Let Jona Continue To Fumble And Bumble

Ever since circumstances thrust Goodluck Jonathan to prominence as the public face of the charade that goes on in Abuja as government, he has consistently made himself the laughing stock in the eyes of enlightened humanity.  Has anyone forgotten how he fumbled and bumbled along, all the way while Umaru Yar’adua laid comatose in a Saudi hospital while Yar’adua’s semi-literate spouse Tu’rai, and the goons that swarmed the seat of power at the time, effectively hijacked the state and assumed de facto control of Nigeria for as long they could swindle and hoodwink the world to believe and accept that Yar’adua was still alive and in-charge?  It was not only that they wouldn’t let Jona in his capacity as the vice president, make any manner of contact with the man even after they freighted him back to the seat of power on life support, he sheepishly complied with their directive that he must stay away and believe that Yar’adua was still hale and hearty.  If Tu’rai’s hands and the hands of her goons were not forced by the smelling and decomposing corpse of Yar’adua, this Jonathan would still be ‘acting president’ up until today.  

Anyone who watched the fidgety interview he gave CNN’s Christiana Amanpour during his visit to the US earlier this year would easily discern the degree to which he is a broken man from his inability to even make simple eye contact throughout the duration.  Again, that interview was fumble and bumble galore that included his admittance that Tu’rai refused him access to a dying Yar’adua, and in the same breath he attempted a spirited half-baked effort to exonerate her of any wrong doing for so-doing. 

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When Tu’rai and co finally let go of Yar’adua’s rotting corpse, and Jona was allowed to morph out of that innocuous “acting president’ capacity”, did he not quickly make spirited attempts to fly to Saudi Arabia from France to supposedly pay obeisance to the very autocrats who rule and hold sway over Saudi Arabia for taking care of Yar’adua even when it was abundantly clear to anyone who cared to know that those same autocrats aided and abetted the humiliation that he was drenched with when he was refused to make even telephone contact with Yar’adua who was falsely claimed to be recovering well in their hospital?  His wife, Patience wailed most visibly as Umaru’s decomposing corpse was wheeled out of the seat of power.  Since he morphed out of his “acting president” capacity, he has used and invented opportunities to often trumpet Umaru as his “beloved president”.   His fumbling and bumbling shrouded his trip to Kampala, Uganda for the African Union (AU) Summit where we were recently told he caused his aides to feign aircraft malfunction all in the bid to conjure an excuse to purchase additional jets for the presidential fleet.  What kind of president is this who lacks the nerves to make the autonomous decision to expand the fleet of aircrafts that fly him around!  As per each of the foreign trips he has made so far either to Canada to merely observe the G8 Summit or to New York for the just concluded annual opening talk fest at the UN, the story has consistently featured him as a fumbling and bumbling principle.

Then came those bomb blasts in Abuja on October 1.  Even after the shadowy so-called Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta (MEND), which has established itself as a notably irresponsible and extortionist contraption that injected itself over night into the Nigerian charade, clearly claimed responsibility for those blasts, this Jonathan was quick to fumble and bumble his way to exonerate the MEND otherwise!

Right after the MEND’s claim of responsibility for those blasts that were staged quite far away from where Jonathan was enjoying the limelight of the fiftieth independence anniversary celebration, and before Jonathan’s fumbling exoneration of the MEND, I had indicated to a friend that the blasts were staged by elements that operate to aide his bid to contest the presidential election next year as the PDP flag bearer.  My gut conviction is that the MEND planned and carried out those bomb blasts to achieve two aims: It wanted to use them to intimidate and at the same time, white mail Jonathan’s Hausa-Fulani detractors who have sworn to actively deter him from bearing the flag for the PDP in the presidential election slated for next year, to scamper away and make room for him to contest in the name of the PDP.  Jona has indeed, proven himself incapable of articulating a water proof case that he has the legitimate right to run for the presidency in his capacity as a citizen.  What then puts him apart from his Hausa-Fulani detractors who base their claim to perpetuate their hegemony in the Nigeria project on the absurdity that their so-called PDP zoning formula must trump what currently exists as the Constitution?  Shame!  

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For me, Jona’s quick fumble to exonerate the MEND is an affirmation of the hunch that I had over those blasts.  I must make haste to add here that if I put aside all inhibitions that derive from journalistic objectivity and grab the cap of logical rationalism, and put it right on my head, I’ll stand firm to intone that Goodluck Jonathan is tangentially associated with those bomb blasts.  He is not associated with them in the sense that he was directly involved in planting them.  His association derives from his involvement with the MEND and the characters that run it.  All of them have been known to fumble and bumble as much as Jona himself.  In fact, if the truth must be told, I will add that I have heard for the umpteenth time from those who know, that Jona and people like him from the Niger Delta are now the patrons of the MEND.  They intend to sustain the MEND and use it as their barking dog, which they will incite from time to time to see if it will scare the Hausa-Fulani ruling elite and probably cure them of their warped mindset that Nigeria, the groups that constitute it, its natural resources are theirs to either manipulate or plunder in perpetuity.  Shame to the devil! 

It is a shame that Jona and his kinsmen and women are only capable of such lousy perception of the plight of their people in the unjust Nigeria project.  So far, they have licked off some mouthfuls of crumbs dusted off the mats that Hausa-Fulani rulers who cream off the wealth that accrues from the hydrocarbons mined from under their homesteads, sit and dine on.  But they must think twice if at all they want to continue to cling on to the notion that a full four-year stint for bumbling and fumbling Jona in Abuja will redress the inequity that afflicts them in the Nigeria project.  Meanwhile, let Jona continue to fumble and bumble on.  Shame to the devil!

● E. C. Ejiogu, PhD, is a political sociologist.    

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