Sacrifice For Peace …Reward For Jonathan, N’Delta

Goodluck Jonathan

Various studies have shown that most African leaders choose to remain in power, if possible, till death, not so much for the lure of power but for the uncertainties and dishonour that often trail life after power. To prevent that, some political leaders would prefer to die in office rather than face the humiliation often meted to them by successors.
In the months leading to the last general elections, Nigeria sat on a keg of gun-powder, ready to explode. The scenario tended to confirm an earlier predication by institutions in the United States of America, that a break-up of the country was imminent.
The height of desperation demonstrated by political parties and politicians, the nature of violent vituperations and the level of acrimony in the land, indeed portended grave danger to the unity of the country. There was so much bad blood, small arms proliferation, threats of civil disobedience and formation of parallel government and indeed readiness for ‘War’ that held the promise of claiming several lives.
The campaigns by various political parties lost steam. Rather than focus on ideas, policies and programmes, appeal to ethnicity, religion and cultures, took the front burner. In some parts of the North, anyone who was perceived to be supporting a candidate other than their own, was tagged an enemy and risked losing everything after the outcome. That flogged many into line.
There were also tales of illegal militia training and stockpiling of weapons in readiness to raise hell once the electoral outcome was unfavourable. In other climes, non- indigenes were forced to return to their areas of origin to avoid likely annihilation.
Such was the scenario when the elections of March 28, 2015 took place. It was a project that should produce a President and Commander-In-Chief of the Armed Forces of Nigeria and members of the National Assembly. The two leading political parties, the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC) were virtually at each other’s throat in the scramble for power.
Interestingly, the highest position in the land, which both parties were scrambling for, was not vacant. There, indeed, was an incumbent, in the person of Dr. Goodluck Ebelle Jonathan. In that position, going by antecedents and indeed rulership style of previous Nigerian leaders,  Jonathan could, in many ways, influence the electoral process in his favour.
As Command-In-Chief, he could deploy troops to ‘enemy areas’ and reduce votes by disenfranchising many. He could also interfere with the electoral body, by sacking suspected black-legs, and replacing them with trusted friends that would deliver. More than that he could frustrate the purchase and use of card readers, and instead do the familiar, prepare results for announcement. But he didn’t.
Instead, in months leading to the polls, former President Jonathan repeatedly assured Nigerians that the electoral process would be free, fair and credible and promised never to interfere with the work of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). Secondly, he assured that no one’s ambition, not even his, was worth any one’s blood. Of course, those were promises African leaders often made but were never compelled to keep.
Jonathan was under no compulsion to deviate from such leaders’ double-speak. But when the early results showed unfavourable outcome, the incumbent President, and Commander-In-Chief, did the extra-ordinary, what no Nigerian Presidential candidate had ever done, not to talk of a sitting President: He called his opponent, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari to congratulate him, something even Buhari could not have done if both were to change positions.
The implications of that early concession of defeat were indeed huge. First, he should have known that his presidency was the first by a Niger Deltan since independence and after years of violent agitation against marginalisation, discrimination and indeed socio-economic strangulation, in spite of the fact that the area accounted for over 80 per cent of the country’s foreign exchange earnings. Thus, he carried with him the hopes and fears of the people of the oil bearing region.
Secondly, knowing the kind of exuberance that new administrations often demonstrate, the former President should have known that most, if not all, those who worked with him stood the risk of being witch-hunted, to fulfil the initial threats of vendetta and vindictiveness which the various political party campaigns held.
Thirdly, President Jonathan, did not consider the fate of the states and geo-political zones that invested their votes in his re-election, instead of his opponent’s. In a country where a politician sees himself as a partisan tin-god, even after elections when, he ‘should belong to no one and belong to everyone,’ it was indeed a deadly gamble to expose such supporters to the now familiar post election marginalisation and discrimination.
Within barely months into his Presidency, Gen Muhammadu Buhari seems set to teach Jonathan and his supporters how not to concede defeat in sacrifice for peace. In course of his recent US visit, Buhari did not mince words when he said “… Constituencies that gave me 95 per cent cannot in all honesty be treated equally, on some issues, with constituencies that gave me five per cent. I think these are political realities. While certainly there will be justice for everybody, but the people who voted, and made their votes count, they must feel the government has appreciated the effort they put in putting the government in place”.
Ironically, in all his previous three attempts at the Presidency, Gen Buhari won nearly all the Northern States. That meant, former President Jonathan lost those States to the general in the 2011 elections, yet virtually all development projects ranging from Railways, Almajiri Schools and indeed new Federal Universities were sited in those areas.
The Niger Delta, where, Jonathan hails from, and which voted massively for him could not boast of 30 per cent of the worth Buhari’s North-Western Zone enjoyed. And that became Jonathan’s waterloo.
In campaigns after campaigns, prior to the elections, former Rivers State Governor, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi challenged the former President to point to development projects initiated by his administration, completed and commissioned for the Niger Delta peoples’ use. Amaechi, said he was opposing Jonathan’s re-election bid because his presidency had not proven to be a blessing to those who voted for him.
Is that what Buhari plans to correct? Developing first, those areas that gave him 95 per cent votes; reserving all plum appointments for them and indeed encouraging them to vote same way, in next elections? Conversely, abandoning the South East and South-South to their fate?
A fate, compounded by an early concession by their own, in sacrifice for national peace?
Sadly, Jonathan is also not spared.
This is because, President Buhari, whose previous promise to Nigerians was that all stolen public funds would be re-covered under his anti-corruption drive, has decided to probe only and only the Jonathan administration, as a reward for the former President’s democratic  maturity and statesmanship.
Nigerians can still recall the Hallibuton scam, for which all foreign collaborators were punished in their own countries, while all Nigerian actors still walk the land freely. An administration that prides itself with the toga of fighting corruption, wants to limit its searchlight to six years.
This is why many Nigerians feel that Buhari’s resolve amounts to ingratitude, personal vendetta and political vindictiveness. Not only is the approach selective in justice delivery, it amounts to punishing a patriot for his statesmanly disposition to an electoral outcome.
My Agony is that most of those hanging around the President in the name of party solidarity are indeed no less corrupt than Jonathan’s Ministers, whom Buhari seeks to probe, convict and punish. By all means.
Any probe must be holistic and not targeted at a former President, whose geo-political zone accounted for and still accounts for the economic survival of the country but which resources were managed to its exclusion until the last six years, yet without real gains.