The sentimental ontology of the President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan’s dirt poor background that worked so proudly on our emotions to the point of fanatical adulation has turned out to be a deliberate mass manipulation. When the wizards and witches of Abuja made that fatal decision to exchange the soul of ex-President Umaru Yar’ Adua for Jonathan’s, little did Nigerians know that they were entering the galactic realm of outer darkness. Even professional political prophets could neither discern Jonathan’s pathological proclivity to dithering nor foresee his cabalist approach to politics.
In 2011 in the heat of the brouhaha of his political campaign, every of his words was holy writ. We embraced the eloquent voices that proclaimed the virtues of his commoner background. In 2011, we were made to believe that he was a man of the people. All his paid artists were creatures of creative imagination. These recreative artists succeeded in delivering up Jonathan, with a touch of folklorist tale, that the President was a demigod!
The first salvo among the shibboleths released to the public realm was that he was a shoeless boy from Otueke. That is, he was born a plebeian. We were also given the image of a humble low lifer whose claim to enjoying life did not go beyond eating gari and more gari. Then for bluff and chutzpah in the evening under the glorious Otueke moonshine, Jonathan and his kinsmen found joy in settling for bottles of ogogoro, paraga and opa eyin! His dietary oscillography was pure carb and apeteshi. The remorseless plebbing of his ghetto origin was enough catalyst to galvanise our collective sympathy. And sure enough we kept the faith. Our 22 million votes – rigged or not – enabled Jonathan to gain an unfettered access to the seat of Nigeria’s most coveted trophy: the presidency.
As a professional contrarian who is proud enough to stick out his head above the parapets of hypocrisy, fawning patronage and flattery, I am raising an accusation against President Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan that he has failed Nigeria and Nigerians. I am saying that the deceit and shibboleth of his sainthood has fallen to reveal a dithering, slumbering, clueless, cowardly, ignorant, paralytic and corrupt creature pretending to be the leader of the most populous black nation on earth. The documented pathology of his laziness has stalled Nigeria’s journey to redemption. We should have been forewarned that a lazy, drunken zoologist does not belong to Aso Rock but in the midst of baying cheetahs, lions and crocodiles.
When he rode to power under the shower of our empathy, he made a proclamation. He promised transformation. Under the crisp air of our new hope and his own air of certitude, we embraced his oration of transformation without modulating it with doubt and cynicism.
We trust that Jonathan is not part of those rentier politicians who have destroyed Nigeria soul, mind and body. Even the avowedly pessimistic had to yield to reason. They had to yield to the common song of the time that Jonathan was a blast of fresh air. Today, Nigerians are paying for that strange flirtation with his political rhetoric and choreographed sound bite. Let us test the evidence. First, President Jonathan is yet to declare his worldly asset, a written demand from the constitution of this nation. His official bombast that he would not divulge his asset on pages of newspaper proves his capacity to desecrate and do violence to the constitution he swore to uphold. The price being exerted by his failure to obey the constitution of the land echoes in both the states, senate and the legislature.
Governors, senators and other legislators have carved out their own republics within a republic. At will they disrespect, disrobe and distort the law in the grandest of political impunity not seen anywhere in the world. They take their cue from the dotard in Aso Rock who rules without any oblique hint of concern for the rule of law. We are govern not by law but by the opinionated prejudice and herd mentality of our overpaid politicians. Governors spend state money as a personal fortune. Senators and legislators live lawless lives. They divine immunity clauses in the constitution. They self-award themselves huge salaries which give them lavish access to gracious and opulent living in a land teeming with 60 million jobless Nigerians.
Secondly, Jonathan is living in a cocoon world of political profligacy. He epitomises the lies, chicanery, duplicity, impunity, waste, favouritism and hypocrisy of Africa’s brand of liberal democracy. He has abandoned the folklorist tale of his carefully choreographed background of frugality, moderation and austerity. He has developed a lofty distaste for material prudency and transparent husbandry of national resources and wealth. There are many examples that boggle the mind. He has been a supporter of his wife’s obsessive madness for provocative obscenities. In bedroom arm-twisting, Patience Jonathan has worked her sorcery on the president and succeeded in her inclusion of First Lady Peace Mission Building in the 2013 Federal Capital Territory appropriation budget . Elsewhere, revolution is made of this!
