If Jonathan runs…

The title of today’s column borrows from the very first (preview) edition of Weekly Trust newspaper, published in January, 1998. The paper debuted with the front-page story “If Abacha Runs…” penned by the inimitable Bashir Y. Ibrahim. Obviously, the circumstances are different today. Nigeria is no longer a dictatorship and the subject in question, former […]

The title of today’s column borrows from the very first (preview) edition of Weekly Trust newspaper, published in January, 1998. The paper debuted with the front-page story “If Abacha Runs…” penned by the inimitable Bashir Y. Ibrahim.

Obviously, the circumstances are different today. Nigeria is no longer a dictatorship and the subject in question, former president Goodluck Jonathan, does not have a chokehold on power while seeking to self-perpetuate. In fact, it is not entirely clear if he really wants to run or not. President Jonathan has not publicly declared his intention. But despite weeks of speculation and some political manoeuvring to position him as the PDP candidate in the 2027 elections, he has not categorically said he is not interested either. As a Hausa proverb says, if a dog is sniffing about an old shoe, it probably wants to carry it off.

It is within his rights as a citizen to run for the office of the president, as the courts have reiterated yet again. He is a politician who, through the tide of fate, found himself coasting from a deputy governor to the president of the country.

It would seem he is a nice man, the sort who in the 2023 APC primaries would have been advised to sell ice cream. That is probably the problem with Jonathan and it was what torpedoed his presidency and made him the first ever sitting president in the history of the country to lose his re-election bid. He was too nice that he could not stamp his foot down and stop the looting happening right under his nose, or say no to those who abused his geniality to exploit the country. When he needed to act, he pandered to advisers who took advantage of his amiability for their own benefits. For example, when then Central Bank Governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, formally petitioned the president about some $20 billion that the NNPC failed to remit to the federation account in September 2013, all fingers pointed to then Minister of Petroleum, Mrs Diezani Allison-Madueke. Yet, while the petition rattled the nation, and should have warranted an investigation, President Jonathan did not read the room and decided to travel with Mrs Allison-Madueke on holy pilgrimage to Israel in October.

Ancient history, some might say. But our recurrent political amnesia has led us to more quagmire than we can bear. It was what led Nigerians to persistently clamour for the return of “Buhari the Brave”, the lion of corruption, and ended up with Buhari the Nonchalant between 2015 and 2023.

So, what will happen if Jonathan decides to run in 2027? First, he will lose the elections, again, and he will lose face in addition. While in 2015 he became the president who lost the elections but gained enormous respect for graciously conceding and putting the interest of the country ahead of a goading team of his advisers. This time it would be very, very different. He no longer has the paraphernalia of office attached to him. No power of incumbency, as we say here. And worst, is that the PDP that started fracturing under Jonathan’s watch as party leader is almost completely derelict now. Going into the 2015 elections, the PDP under Jonathan had 21 governors, after five had defected to the opposition. today the party has only one.

The party does not have the bandwidth to mount even an unturned mortar for Jonathan to stand on, not to talk of a soapbox, a drum or even one of those elaborate platforms such as that one that collapsed in 2019 when party leaders stood on it and shouted the party slogan.

While Jonathan cannot be faulted for his loyalty to the party that gave him everything on a platter of gold, we cannot ignore that he was a bad party leader. He inherited the party at the peak of its powers and left it on the path of irredeemable collapse.

After he graciously conceded defeat in the 2015 elections, he was lauded as one of the few African leaders to do so and became a regional icon. He saved many lives by that phone call and will forever be a hero for it. He gained status as an international election observer and a respected speaker on affairs of democracy. He has enjoyed more respect than he truly ever commanded as president of Nigeria.

However, there are valid reasons Jonathan lost the elections in 2015. Yes, he may be a good man, but he wasn’t a very good president (To be fair, we haven’t had a good one in a long while). He has some credits though. He oversaw some of the sincerest electoral reforms this country has ever experienced, his government managed to contain the Ebola outbreak and he performed the mathematics of economic rebasing—more a statistical achievement than tangible improvement in the lives of Nigerians.

However, his handling of insecurity was damaging. Under him, Boko Haram took hold, seized a sizeable territory, proclaimed a caliphate and a capital, abducted thousands and detonated bombs wherever and whenever they so pleased. All the time Jonathan danced, denied Chibok, and often seemed out of his depth. There was a shocking lack of fiscal responsibility and nonchalance towards high-level corruption. He often seemed to be played by those he trusted, who had no qualms manipulating the president for their own objective.

One incident that demonstrated this was the Morocco diplomatic debacle in March 2015, when Jonathan’s advisers lied that the president had spoken with the King of Morocco. Not wanting to be dragged into the unfolding Nigerian political soap opera, the Moroccans refuted the claim. Jonathan’s team unwittingly doubled down, prompting a major diplomatic row that culminated in the North Africans recalling their ambassador.

For any country, that is a serious incident and for five days, it was front-page news in the country. But the president didn’t know this was happening. When Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, paid him a courtesy visit and asked him about the row, Jonathan jumped from his chair “as if it were on fire.” It was the first time he was hearing of it.

Again, to be fair, Jonathan would not be the first Nigerian president to be cocooned by his advisers and shielded from reality. Sadly, his successor suffered the same fate and Nigeria paid dearly for these disconnects.

No doubt Jonathan made some mistakes during his presidency. I am sure he has reflected on some of these and perhaps realised the extent of the deception he was led into by his trusted advisers. If he had learned from the mistake of his past, we have not seen evidence of that.

What makes him a better leader now than he was then? Many people thought Buhari’s three-decade hiatus outside power was a learning curve for him, one that would make him a better leader, but we saw in his eight years of misrule that was not the case.

For President Jonathan, running for president on the deflated rubber boat that the PDP is today will be a grave mistake, one designed to milk him as a cash cow for smarter politicians. If he agrees to be used in this way, it could only mean one thing—he had not learned from the way he was used during his presidency.

I know Nigeria is in a dire strait right now and all good Nigerians want to see something change. However, this change ought to be strategic. The task before Jonathan is to first help rebuild a credible opposition, where he can demonstrate his leadership ability, and position the opposition to make Nigeria’s democracy competitive and give Nigerians genuine options at the polls. Anything short of that would be a perpetuation of the bad decisions that characterised his governance. Goodluck Jonathan is the most educated man to govern this country. With that education, his experience in office and his years of reflection, he should know that there are more ways to help Nigeria than running for president.