Former President Goodluck Jonathan is being inundated with requests to join the presidential campaign despite having been sworn in twice in the past.
Report by Stanley Odiase
Former President Goodluck Jonathan is no stranger in the Nigerian political landscape. Neither is he a soldier of hard work. Why? Jonathan has been a beneficiary of mysterious circumstances. A closer look at his antecedents would instantly reveal the handwork of what people call “fate”. A very simple man, born not of a silver spoon; for example, his father was an Ijaw canoe maker called Lawrence Ebele Jonathan, while his mother was a retired farmer called Eunice Ayi. Definitely, farmers and canoe makers are not in the upper class by any means. Yet, they did their best for their son and worked hard to send him to school. He went on to bag a Ph.D. in Zoology in 1995, then proceeded to teach in Rivers State College of Education from 1983 to 1993!
He then served as Assistant Director in the defunct Oil Mineral Producing Area Development Commission, then known as OMPADEC, then elected deputy governor of Bayelsa state in 1999 under PDP. Soon after, he was elevated to be Governor when the incumbent was impeached, and in 2007 was called to be the Vice President of his party, the PDP. Fortune, never too far behind him, smiled his way again when the incumbent President passed on, and on May 5, 2010, was sworn in as president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria! He stood for election in 2011 as president and won. His highest point was handing over power peacefully after conceding defeat to Buhari in the 2015 presidential elections. Since then, he has been sort of in Limbo, only appearing occasionally on the scene as an elder statesman.
But the news on the air is about his impending return to contest under the PDP as a presidential flag bearer to possibly unseat incumbent President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. The argument is that since Buhari was used to remove him during his time, it is only wise to employ the same tactics to do the same to Tinubu, who engineered the deal. Well, Good luck to him. With Jonathan, you never can say. But where does that leave Nigerians? The logical interpretation of this move is that he has nothing to offer Nigerians-like his first tenure! Other wise what is he coming to achieve that Tinubu is not already doing, and even exceeding expectations?
Is Jonathan coming to remind Nigerians of the Chibok girls abductions or the extensive damage done to grief-stricken parents? Is he coming to remind Nigerians of the disastrous oil marketers’ adventures? The rape of Nigeria through the destruction of the Refineries? Or the rise of insurgency? Was it not the era of Jonathan that $2 billion was distributed in the streets of Abuja? Who will forget the Dasuki incident? Under Jonathan, the dualisation of the vital East-West artery road was never completed. It was in Jonathan’s era that the lingo “ na our brother dey power” began, and the Niger-Delta boys took over the streets of Abuja. Nevertheless, both in form and action, Jonathan displayed extreme weakness as a leader; he wasn’t firm and decisive, allowing mediocrity to seize control of the reins of government.
Can anyone forget the Dezieni Allison-Madueke misadventure in the oil sector, under Jonathan’s nose? There are numerous examples to completely demystify the aura of who Jonathan is. Today, President Tinubu is showing a leadership example. He is touching areas deemed anathema by other regime administrators. Tinubu has raised pension allowance of retirees; he has improved salaries of civil servants; Tinubu listens, distributing appointments evenly; he has affected Farmers positively and revived loans for Nigerian students, not to mention solving the perennial ASUU strikes that crippled Nigerian universities. Tinubu has ended the almost inconceivable fuel queues and is now working assiduously to end perpetual blackouts.
Tinubu is forthright, touching the nerve center of the average Nigerian. Like they say, “Eko for show”, he is a “showman”, an actor, not conservative, passive, and toothless. Why would Nigerians prefer a Jonathan to somebody like this, except for selfish and precarious reasons! The good advice to Jonathan is this: shun all entreaties to be dragged into the unknown. He should stay cool and maintain his statesman’s status as of now. I bet he doesn’t want the EFCC to reopen the case of his wife’s $15 million case. Well, he may try his luck; who knows, he may have enough money stashed somewhere to fight a Tinubu who is no doubt the reigning heavyweight boxing champion of Nigerian politics. I only fear a technical knockout for him in case he decides to try and a landslide for Tinubu.
