Jonathan: a man for a time like this

why God brought a humble, mild mannered man, colourless and seemingly clueless man like him to be president. There are some who even voiced it out aloud to themselves or their wives that they were so sure they would have performed better if God had deemed it fit to make them president instead of Jonathan.Many […]

why God brought a humble, mild mannered man, colourless and seemingly clueless man like him to be president. There are some who even voiced it out aloud to themselves or their wives that they were so sure they would have performed better if God had deemed it fit to make them president instead of Jonathan.
Many must have given up wondering why it was Jonathan and not themselves and some other better qualified person sitting on that exalted Nigerian throne in Aso Rock. As a man interested in spiritual matters I must confess that I spent the better part of Yar’Adua and Jonathan’s presidencies wondering why God brought to the throne two such weak and completely unassertive leaders. I often consoled myself that the ways of God are past finding out. At certain times, I hear people blaming Obasanjo saying it is all his fault. That he singlehandedly imposed the two men on Nigeria so that he could control them. But like Archimedes who discovered a great principle of physics in a bath tub and shouted Eureka, meaning he had found it, I can now say very confidently  that the emergence of Yar’Adua and Jonathan was divine.
Yar Adua’s divine mission was to implement amnesty for the Niger Delta militants and bring peace to that region and in turn pave way for economic prosperity for the nation. Nigerians, with their notorious short memory, have failed to appreciate the severe nose-diving of the nation’s economy as a result of the militancy in the Niger Delta and how our economic fortune changed for the significant better when the amnesty programme and its component parts of rehabilitation and reintegration of the deprived Niger Delta agitators was worked out. Which is why Yar’Adua came, was terminally ill yet the sick and the weak man succeeded where the likes of a four-star General and one of the most powerful Nigerian presidents yet, Olusegun Obasanjo, failed. God’s battles are not won by the swift or the strong. They are usually won by those who have been specially engraced by God himself to fulfil a particular mission.
On his part, Jonathan was destined to come at the time he came and for the period he stayed to mid-wife the change that God was bringing to the country. God knew Nigeria was going to face a change and brought a man like Jonathan who will not play a Gbagbo that would bring about tears, blood and sorrow upon Nigeria. And that explains why Jonathan has become an authentic Nigerian hero not for the many wise and thoughtful things he has done; he is not a hero for the many bold initiatives he undertook to take his nation to the next level; being no orator, he is not a hero for any stirring messages he was able to deliver to galvanise his compatriots to roll up their sleeves and work to save the nation. No. He became a hero for the one foolish thing others in his shoes would have been tempted to do but for which he was wise and gracious enough to have resisted to do.
It is in this light that I want Nigerians, especially the incoming administration of Muhammadu Buhari, to see Jonathan. The one man in Nigeria who should be most grateful to Jonathan is Muhammadu Buhari. Buhari owes Jonathan a debt of personal gratitude because he, Jonathan, has saved Buhari the blushes of inheriting a fractious country; he saved Buhari the trauma of ascending the throne on the skulls of compatriots.
This is why a humble me is here suggesting to Buhari to treat Jonathan with honour and deep respect. He should resist the temptation and the pressure from hawks surrounding him from treating Jonathan in a manner that even remotely shows disrespect and dishonor. He should stop ruing the past and blaming our failures on past leaders including Jonathan and some other PDP governments before his.
Rather, Buhari has Jonathan, Yar Adua and the rest of the PDP leaders who messed things up for the past 16 years to thank. If they were so brilliant and able there would have been no need for the emergence of a Buhari. Nigerians are aware of our plight. In fact some of us citizens are more acutely aware of how terrible things are in some sectors of our national life much more than our leaders like Buhari can ever be aware of. For instance, Buhari cannot queue up in a petrol filling station for up to six hours in order to fill his car.
It is not re-assuring at all when our leaders join us in complaining as the president-elect did recently when he told a delegation that visited him that past leaders have not built socio-economic infrastructure for Nigeria and that they misused the tons of trillions of Naira that came into the national coffers. We know all this which is why we brought Buhari to correct or fix all the broken things in Nigeria.
My humble, patriotic charge is that the president -elect should spend more of his time working out a big plan for returning Nigeria to glory. As the late Tajudeen Abdulraheem always urged Africans, we should stop complaining and agonizing and start organizing. We complain too much in this country which is why we have very little time to pray, plan and prepare to execute policies, plans and projects that would uplift our nations. Those who spend almost all their time blaming the past will not have a very good chance to create a good future