Jonathan as hostage

I celebrated the peace pact signed by Jonathan and Buhari last week. Thanks to Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary-General and Emeka Anyaoku, former Commonwealth Secretary-General for their wisdom in midwifing what will go down in history as one of the important interventions that cleared the way for peaceful elections in 2015. The US embassy in […]

I celebrated the peace pact signed by Jonathan and Buhari last week. Thanks to Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary-General and Emeka Anyaoku, former Commonwealth Secretary-General for their wisdom in midwifing what will go down in history as one of the important interventions that cleared the way for peaceful elections in 2015.
The US embassy in Abuja was as impressed as many operatives in the diplomatic circuit. A statement by the embassy read: “We encourage all candidates and political leaders across Nigeria to make similar pledges. We remain committed to working with Nigeria to strengthen its democratic institutions in the years to come.  As part of that effort, we continue to support the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in its crucial task of achieving transparent, credible, inclusive and non-violent elections in February.”
While foreigners were offering to help us achieve credible and peaceful elections, one of the president’s godfathers, Chief Edwin Clark, declared that the pact would not succeed. He said the accord meant nothing to him. In his view, Candidate Muhammadu Buhari, ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo and electoral umpire Attahiru Jega were the problem with Nigeria. Clark says Jonathan is spotless and has been a great president.
It is so easy to see why President Jonathan has underachieved if Chief Clark is one of his major counsellors. And he is. I have had cause in the recent past to appeal to both Chief Clark and Professor Ango Abdullahi to respect themselves and stop tendentious pronouncements. While Abdullahi seems to have decelerated, Clark is revving up hate full-throttle.
The conspiracy theories they’ve woven around every perceived misstep of the president are legion. And it seems Jonathan himself believes the fable that he is the best president Nigeria has ever had (LOL). That it took the president 274 days after the kidnap of 219 female students by Boko Haram to visit Borno State and commiserate with the people shows that he believed the yarn that the insurgency was directed at his administration.
The near-assassination of Buhari by the same terrorist organisation last year was apparently not enough to convince the theorists. They are still peddling the ‘we versus them’ fable around even after the terror attacks in France for which our president commiserated with that country even when he had not yet at the time commiserated with his fellow countrymen suffering the same terror in Nigeria’s North-East. The president ought to have made that trip at worst 270 days ago. But better late than never.
But I rather enjoyed Chief Clark’s missile directed at Obasanjo. As I always say, it is not prophetic to say that the wily soldier-turned-beautiful-bride-of-democracy will shortly launch another of his notorious scud missiles at Clark and his protégé. Clark invents the enemies; Jonathan that suffers the consequences. Remember, Clark and all the other tribal champions who have clearly cast the president in the mould of an ethnic president are not candidates in this election.
There is no clearer evidence of the panic in the Jonathan camp than Clark’s declaration that INEC Chairman, Attahiru Jega was working for the rival APC. The fixation in the camp of the ruling party seems to be that an allegation was tantamount to conviction. Jega is supposed to be guilty because Clark says so.
Could it be that the old PDP godfather is preparing the minds of his acolytes for electoral drubbing? Those threatening to destroy Nigeria if Jonathan loses the elections do the president grievous harm. Nigerians will not be blackmailed. Unfortunately it appears that they are too big for the president to rein in. They call the shots on his behalf. He is their hostage.
Despite the fact that blackmail and fear-mongering deployed in support of the president have failed to sway the discerning, it seems the ruling party doesn’t have any other card to play. In the last two weeks they’ve been using the names of journalists jailed through Decree 4 by the Buhari-led military government in 1984 to make their point that Buhari was a mere despot. But such cheap tactics always backfire. And it surely did when Tunde Thompson, one of the affected journalists, shoved the blackmail down their throats.
Thompson admonished those using his ordeal as election weapon against Buhari to stop.
“It was the head of NSO that ordered our arrest. I think it’s now over 30 years, people should learn to be charitable; they should learn to forgive and let bygones be bygones especially when we know the truth about who did what. I will like to say that Buhari didn’t order my arrest, so I bear no grudge against him.”
Thompson said his support for Buhari was borne out of his conviction that Nigeria needed a person of Buhari’s sterling qualities to stem the wave of corruption, economic meltdown and impunity that has characterised President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration.
Thompson said if Buhari became president he would not tolerate sacred cows as routinely happens under President Jonathan. “Some even seem to be too powerful. They are sacred cows and they cannot be tamed. Is that not dangerous? I believe that a person like Buhari at this time can call anybody to order and some people are afraid of that.”
Nothing betrays the level of desperation of Jonathanians like the recent circulation of a forged ‘medical report’ purported to be that of Buhari in which the patient is said to have cancer of the prostate. The Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital has disowned the report, which was said to have been issued by ‘Ahmadu Bello Teaching Hospital’, as a cheap fake, noting that such reports usually emanate from the laboratory technology section, not handwritten by a faceless medical doctor. Garba Shehu, spokesman for the Buhari campaign, has also noted that General Buhari has not visited that hospital in the last five years. O Desperado, vendor of lies, failure will always mount sentinel at thy doorpost!
In 1993, doomsday prophets in the mould of Chief Clark predicted that the elections would not hold or that violence would disrupt the exercise. That contest ended up being the freest and fairest and most peaceful in the annals of Nigeria. So will it be with the 2015 elections.