“I was actually in that valley on
March 28, 2015. I did not want Nigeria to slide into a theatre of war, with
his fellow county men and woman dying,
and many more pouring into other nations
in Africa and beyond, as refugees.
In fact, it became so disturbing that some
interest groups in the United States
began to predict indeed, many Nigerians did buy into this doomsday prophesy as
they began to brace themselves for the worst. As the President, I reminded
myself that the Government I led had invested so much effort into building our
country. I worked hard with my top officials to encourage Nigerians and
non-Nigerians to invest in our country to be able to provide jobs and improve
the lives of our people” said
ex-President Goodluck Jonathan, during a dinner in his honour by Cercle
Diplomatique, Geneva, Switzerland recently.
In the aftermath of the March 2015
Elections, when ex-President Mr Jonathan conceded defeat to Mr Buhari, the
immediate reaction of his supporters, both in his political party and outside,
was to hail Mr Jonathan as an uncommon African hero, a man who loved his
country so much that he did not want it to slide into anarchy, or worse, a
civil war, where there will be blood on the streets, so he conceded defeat
gracefully.
To these champions, they cited the
fact that on previous elections where Mr Buhari had lost elections (three times
before 2015), there had been violence and deaths on the streets, most notably
in some parts of the north of Nigeria, allegedly instigated by the words of Mr
Buhari then. Of course, there was no such violence in the southern part of the
country, east and west or even the middle belt.
I always concur with them that this was rather unfortunate and really,
at that time, I was very much against Mr Buhari considering what appeared to be
his desperation to get to power.
I really cannot understand the cerebral
reasons behind Mr Jonathan's assumed heroics for conceding defeat. He ran in an
election in a democratic setting; the results came and he lost, so what else
should he have done? Hold on to power despite the result which showed more than
15 million Nigerians preferred Mr Buhari to the 12 million who voted for him?
He must concede, of course! There is nothing heroic about it.
Yes, if he had not conceded and the
country had been ripped about by violence, all blame would be on Mr Jonathan,
so he really should be commended for this. It is not enough to say that at
previous elections, (which were obviously rigged by the then ruling party) that
Mr Buhari did not concede defeat and violence was the result, so he did not
want to put Nigeria through this pain. But apparently, Mr Jonathan is still
besieged by those sycophants, political jobbers and bad advisers who ensured
his term in government was an absolute disaster for his own countrymen and
women.
Mr Jonathan was roundly rejected and handily
defeated in the polls, what choice did he really have other than to concede
defeat and acknowledge the winner? Jonathan ascribing any other reason for
conceding to Buhari other than his loss at the poll is saying so much about
nothing.
On the other hand, with all these
going around the world and saying things like this is nothing but another
malaise of the typical African ruler’s mind and notion that they must always be
in power; win or lose, wanted by their people or not; a total disregard for
democratic norms and values and for their own people.
What sympathy, respect or laurel does
Mr Jonathan hope to gain from these statements of “heroically” conceding defeat
in a democratic election, if I may ask again, because I do not see any? He’s
rather making nonsense of democracy in his country and confirming to the whole
world, again and again, that it is a normal thing for an African leader to refuse
to relinquish power in an election. It is sad.
When citing what happened after Mr
Buhari lost elections previously, Mr Jonathan’s supporters failed to remind us
that Mr Buhari was not in power, but in opposition, and had no control over his
supporters who took to the streets, maiming and killing, and that security of
the whole country is still the responsibility of government. Here, let me say
that may the souls of the innocents that lost their lives in these mindless
violence, rest in peace and the Lord provide succour to the family they left
behind.
How can we describe the way Mr
Jonathan conceded defeat in any way as 'heroic', with all the 'failed' intrigues
to scuttle the elections, the last of the intrigues being the Orubebe's infamous
act, that, by divine power of God, hit the rocks; the stupendous amount of
money – mostly in American dollars, that was spent (and which we now know ended
in the private pockets of his chief campaigners) ...and the 'road' got blocked
inevitably?
There were elections in Tanzania,
South Africa, Ghana and power changed hands in these countries, even Cote
D’Ivoire by force; what's so special about Mr Jonathan conceding defeat, after
his six-year myopic, very mundane leadership style?
The special thing about the election
is a people's determination to elect who they desire against all odds, whether
right or wrong, that's what needs celebrating, not a very spurious and
self-congratulatory “heroic” concession of defeat. This is not what Mr Jonathan
needs to tell us at this time; what he needs to tell Nigerians, and indeed the
world, is how his government managed to be so corrupt and incompetent that the
economy of the country was on the edge of collapse.
Mr Jonathan will do well to discard
this delusion of a hero, if he’s to maintain any further dignity from whatever
little is left. If the people who misadvised him in six years of power are
still the ones advising him, I am afraid he’s on the verge of being consigned
to the dustbin of history with massive ignominy.
I would have loved for Mr Jonathan to
go down in history as a different kind of hero, even super-hero; but, let us
face it, his six years in office was more of zero. Many Nigerians, including
me, took to the cold streets of London, and other cities like New York in 2010
to demand that Mr Jonathan assume the Presidency after the intrigues played out
by the cabal of the now late Umar Yar ‘Adua; and in 2011, after promising a
“breath of fresh air”, we were, including me again, conned into voting for Mr
Jonathan. The returns and promises of our faith in him are what we are
experiencing today with great pains, poverty, dire economic straits, extreme
corruption, insensitivity of his officials, lieutenants and acolytes, not to
talk of a destruction of our moral values, dilapidation of infrastructures and
a decayed socio-economic fabric.
What separates Mr Jonathan’s hero from
Mr Jonathan’s villain? As things are panning out and a lot of murky details are
being unearthed about Mr Jonathan’s tenure in office, isn’t he turning out to
be more of a villain than a hero? How
successful was his hero anyway? And are heroes such as him, if you insist on
calling that, successful anyway?
Mr Jonathan should not be going about
propagating that label of hero. He has no claim to gallantry based on conceding
defeat in a democratic election. Let him and his followers a genuine epic
reason for him to label a superman.
Since 2010, our former President went
from hero to zero.
Akintokunbo A Adejumo MSc, Dip Mngt, CIHM, MCMI, FITP
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