democratic ethos such as congratulating a victorious opponent, let me call his attention to the implication of his rejection of the voice of reason.
He will be haunted by the legacies of his five years of maladministration covering incompetence, his alleged sponsorship of militant groups as governor of Bayelsa and his mishandling of the power sector privatization which according to Punch newspaper ‘transferred most of the generation and distribution companies to untested, incompetent domestic consortia that have saddled Nigeria with a legal quagmire’.
There was the report of an international judicial probe that claimed that Nigerian government was defrauded to the tune of $1.1bn through the Malabu oil field scam. The case of Jonathan’s unconstitutional removal of Lamido Sanusi as CBN governor for alerting Nigerians of missing $20b from NNPC account and the heavy price Nigeria paid for replacing him with unqualified, incompetent and a man without character like Godwin Emefiele .Of course, Jonathan will be reminded as soon as he joins the political fray that he an ethnic jingoist who came to Lagos to appeal to non-Yoruba residents to vote out the resourceful Lagos State governor; traded Obasanjo he had earlier described as ‘after God and his father, Obasanjo is the next’, for Chief Edwin Clark, his fellow Ijaw man, and his deployment of the leadership of the Ijaw militant groups he had empowered through award of multibillion dollar contracts to unleash ‘verbal terrorism’ on the leadership of the Hausa Fulani.
Finally, Jonathan will be haunted by his failed attempt to write his own account of his ‘five years of corrupt-ridden administration’ dismissed by a Punch newspaper editorial as ‘a potpourri of falsehoods, hypocrisy and lame excuses’. And of course there was the London Economist’s damning verdict that Jonathan was the ‘most corrupt, most clueless government in Nigeria’s history’.