By Paul Onomuakpokpo
After former President Goodluck Jonathan launched his memoir My
Transition Hours on Tuesday, he might have heaved a sigh of relief. It might
not be because the ordeal of writing and preparing to present the book to the
public was now off his shoulders. Nor because he was now luxuriating in the
cathartic effect of dislodging the single narrative that de-privileges his role
in nation-building and the 2015 elections. Rather, it could be because of the
sweet contemplation of the fresh horizon of possibilities that had opened
before him. Now, he realised that it was not all gloom – he might not have been
denigrated as an irredeemable villain after all.
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| *Former President Jonathan |
For over three years, Jonathan might have been
shocked by how his legendary good luck has mutated into a source of personal
tragedy as he was weighed down by the thought of his now being eternally
identified with a dark role in the crisis of development of the nation. He
might have felt that he and his government were held in utter disdain by the
President Muhammadu Buhari government that has continued to afflict them with a
rash of allegations of sleaze. The Buhari government has been unrelenting in
portraying the Jonathan government as presiding over the unconscionable
despoliation of the country. It seizes every moment to catalogue the
depredations instigated by Jonathan and his co-travellers.
In this regard, the
Buhari government portrays almost every person who served in the Jonathan
government as an active participant in the grand heist of that era. But there are
those who have stood out because of their alleged egregious acquisitiveness:
Jonathan’s wife and the Minister of Petroleum Resources, Diezani
Alison-Madueke. Like others, these ones are being prosecuted in law courts.
Their property that are considered as proceeds of corruption have been
confiscated by the Buhari government. The Buhari government has gone further to
begin the process of extraditing Alison-Madueke from Britain to Nigeria so that
she can defend herself against a plethora of corruption charges and perhaps
vouchsafe details unknown to her prosecutor concerning her swanky property and
bank accounts at home and overseas.
Even Jonathan at a time was accused of being directly involved in corruption.
He was at a time threatened that if he did not bury his head in shame,
eternally keep quite and refrain from criticising the Buhari government, his
role in the pecuniary atrocities perpetrated on his watch would be exposed.
Yet, the tragedy that the Jonathan era poses to the Buhari government is that the
latter is in a dilemma as regards how to categorise Jonathan: Is he a complete
villain or has he some redemptive attributes? But the sense of tragic quandary
might have been mitigated by the Buhari government’s resolution of this dilemma
by categorising Jonathan’s governance as reeking of corruption while his
politics are an exemplar of an accommodating spirit that is much-needed in a
nation like ours that is bursting at the seams with centrifugal forces.
As early as the moment of his inauguration,
Buhari made known this categorisation. That was when he acknowledged the noble
role of Jonathan in his emergence as the president. During the launch of
Jonathan’s memoir, Buhari reiterated the exemplary role Jonathan played in
staving off the crisis that could have stymied the nation’s democracy if he had
demurred at that moment of accepting that he had been routed by the opposition.
Having vouched for Jonathan’s unimpeachable democratic credentials signaled by
calling him and congratulating him while the votes were still being collated,
Buhari expressed the optimism that he would once again blossom.
To be sure, it is not only Buhari who has
acknowledged the role of Jonathan in stabilising the nation’s democracy. But
the difference is that when this acknowledgement comes from Buhari, it seems to
carry more credibility. People like Bishop Matthew Kukah who acknowledged this
earlier were dismissed as those who were lamenting the end of their parasitic
existence that was energised by the Jonathan government. Those who concluded
that Kukah was a moral burden on the ecclesiastical community even thundered
why the Catholic church should not de-robe him for daring to suggest that the
smooth political transition that Jonathan midwifed was too epochal to allow
room for an investigation into the financial transactions of his government.
Of course, it is possible that Buhari has only
become enamoured of this feat of Jonathan because he might have wondered if he
would not have repudiated the electoral verdict if he were in Jonathan’s shoes.
But we should not consider such tragic foreboding as far-fetched. After all,
Buhari has demonstrated how much he would applaud impunity in order to achieve
electoral victory. This was demonstrated in the cases of Osun and Ekiti states
where the Buhari government had to allegedly rig its way into electoral
success.
We must not dismiss the above foreboding. If
Buhari’s people insist on snatching victory from an election that they have
lost, does Buhari have the courage to stop them? Would his cronies not have
their way in a manner that would starkly remind us of his helplessness in the
face of the two presidencies in Aso Rock where he is leading only one? Buhari
is said to be credible. It is said that it is the people serving in his
government that are corrupt. And when they `are found to be corrupt, Buhari is
not willing to sack them. In the same vein, when these corrupt aides insist
that Buhari has won the election even though he has lost it, can he say no to
them? It is equally possible that Buhari’s generous praise of Jonathan’s
politics is a way of rebranding himself for the 2019 election. Buhari could
have been repulsed by the prospect of being seen as still not accommodating if
he had again inveighed against the propensity for corruption of Jonathan. In
that case, the best he could do at a public event of such magnitude was only to
praise the politics of Jonathan.
Jonathan is said to have demonstrated courage in defiance of his aides. His
aides wanted him not to accept defeat. But before the counting was even
finished he quickly called Buhari to accept defeat. No doubt, it required
courage for Jonathan to have taken that step. Yet, this kind of courage that
Jonathan demonstrated has also become a source of his demystification. Was this
courage real ? Or was it externally induced?
The fact is that if Jonathan had that kind of
courage, it did not show in his government. He did not demonstrate this courage
by making his aides to avoid stealing from the treasury. Even if the maturation
of this kind of courage only attained its peak in the twilight of his government,
there could have been its incipient demonstrations. In that case, the courage
that Jonathan demonstrated in the face of defeat could have been borne out of
conviction, or pathological weakness or apprehension. Jonathan could have well
understood the perils of insisting on electoral victory. Was he apprehensive of
the Gbagbo treatment? Was he apprehensive of being forcibly evicted from Aso
Rock knowing full well that Barack Obama’s United States
But while it is obviously problematic in
canonising Jonathan as the nation’s gold standard in accepting defeat during
elections, we must credit him with succeeding in dissembling if the courage he
demonstrated was not natural to him. The challenge now is for succeeding
presidential contestants, led by Buhari, to go beyond just eulogising Jonathan
to naturally manifesting courage or pretending to be magnanimous in defeat if
only to stave off the dogs and the baboons from being soaked in blood. It is in
doing this that Buhari and other citizens can pay the highest tribute to
Jonathan for not plunging the nation into a crisis because of his self-serving
political ambition.
*Dr. Onomuakpokpo is on the Editorial Board of The Guardian
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