Jonathan’s Thanos moment

In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a massively successful American media franchise based on serial adaptions of popular comic books, the morally polarizing supervillain, Thanos, gloats over the dilemma of his victims in a memorable encounter. “You could not live with your own failure,” he says, unsmiling, and then asks, “Where did that bring you? Back […]

In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a massively successful American media franchise based on serial adaptions of popular comic books, the morally polarizing supervillain, Thanos, gloats over the dilemma of his victims in a memorable encounter. “You could not live with your own failure,” he says, unsmiling, and then asks, “Where did that bring you? Back to me.”  He’s maddened by the ingratitude of the surviving half of the universe he has destroyed, and whose heroes hunt him to undo the tragedy. 

Last Friday, the Vanguard newspaper reported that a group of protesters “stormed” the Abuja office of former President Goodluck Jonathan, one of Nigeria’s fiercely-opposed leaders, and begged him to run for President. Again. They attributed their decision to reject him in 2015 to “deception” and “brainwashing” by his successor’s campaign team. “Now we know better,” their spokesman was reported to have said, adding that “under Jonathan, the minimum wage could buy one or two bags of rice. What do we have today? We are begging President Jonathan to forgive us, we have realized our mistakes, we want him back to complete what he started (sic).”

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Acknowledging the theatrical performance of the “repentant” citizens, the former President did what any politician in his position would’ve done—that he could neither confirm nor deny that he was running for President, that a process was ongoing, and then asked the visitors to “watch out.” It’s a tacit confirmation of a long-suppressed rumour of his interest in returning to Nigeria’s Seat of Power. I liken that moment to Thanos’s mocking encounter with earth’s heroes, The Avengers, where he teased their failure to find a solution other than one through him. 

Jonathan had every right to enjoy that moment and to gloat as he chose. He handed over the affairs of a burning country to self-styled progressives who have failed to rescue it as promised impressionable voters ahead of the 2015 general elections. Beyond the macroeconomic disasters, and the implication on everyday citizens, the hopeless disintegration of the country’s internal security under retired critics once fond of rushing to organize world press conferences over every state of killings in Jonathan’s days has brought to the fore a disturbing irony. 

In the early years of Buhari’s government, his supporters were quick to cite and celebrate the absence of bomb explosions in urban centers as what set him apart from the “clueless” predecessor, and it used to make sense. But, as the years rolled by, with households previously grateful to Buhari for the silence of bombs losing loved ones to bandits, and sometimes permanently, the difference became indelibly blurred. What began as sporadic abductions of cross-state travelers have become a sophisticated criminal economy, and it’s even more frightening that this seems to have defied the government itself. 

Buhari’s government has transitioned from its enthusiasm to paint Jonathan’s government as the evil opposite to comparisons of the severity of either’s poor performances across sectors. It’s no longer fashionable to carpet, say, Jonathan’s fiscal policies, especially the depreciation of Naira, when Buhari too inherited a Naira trading at about N190 per dollar and has it at about 590 now in the parallel market. Neither is there a moral high ground for politicians that once played down and politicized fuel subsidies only to take charge and find themselves held to ransom by the fuel subsidy regime. They also inherited an economy where petrol was selling at N85 per litre, and now struggling to maintain the N165 they’ve imposed on the country. 

Similarly, Nigeria’s latest position in the global Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) of Transparency International, which ranks the most and the least corrupt countries in the world every year, is a reminder that the anti-graft war, which the Buhari government once marketed as its defining trait,  has been a sham. Nigeria, the organisation revealed, has dropped down five places from its 2020 ranking, which is a historical low, and it’s now the 154th of 180 countries assessed in the order of decreasing degree o corruption. The validity of this ranking is the realization that almost everything for which Buhari’s predecessor was maligned is still in practice, the difference being mostly the names and party affiliation of the perpetrators. 

Nothing underlines Buhari’s failures since assuming power about seven years ago as much as the ongoing yearning for Jonathan’s return in some quarters, even if by sponsored groups. What’s scarier is that such clamouring for his participation in the 2023 election isn’t seen as absurd by even those who used to rush to write and believe ridiculous stories of his complicity in the Boko Haram horror. Jonathan was Nigeria’s prime supervillain ahead of the 2015 elections, ridiculed by everyday Nigerians, the western media, and the Obama administration.

But it would be fatal self-deception for Jonathan to believe the words of those crawling back to him to ask him to run for President again. Although it’s his constitutional right to do so, he must not interpret the call as vindication of his government. He was an evidently-disastrous President. The problem is that Buhari has failed to do better and Nigerians are paying for failing to stop him after his first uninspiring tenure. 

What Jonathan needs before setting out to run is a genuine friend to refresh his memories of what transpired while he was in power and the hopelessness that characterized his reign. He must be made to understand why he was nicknamed Mr. Clueless and mocked persistently for lacking the idea and confidence to confront the chaos that facilitated his sack from Aso Rock.    

If it would make Jonathan feel better, he should console himself with a beautiful lie that Nigeria doesn’t deserve him, and that should also be his response to those asking him to run for President. He’s one experiment Nigeria has tried, and it was a well-documented disaster. He may choose to laugh at what’s become of his successor, but even Thanos’s second attempt to “create a new (universe) teeming with life,” which he expects to be “a grateful universe,” ends up as his final show. Whoever rushes into a collapsing oven after being torched isn’t thinking straight.