Goofs Of Amnesia …Those Northern Calls For Jonathan’s Job

Last week, a little known newspaper columnist coughed very malodorous and damaging invectives at President Goodluck Jonathan, in an article titled, A Dangerous President’ which not merely imputed executive complicity in the ill-fated Independence Day Abuja blast, but also made suggestions that fell less than an inch short of ordering out of office, the serving commander –in-chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

So unsavoury was the choice of words, shamefully defective, the argumentation, and brazenly schizophrenic the eventual conclusion such that to attempt even a schizoid reply will amount to a willing conscription into same hollow ritual where, patients of manic depression blab cacophonous goofs in the name of voicing an opinion.

The only half- point that the faceless author thought he made , making albeit labouriously the insinuation that a president under whose watch such a twin bomb explosion took place has no reason to remain in power and that the matter has been made even worse by  the mere fact that such a president received in audience a gang of  former Niger Delta militants, to condole with Nigerians and their president, for the nearly one dozen souls that perished in the blasts.

Reading in between the lines, I discerned a dizzying helplessness, on the part of the author to voice what he truly intended, his primary but concealed mandate in my view, being, to amplify the obviously unpopular calls by the  self seeking collection of desperate politicians under the aegis of Northern Leaders Forum (NLF) for President Jonathan to resign, methinks not purely for the blasts. It was instead, a reharsh of pent-up frustration arising from Jonathan’s last comments on the zoning module of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). To the confused writer’s apparent confusion shall I inject some clarity.

A fortnight ago, upon return of his presidential nomination form to  the PDP National Secretariat, Abuja, President Jonathan had, for the first time contributed to the long dragging debate on zoning and averred that the party had not and could not have zoned the presidency but if it ever did then, it had been in breach since 1999, when, President Olusegun Obasanjo became president, defeating  all other aspirants, some of them from the northern parts of Nigeria. The same was repeated in 2003 when, Obasanjo sought and got re-election.

The argument was that if the party had zoned the presidency to the south alone, and a southerner was the incumbent, why were other northern aspirants not denied nomination forms to challenge Obasanjo? For that contribution to the debate on zoning, some self-styled northern leaders characterized him in so many demeaning moulds; ingrate, thorn-coat, greedy politician and even betrayer were just a few. Infact, former Military President Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida (IBB) even said, if not for zoning, Jonathan would not have smelt the vice presidency slot behind late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua.

Viewed closely, Babangida should have said the exact opposite, for, if the Vice Presidency had been zoned to the entire southern part of Nigeria in 2007, Jonathan’s Bayelsa State, with its low population numbers would not have had the shot, which means, either that the party decided from which geopolitical zone the party’s running mate must emerge, after first deciding that it must be Yar’Adua for president or that prior to the general party primaries,  the choice of Yar’Adua and Jonathan, was decided upon by the leader of the party, in that case, the serving President Obasanjo and  a hand-full of others.

If therefore, the serving president who, by PDP culture, is automatically the leader of the party, nor tenure-bound, and like Jonathan is  neither restricted by constitutional impediments and seek to lead, it thus follows that all other zoning requirements would, at once be tailored in tandem with the known. Am I sounding like a dubious northern leader? For once let me.

Seriously scared of the  incumbency factor and unhappy to be out-done by Jonathan in a game they cherish the most, soon after he voiced his readiness to contest the presidency in 2011, same self-serving northern politicians, and apostles of zoning, have continued to gang-up against the president, whose geo-political zone, the Niger Delta region, otherwise called the South-South has never produced a president while ,many of those scheming to take –over Aso Rock had been there either as Military President or Heads of State not to mention that their own Zones’ hold on power has defied all conscious tenure counts.

It is with that same penchant for greed that they recently called on President Jonathan to resign because of the crime of allowing criminals to plant bombs near the Eagles Square, Abuja in which some twelve Nigerians died. For that, rather than condole with the president, the symbol of our statehood, unite and fight the nation’s common enemy- the terrorists and most importantly, articulate ways of preventing  re-occurrence, the supposed Northern leaders decided to play the usual divisive politics with such national calamity.

Cowardly acts of that kind had taken place in our history as a people. For example, it was in 1986, under Babangida’s watch as military president that the novelty of a parcel bomb killed the founding Editor-in-Chief of Newswatch Magazine, Late Dele Giwa.

To date that terror attack remains unresolved, yet none urged Babangida to resign. That is why it is laughable that the same military president under whose watch near similar and even more heinous crimes, ranging from drug trafficking, questionable  air-crash in which some of the finest of the Nigerian Army perished and countless extra judicial killings took place in Nigeria, would also join forces with others like Mallam Adamu Ciroma to attempt to blackmail Jonathan into forced resignation. But when his campaign manager, High Chief Raymond Dokpesi was fingered, IBB quickly fired, ‘it is idiotic for any one to attempt to link me with the Abuja bomb blast”. He even went further to justify the sentiment of the northern leaders, when, he said it was shameful that the Nigerian Security was pre-warned but failed to prevent such terror attack, a point which he thought still makes him the most qualified to fix things, but not  a word in condolence with the Nigerian presidency.

If Babangida is as patriotic as he wants Nigerians to believe, why did he not share of the jubilee celebrations? Was the ceremony, President Jonathan’s personal Birthday or Nigeria’s?. If he could shun his own nation’s 50th independence anniversary, which country’s president does he wish to become? Or did he , like the ‘inept’ Nigerian security,  have pre-knowledge of the planned bombing and so chose to stay behind in his palatial Minna ‘Aso Rock’, for President Jonathan, visiting national leaders and other Nigerians to perish alone in the blast? If not so, why did he not raise an alarm to persuade all others not to make it to the celebrations? Or at least attempt to prevent them? Try as I have to agree with IBB that it is very idiotic to link him with the bombings, a rehash of these and many more questions make me feel like an idiot being the devil’s advocate.

Even so, the same good old Adamu Ciroma, the failed agent of the zoning policy, a bad loser who would not accept clear defeat, which his reaction to the final PDP position on the zoning subject translates into,  but would step forward to call for the resignation of a serving president, because of a terror attack which still wears the cloak of a political misadventure.

Where I come from, age comes with wisdom, constant readiness to build not to break, anxiety to preach love not hate and above all a resolve to stand on the part of equity not greed.

But judging by Ciroma’s recent goofs, I see one suffering from manic depression, temporary amnesia  or outright greed on wheels not consistent with old age and thus depicts the very opposite of the value that ought to be attached to the grey hair.

That is why that misguided writer who, in following elder Ciroma’s jaundiced thought process, charactised President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan  ‘A  Dangerous President’ deserves our sympathy and forgiveness, for, he was giving honour to Ciroma’s old age, which he thought epitomized the same qualities young men usually cherish and which he should have known by now, Ciroma lacks.

My Agony is that up till this day, Mallam Ciroma, IBB and the so- called Northern Elders Forum have found nothing wrong in their folly of not sharing the national grief which Nigerians feel, over the unnecessary deaths on independence day, what they find wrong instead is that Nigerians have refused to see the ‘wisdom’ in elders’ call for president Jonathan’s ouster; the unresolved Giwa’s death notwithstanding.

Methinks, its for their ilk that John Webster, wrote in The White Devil, “ A politician imitates the devil, as the devil imitates a cannon, wheresoever he comes to do mischief, he comes with the backside towards you, just like that columnist did, using Ciroma’s back.