Goodluck Jonathan has no regard for Nigerians and therefore doesn’t believe it is wrong to look us in the eye and lie to us. Much as I respect the office of the President, I must confess the office has been so diminished by the president occupant of the Aso Villa, that it does not deserve the respect of any self-respecting Nigerian. At every given opportunity, Jonathan has been embarrassing the country and Nigerians, all in his desperation to retain power by all means possible. We have been forced to listen to the president’s fables in the past five weeks after he and his security goons forced Attahiru Jega to shift the general elections earlier scheduled to take place in February. Not content with churning out barefaced lies by him and his crude spokesmen, Jonathan has upped the ante of embarrassment by lying against a fellow country’s leader and to the international community through his interview with the BBC.
Before the dust settled on the Moroccan phone call scandal, Jonathan told Will Ross of the BBC that he is not desperate to win the 2015 election, something I find insulting to me. If he is not desperate to win the election then can he explain the unnecessary tension he has been subjecting us to in the past six months or so? It will be a herculean task to attempt to list all the desperate moves Jonathan made in order to win the 2015 election by crook – he doesn’t care about the ‘hook’. But let us attempt to itemise them, anyway.
The contrived “adoption” of Jonathan by all the organs of his party, the PDP, which culminated in his coronation as the sole candidate for the presidential election, was purely because of his desperation to avoid facing a credible – or even an alternative – candidate in his party. The party and its apparatchik made sure no one was allowed to challenge Jonathan because of the fear of rejection by his party men. If this was not a desperate move, what is? The INEC fixed February 14th, 2015 as the date for the presidential elections but the commission was forced to eat humble pie by Jonathan and his party because they saw defeat facing in the face and the only thing they came up was the insecurity boogie. The elections were shifted in order to give Jonathan and the PDP more time to corrupt the system and the populace. If this is not desperation, what is?
We have seen the heightened level of criss-crossing the country including Jonathan’s temporary relocation to Lagos and the states of the south west while Namadi(na) relocated to Kano and Kaduna, distributing money like confetti to voters. They were unmindful of the damage they were doing to the electoral process. If this is not desperation, what is? The series of fictional documentaries produced and directed by his campaign team (which is made up of people with questionable characters) trying to smear the presidential candidate of the APC and the leadership of the party falls into the desperate pattern which must have been directly approved by Jonathan himself. If this smear campaign is not desperation, what is? The newfound bravery of our armed forces in attacking and chasing Boko Haram insurgents from hitherto occupied towns and villages after six years of running from the rag-tag insurgents says a lot about the government’s commitment or otherwise in fighting the scourge. We suddenly have the “ferocious” Boko Haram elements running with their tails between their legs at the sight of the Nigerian army. It took the smell of defeat before Jonathan got serious about the sanctity of human life, if this is not desperation, what is?
With a naval force and the Civil Defence, Jonathan decides in his wisdom to outsource the protection of our shores and pipelines to criminals who are euphemistically called ex-militants by a media wowed by brown envelopes and sectional mind-set. These are the same guys who routinely break the pipelines and steal oil, yet are now rewarded for their criminality. This comes barely two weeks to the presidential election. May I suggest that since there are oil depots in Maiduguri, Bauchi, and Yola – areas considered spheres of influence of Boko Haram – the protection contracts should be extended to Boko Haram and other militants in Plateau, Nassarawa and Benue states to make the reward system for treason and murder national in outlook. This is not desperation but an avenue for creating employment for youths from a section of the country to the detriment of other areas.
Then the persistent call for the sack of Jega as INEC chairman before the conduct of the 2015 elections. The calls range from pseudo-statesmen like Ekwueme, to old militants like Edwin Clark, to oil thieves like Asari Dokubo and Tompolo and those with blood on their hands like Gani Adams. These are Jonathan’s current bedmates whose main bond is the prevention of General Buhari from winning the elections and sending them to oblivion or the gulag, where they rightly belong.
Not desperate? Try this. In his desperation to cling to power, Jonathan is not loath to use the ethno-religious card, unmindful that this road may lead us to Kigali. With the Abidjan scenario becoming more real to Jonathan, he would rather that Nigeria take the Kigali road. His dim wife has been traversing the country inciting jobless, hungry youths against the opposition and in the process insulting her betters.
Jonathan is desperately desperate and he shouldn’t deny that. For a chief security of a country to be seen hob-knobbing with treasonable felons like Asari Dokubo, Gani Adams, the MASSOB guys and the rest of the oil thieves a few days to a national elections says much about his frame of mind. Though Jonathan and his wife have been trying to give new meanings to certain actions like corruption and stealing, they can’t change the meaning of desperation. They are desperate to cling to power at whatever cost to the nation and Nigerians shouldn’t make the mistake of lowering their guards believing that Jonathan is not desperate. The wife, who wants to remain the First Lady, but behaves like an unrefined street food hawker, in her characteristic dimness, let out her fears of facing her just desserts when she said she is not ready to feed her husband in jail.
It was Gbagbo’s desperation that plunge Ivory Coast into a needless war in 2010; it was also the insensitive insults by journalists and politicians that led to the massacre of over 800,000 innocent souls in Rwanda in 1994. Nigerians should be mindful of desperate politicians who would rather the country disintegrate than them losing the paraphernalia of office. The Jonathans have done enough damage to an already fragile union. Let’s boot them out of the Aso Villa on March 28th before they take us down the road to Kigali.