Patience Jonathan’s ghoulish dream of a N4 billion white sepulcher under the skyline of Abuja is a monument to ego and waste. This is a democratic profligacy. Under our bemused watch she appealed to the Senate and the House of Representatives to pass the Wonga (money) budgeted for the project. In a fit of irrationality she explained that the building was not for her but for Nigerians. According to her, when Maryam Babangida and Mariam Abacha built the Women Centre and the National Hospital they did not carry the buildings when they left government. She added that she will not go with the peace mission building when her tenure expires. Explaining further, she said the peace mission project was initiated by late President Yar’Adua, adding that other countries lobbied for the mission to be in their countries but it was given to Nigeria on a platter of gold. She revealed that the United Nations and ECOWAS buildings are being maintained by Federal Capital Territory Administration.
Patience Jonathan’s argument with its illogic is nothing but a homage to lawlessness, impunity and a revelation of the ways prudence and accountability have retreated from the realm of polity in our country. “When my tenure expires”, did I read that right? This statement from Patience Jonathan is absolute poppywash, of course! She is a thief. She has stolen a public space outside the constitution of Nigeria. It is only in Nigeria you will find the wife of a president live a parallel life with her husband in coveting office, usage of presidential jets and private staffers. It is only in Nigeria you will find huge amount of public money allocated for the profligate use of the “Office Of First Lady”. Elsewhere, revolution is made of this!!
Michelle Obama, the self-effacing wife of the president of America has no private fiefdom in the Oval. Only recently, she said that she was a single parent as an endearing deference to the job of staying at home to look after her children and the painful deprivation of missing her husband due to presidential duties. She harbours no competitive space with her man. Samantha Gwendoline Cameron, wife of David Cameron (Kamoru) the British Prime Minister is a businesswoman with no access to prime ministerial jet to fly her to expensive hospitals in Dubai, France and Germany.
Jonathan’s habit of projecting Nigeria as the father Christmas and bank manager to all the weak, tired and the dispossessed of the earth is a felonic behaviour. This desperation to showcase Nigeria as giant of Africa does not stand the test of reality. The revelation that Nigeria (FCT) foots the bill of maintaining both buildings of ECOWAS and United Nations is scandalous. Funds meant for the enjoyment of Nigerians are criminally diverted on daily basis to pay for laundering our bad, soiled and damaged reputation as a nation. As I write, discussion is ongoing to deploy billion of naira to surrendered Boko Haram jihadists under the weepy leniency of amnesty. In less than two years, President Jonathan has transformed himself from a demigod to mammon.
President Jonathan’s dream of transforming the Tower of Babel of our corruption has continued to receive divine retribution. It is still blasphemous to attempt to transform the temple of corruption in Nigeria. And who else to prove that he is incapable of cracking the monolith of our national disgrace than President Jonathan. In a touch of pantomime to his drive to fight corruption at all levels, he gives it a gloss of respectability in the recent announcement of his presidential pardon. Everyday, you reach a frustration point with this Otueke journeyman. He extended kinship loyalty to former excellent thief of Bayelsa state, Diepreye Alamieyesiegha the man who brought Nigeria into international disrepute and gave him pardon for his criminal rape of public funds.
That action or pardon was the clearest assault against corruption and good governance in Nigeria. And to make matter worse, senior mad dog, Dr. Doyin Okupe, came up with marijuana-fuelled riposte when he said that Mr. Alamieyeseigha had “impacted positively on the overall economy of the nation”. Another junior mad dog, Dr. Reuben Abati, on a TV programme, described those who are criticising Jonathan over Alams pardonable pardon as suffering from “sophisticated ignorance”. These ingratiating comments from Okupe and Abati have an apt epitaph in Proverbs 28:21: “For a piece of bread a man will transgress.”
Before his reinvention, President Jonathan was a subject of fascination. Today, he is a subject of intense revulsion. Today, he is surrounded by high-minded sinners, unrepentant thieves, money cannibals, Jezebellian wife, soul-eating ritualists, cabal-driven cabinet, predators, brigands, incompetents and phoneys. Today, we have been forced to admit that this nation is saddled with a brainless drone who has taken Nigeria to the tipping point of social despair, political tension, insecurity, barbaric corruption, hopelessness and a sustaining sense of helplessness. Now peel back his layer, you can see how President Jonathan has morphed from a demigod to mammon.
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