Her Profane Excellency

(1) Patience Faka Jonathan, the wife of President Goodluck Jonathan; (2) Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Finance Minister and Coordinating Minister of the Economy; (3) Diezani Alison-Madueke, Minister of Petroleum; (4) former Aviation Minister, Ms Oduah; and (5) Goodluck Ebele Jonathan himself who is the weakest of the five.The strongest of the five presidents, Patience, has recently been […]

(1) Patience Faka Jonathan, the wife of President Goodluck Jonathan; (2) Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Finance Minister and Coordinating Minister of the Economy; (3) Diezani Alison-Madueke, Minister of Petroleum; (4) former Aviation Minister, Ms Oduah; and (5) Goodluck Ebele Jonathan himself who is the weakest of the five.
The strongest of the five presidents, Patience, has recently been campaigning for her own re-election because she sees herself as a she-president. At no other time in Nigeria has conjugal affinity been so bastardised as to encompass national and international affairs. Because top security chiefs show her courtesy as they must in line with tradition, Mrs Jonathan fancies herself as the commandress-in-chief and has been storm-trooping all over the country.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with a woman supporting her husband’s campaign. The problem with Patience Jonathan is that she insists on dragging the campaign to her low level of tribalism laced with grammatical bombs and squint-eyed logic. And is she rude!
Just the other day she made the headlines for describing her husband’s main opponent, General Muhammadu Buhari as brain dead: “Wetin him dey find again? Him dey drag with him pikin mate,” she said in Pidgin English, “old man wey no get brain, him brain don die patapata”.
She then proceeded to distribute the bribe she had taken to Kogi for the women. In her puerile attempt to rationalise the bribe she said, “This time around, I came to thank you very well. I brought some gift for you, I brought rice, I brought meat, I brought brocade. I brought many things for you. It is not for election but to thank you very well.”
Now let me ask an old-fashioned question: Where did Mrs Jonathan get all the money for all the bribes she has been doling out? Indeed, what is the totality of her earnings in her entire working career? If anyone was still in doubt that the Jonathan government runs on a democratisation of bribes, here is a piece of evidence.
Earlier in Calabar she had urged her supporters to stone anyone who chanted the slogan of the opposition, “Change”. She had directed, “Anybody that come and tell you change, stone that person…” The thugs in her homestead of Okrika have obviously taken her directive to heart as they have violently disrupted every rally of the opposition APC in the area. And, irony of ironies, Mrs Jonathan insists on being addressed as ‘Mama Peace’!
Of the thousands of comments condemning Mrs Jonathan on social media, the one that caught my attention was written by one Ebong Etim of the University of Uyo: “The First Lady is not showing the good example we expected from her by publicly abusing another woman’s husband (Buhari) in the name of politics. Most of her utterances have not been helpful to the course of PDP and GEJ…unfortunately nobody is telling her the truth.”
Another Nigerian, Kazeem Alayande wrote, “What do you expect? She can never respect another woman’s husband, let alone an elderly person. If she has elders at home, she can never call GMB brain dead!” Yet another commentator simply put Mrs Jonathan’s comments down to “a patent lack of good breeding”.
But she can find succour in her party’s endorsement as the PDP has declared that it backs Patience Jonathan’s statement all the way.
It is easy to see the trajectory of how a few people – friends, family and political associates, have rebranded President Jonathan as president of an ethnic group, president of a religion, president of a minority cabal, president of a party without morality.
President Jonathan seems to have made up his mind that the only way he can win the forthcoming elections is by securing the endorsement of all sorts of groups, including the traditional institution. He has gone round Yorubaland, seeking blessings from the royal fathers, the latest being the show at the Ooni of Ife’s palace where some traditional rulers gathered to ‘bless’ him. The forthcoming elections would prove to Jonathan’s advisers that they don’t know Yorubaland at all.
The Crown Prince of Benin Kingdom, Prince Eheneden Erediauwa, had to come out of his royal shell last week when he warned the Peoples Democratic Party to stop using his visit to President Goodluck Jonathan as campaign material. The prince urged the public to discountenance the use of his pictures, images, audio and video to campaign for votes, saying he was not a member of any political party.
As further proof of my earlier thesis that there was a deliberate reaching out to tribal groups, Ralph Uwazurike of the Movement for the Survival of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) recently added his voice to those of the Oodua Peoples’ Congress (OPC) and some other tribal groups seeking relevance and unearned affluence from Jonathan. He pleaded with Igbo people to vote for Jonathan and even went a mile further – he said he would support Jonathan to run for a third term in 2019!
The ruling PDP continues to show its incompetence even in demonising perceived opponents. Last week a sponsored group stormed selected media houses ostensibly to  canvass support for the military. It was clear to anyone with a quarter-brain that it was a sponsored group. One of the hired protesters, Lawal Mohammed, a suya seller, lamented the non-payment of the agreed N1,000 for his services by the PDP operatives.
The aim of the protest was to pitch the military against those media houses. But all Nigerians are in full support of the military but they disapprove of the incompetence of the commander-in-chief.
Even as Jonathan’s re-election bid has become the most money-spinning industry in town, there are some former Jonathanians who have found their voices after ruminating over how fate dealt them a cruel hand. MEND’s Henry Okah recently made public his assessment of President Jonathan from a South African jail: “It is difficult to speak about President Jonathan without saying something uncomplimentary. I truthfully find him timid and cowardly. His discussions reveal a lack of intellectual depth… I warned Nigerians about Goodluck Jonathan but some people assumed I was speaking in anger and arrogance … There is little difference in his speeches and that of Asari (Dokubo).”
I challenge Her Profane Excellency to reply this jibe.