“Given Jonathan’s history with these people, the same people who made the story of his performance in office look many times worse, some of whom whether as party officials or working directly with him betrayed him, even to the extent of funding opposition, it will be very surprising, indeed, if he puts any trust in their offer. If Jonathan must dine with the devil, where is his long spoon?
After over one year of rumours, hints and prevarications, confirmation of sorts has come: former President Goodluck Jonathan is going to throw his hat into the ring for the presidential election next year. And wait for it: under the banner of the APC thus repudiating the PDP under whose auspices he became Deputy Governor in Bayelsa State, then Governor before fate catapulted him to become Vice President of the Federal Republic, then Acting President and President following the demise of President Umaru Musa YarAdua.
In 2011, he became President in his own right defeating consequential political aspirants like Atiku Abubakar and Gen Muhammadu Buhari.
Last week, some nondescript cheerleaders besieged the former President’s office in Abuja, urging him to come out and run.
If you thought this was yet another ego- boosting stage-managed rally which politicians perennially engage in, Dr Reuben Abati, the President’s Media former Spokesman, confirmed that his former boss was actually in the running.
Apparently, Jonathan gave a condition to his interlocutors: that he would leave the PDP and join the APC if his emergence as consensus candidate of the party was guaranteed!
Under normal circumstances, such an announcement would be a seismic event. But in the circumstances of today where all comers – from the ridiculous to the knave – say they want to be president, Jonathan’s bruited entry only further confounds the process. It comes at a time when Nigerians who have majorly lost faith in the country but are still ready to give it one last chance want some reassurance, some hope, that the future could still be redeemed.
Jonathan’s entry, truth be told, offers nothing of such. He is coming at the behest of a cynical political game by those who see an attraction in him as President since he can only be in office for four years so that power can ‘return’ to them.
These are the same people who you have to wonder what their obsession with power is after they have run the place aground such that they are even afraid to go to their constituencies because of insecurity and are holed up in the ‘new Diaspora’ – as Abuja is derisively called – with Dubai their frequent get-away destination.
These are the people stoking Jonathan’s ego, telling him that the country needs him, that in a time of acute division and splintering, he is the only unifying figure out there.
Given Jonathan’s history with these people, the same people who made the story of his admittedly ungainly performance in office look many times worse, some of whom whether as party officials or working directly with him betrayed him even to the extent of funding the opposition, it will be very surprising indeed if he puts any trust in their offer.
It is recommended that when you want to dine with the devil you do so with a long spoon. But does he even have a spoon with which to dine?
That Jonathan is even entertaining the notion of running for office again, upending the democratic process ( which is what his intrusion at this stage would entail) would be farcical if not so tragic on a personal and even a national level.
On a personal level, it smacks of vaulting ambition. Circumstances not of his own making had thrust him on a political career that many will envy. So why would he now want to be part of a rather ridiculous gambit?
Some who are close to the man aver that he would have wanted a second term to correct the mistakes of the first. He would also have wanted to do something more meaningful for his part of the country which continues to suffer from the avarice and mind-boggling corruption of rulers – local and federal (to wit the scandal-plagued NDDC).
Buhari has since shown, rubbishing the example of our forebears – the Sardauna, Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe – that there is no political price to be paid for concentrating attention and unmerited projects in your homestead. But that is not an adequate reason for a gambit which no matter how you view it, is such a long shot.
You begin to wonder if there is a hidden strategic move to drag Jonathan into the fray. Afterall the man is not idle. He is playing statesman, overseeing international engagements like promoting order and democracy in West Africa and elsewhere, when he is not sending off messages of condolence to the bereaved or birthday greetings to those marking their days at home.
Do the protagonists of this hare-brained scheme think that the other APC candidates who have long invested so much in their ambitions will just roll over and allow the prize to be handed over to someone who at this stage would be no more than an interloper? Do they realise that the Presidential candidacy is a whole new ball game, a world away from the APC Chairmanship contest when all the aspirants were brow-beaten into standing down for Abdullahi Adamu as the so-called consensus candidate?
For Jonathan the long knives will now be out. He had some attraction when his hat was not in the ring. Opponents who had long watched with some bemusement the manoeuvres around his possible candidacy will be all out to recall in graphic detail his time in office, a time of rather weak-kneed leadership which some insist set the stage for the present mess.
Memories, particularly of our present band of self-seeking politicians, may be short. But that of the generality of Nigerians who are groaning under a critical failure of leadership is not.
It is often said that what makes Jonathan an attractive proposition at this time is that what came after him has been far worse.
But right now the situation in Nigeria would not respond to a least bad option. And especially not to the cynical games of self-seeking politicians who have made dirty compromise the driving principle of politics.
Nigeria today demands knowledgeable, driven, sacrificial leadership with an intimate knowledge of its problems and challenges and with the will and courage to dare. For all the partisan political attractions of a Goodluck Jonathan encore, he does not fit the bill.
And if after nearly eight years in power, President Buhari can come up with nothing better than to be part of this absurd plot, the epitaph to his ruinous rule will make for even more grisly reading. Even if the country survives it.
Abubakar, a Political Analyst, wrote from Abuja
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