By Rasheed Olokode
Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan is, to me, the luckiest human being in the histories of all nations that I have ever encountered or read about. The story of his ascent has been nothing but a manifestation of the other side of life. I can’t recall any of those alo, folk-stories, with which our Yoruba elders had given us orientations about life, which portrayed success as a self-imposing attainment in a manner reminiscent of our current President’s. The various zeal-inspiring stories of Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham Lincoln, our own Obafemi Awolowo, Aminu Kano, MKO Abiola and other listless sages that have featured, at one point or the other, in the leadership histories of nations have combined to differently confirm the life of man as being, generally, more of failure than success.
Perhaps, if I were not a living witness to how that seemingly unattainable ambition that legends like the Great Zik of Africa, the irrepressible Awo, the indomitable Aminu Kano, Abiola the martyr and their ilk meritoriously laboured for eventually became an unsolicited gift for Dr. Jonathan, I would, probably, have cast off such narratives, as his, as mere fables invented by pure imagination.
By the history of politics and elections in Nigeria, the 2011 elections, which brought Mr. Goodluck to power, is one and only, so far, in the annals of our national history. All the struggles of our pre-independence nationalists, under the auspices of the Nigerian Youth Movement (NYM) or any of other groups I can’t name here, boiled down to just one thing – the battle to make the voice of Nigerians count and be counted. It was a battle that was indeed the albatross of a multitude and the tragedy of countless others of our heroes past, majorly unsung.
For instance, the ‘treasonable felony’ that actually jailed Awolowo and a large army of others was their effrontery and gut to confront the powers-that-be on the imperatives of free and fair elections in Nigeria. Few of such ex-prisoners who are still alive as witnesses to the miracle of the 2011 elections would not only be thanking their stars for their good luck which contrasts the fate of unquantifiable lots that had been dispatched, they would also live the rest of their lives in sobriety and pain over the undying sight of Dele Giwa swimming in a pool of his own blood on that black day of the first-ever Nigerian letter bomb, October 19 1986 which, although now far away in time, still streams out ocean of tears from my eyes as I write this piece.
Furthermore, it is on record that, in our fifty-two years as an independent Nation, the emergence of this President has been the only event in history that has ever given Nigerians the cause to hope and divorce the pessimism to which prolonged military rule and recurrent civil illegitimacy had betrothed us as helpless brides. The case of the khaki era is easily understandable as regimes when citizens’ hope, in itself, was indeed a crime that ‘justifiably’ sent Nigerians, in multitudes, to the gulag without trial. Even the reigns of all the pre-2011 civilians that interrupted the military foray in the corridors of power only succeeded in heralding a departure that was only a difference between figure six (6) and half-a-dozen. Of course, nothing could have been more foolhardy for Nigerians than to invest their hope in, for instance, the Sheu Shagari-led government which triumph over the real fathers of Nigeria in 1979 and 1983 was an electoral abracadabra that eventually turned back the hands of our national clock and progress.
In like manner, the eventual restoration of democracy in 1999 that ought to have finally recovered our long-lost optimism actually brought not even the slightest cause to hope for change. That the return of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo to a seat he had hitherto bade good-bye was never a decision of Nigerian voters but of a few masquerades, whose whims and caprices had always rein in the masses, was, and is still, a public piece of knowledge.
The best that one can charitably but undeniably grant OBJ and his administration is the status of an ethnic mandate overwhelmingly given by the North. For Baba Iyabo, charity never began at home as his candidature was roundly rejected in the entirety of his Southwest, as formally epitomized in the judicial cancellation of his 1999 over-bloated votes secured fraudulently in his Ogun State home. Worse-still, the Ota-Farmer attempted to finally eclipse our last atom of hope, as he defecated on the Aso throne at his exit. This much was soon confirmed by the conscientious man that he had unconsciously nurtured and enthroned, as though a Pharaoh tendering a Moses, his ultimate waterloo. Perhaps we have been less than grateful to the departed President.
Perhaps we have wronged the spirit of the dead. Perhaps we have erred by failing to give due credit to the man that really created the right psychological environment that left his succeeding deputy with no other option than to ensure credible elections following Yar’ Adua’s open admittance of illegitimacy, the first of his kind and an automatic challenge to the beneficiary of his demise.
My drift is that President Jonathan got it all wrong in attempting to whip up sentiments for himself, by describing himself as the most criticized President in the world, and conjuring the dream of a better tomorrow which the present day is not, in the least, indicative of. Perhaps, Dr. Goodluck needs reminding that Nigerians are, today, not really bothered about bad roads, for the roads have always been bad; we are neither complaining about the perpetual darkness that has always lightened our national character.
It is only a people who have the slightest hope about their existence tomorrow that would bother about all those infrastructures which the President referred to in his speech. I do, in no way, doubt the efficacy of the Biblical prophecy that the rejected stone can become the cornerstone of the house, as indirectly alluded to in the prediction of Jonathan that ‘would leave office as the most praised President’. But, it suffices to ask a self-imposing question here – of what use would stable electricity, spotless roads, safe skies, functional education and all other desirables, which are mere life accessories, be to a population steadily bombed into extinction? Haba! Is it not said that hope exists only when there is life? Perhaps, our countless compatriots already murdered for no fault of theirs can still enjoy those facilities Mr. President would ultimately be praised over, or even become legislators, governors or whatever come 2015.
The truth is that the current tenant at the Aso Villa has been a subject of deeply-rooted anger of Nigerians simply because the opportunity that the smart ones had hitherto robbed us of, particularly during the June 12 tragedy, was, for the first time offered through making of His Excellency as the first-ever President we can truly call ours. Then, isn’t it morally and logically valid that the manner one scolds ones child is not the same one does another person’s? Therefore, our President would do himself some great favour by resisting the temptation to measure up to his critics, either by reinforcing his external voices or crafting personal eloquence in self-defense.
At least, the bulk stops at his table. So, his tiger needs not announce his tigeritude, but to show the requisite character to automatically convince us, Nigerians, tha e the arrival of his presidential goodies. Methink! Cultivating the tu quo que (what about you?) leadership is resignation to fate while accommodating the harshest of criticisms in policy flexibility may just be the bailout for a leader in dilemma. Olokode writes in vide solace4real2000@yahoo.com
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