A mother’s ‘painless’ retraction

I took so long to return that my children began to wonder where I was and what might have happened to me. Then they got wind of the fact that I had gone to the market. The driver who took me there and a few other people who saw me walking into the market attested […]

I took so long to return that my children began to wonder where I was and what might have happened to me. Then they got wind of the fact that I had gone to the market. The driver who took me there and a few other people who saw me walking into the market attested to the fact that I had gone shopping. But there was no direct word from me and my husband wasn’t saying a thing.
Then suddenly I returned. I told my children, who gathered to welcome me that though I was glad to be home, I really didn’t go shopping. In fact that particular market that they were told I had gone to, I had never heard its name before and had no idea where it was. My children became confused, why did the driver and several others say I had been to where I had never been? What could they possibly gain from such a lie? But more importantly, where did I really go? They wondered.
However because they were overcome with joy at my safe return, they were willing to let things be. It didn’t matter where I went, they reasoned, since I was now back safe and sound. Life went on as usual and I continued to play my role as a mother. Suddenly I woke up last weekend and decided to give the biggest Owambe in town. I organised this big party/prayer gig and said I wanted to thank God for what happened to me at that market. I began to narrate tales of my ordeal at the market, including the way nine devils chased me around for seven hours and it was only the will of God that saved me.
While my children listen dumbfounded at my admission that I had actually been to that market, I had grown so oblivious to their plight that I was only complaining about how some friends took advantage of my absence to steal my handbag. My children were getting angrier at what appeared to be a retraction of what I had said a few weeks earlier, but I seemed perfectly content with the fact that whoever was who in town had made it to my event. There was no regret in my speech about the lie I had told earlier and no pain in my voice that I had made others seemed like the liars.
The picture I tried to conjure up in our minds was inspired by Dame Patience Jonathan’s thanksgiving and retraction of last Sunday. We all remember how she returned to Nigeria after almost two months of absence, last year, to declare right at the airport that she was nowhere near a hospital in Germany.  Both the online and print publications that reported on her medical trip were made to look like a bunch of liars who concocted stories just to sell their wares.  Now, without prodding of any kind, the First Lady decided to come clean about her medical sojourn overseas.
What is most disturbing about the whole affair is that there was no attempt to apologise to Nigerians for the lies she told on arrival a few months ago, nor was there any move to explain why hiding the truth was necessary then. Like me, in the imaginary tale above, Mrs Jonathan simply took Nigerians for granted. Otherwise she could have said something like ‘I didn’t want to bother you with the ugly details when I returned that was why I said what I said. But now that I feel you have the stomach for it, I have decided to let you know the truth.’  This would have made us feel respected.
But because our feelings and opinions do not matter at all to her, Mrs Jonathan made no reference to her past spin last Sunday. She was more keen to regale us with the story of how she was dead for seven days but was miraculously brought back to life by God; and how she had nine surgeries in just  one month. Hear her: ‘It was not an easy experience for me. I actually died. I passed out for more than a week. My intestines and tummy were opened.’ The gory details notwithstanding the First Lady still failed to make us empathise.
But Dame Patience wasn’t done with us. As if to say that if her special Lazarus Syndrome doesn’t resonate with us, her personal tale of betrayal and grief might, she chose that same occasion to say that friends and associates had betrayed her by selling whatever they could of her belongings, with the hope that she will not survive to return home. Needless to say, not even this bit could make Nigerians forgive her unrepentant retraction of the tale she told.
Finally she went philosophical, saying that God had given her a second chance by raising her from the dead, because she had not finished her assignments on earth. In her own words: ‘He knew that I had not completed the assignments He gave me that was why I was sent back.’ If some of the things Mrs Jonathan has been doing since making this declaration last Sunday are anything to go by, it is doubtful if God’s work is really on the agenda.
A few days ago she led a demonstration of PDP supporters to protest the opposition to her N4 billion African First Ladies Peace mission headquarters in Abuja. Nigerians are opposed to the wastage of public funds on such an unjustifiable venture but the First Lady wants to have that office against all odds; hence her determination to mobilise support for this particular brand of God’s work. The second of such divine assignments was unveiled at the PDP women’s conference which also held this week. Dame Patience announced that no opposition parties can defeat the PDP. In fact a hundred opposition parties cannot defeat the ruling party, according to her.
So, this is all we get from the ‘Mother of the nation’; for being lied at and for being made to look like liars. Welcome to Nigeria, where leaders get away with anything!