Nigeria Content Online

President Goodluck Jonathan urgently
needs to realize that the reputations, and legacies, of political leaders are
built – or destroyed – not only by them, but also by those that surround them.

Last
Wednesday, May 12, the media prominently reported the statement by Cairo
Ojougboh, the president’s special Adviser on National Assembly Matters, that
Mr. Jonathan will run for President in 2011.

“Mr.
President is a PDP president and he is a member of PDP, and Mr. President will
run under the PDP,” Mr. Ojougboh said, adding that “there is no moral
justification to ask Jonathan not to run.”

Hours
after that emphatic declaration Mr. Ojougboh was back in the news, with a press
statement claiming that the views he expressed earlier were his, espoused in
his personal capacity, and not on behalf of the President. In essence, he
disavowed his earlier statement. “Further to my interview earlier this morning,
let me state that at no time did I say that Mr. President mandated me to say he
will run in 2011. For the avoidance of doubt, I said the President can run if
he so decides and that it will be unfair to ask him not to run. If he decides
to run I will vote for him. All what I said is my personal belief as a private
citizen with the right to freedom of expression.”

We
have reason to believe that Mr. Ojougboh, by telling us that he was speaking on
behalf of himself and not the President, is being economical with the truth. It
is doubtful that a senior Presidential aide would, in making a statement about
a matter as potentially controversial as the President’s decision to go against
the party’s zoning agreement, conveniently forget to immediately qualify the
statement as personal.

It
appears that Mr. Ojougboh was knowingly playing the mischievous game of testing
the waters; and that the whole incident may have been engineered by the
Jonathan camp to gauge the reactions of Nigerians to the possibility of a 2011
Presidential campaign by him. Politicians have been known to create scenarios
like this, knowing that there is always the escape hatch of denial, of claiming
to have been misquoted or misinterpreted.

It is
this kind of ruse that former President Olusegun Obasanjo employs, years after
his failed bid to extend his rule to an unconstitutional third term. When Mr.
Obasanjo today boasts that he never wanted a third term, his ready evidence is
that not once did he ever hint or say that he was interested, and that is of
course, true.

But
we recall that a prominent tactic of that era was for the President himself to
remain silent and aloof while his aides and hangers-on huddled beneath the
umbrella of “personal opinion”, “personal belief” and the “right to freedom of
expression” to push and sell the 3rd term idea.

Mr.
Jonathan, it appears, is borrowing that disingenuous strategy. Posters are appearing
in Abuja and other towns, and all sorts of faceless groups have been calling on
the President to run in 2011 or throwing their weight behind his “intentions”
to run. Like Obasanjo in 2006, Mr. Jonathan, while eagerly dissociating himself
from these groups (through press statements issued by his aides), refuses to
make the much-needed categorical statement to put an end to rumours and
speculations. And to think that elections are only a few months away?

If,
on the other hand, if we chose to believe what Mr. Ojougboh would like us to
believe, that all he did was to in his capacity as a private citizen, make an
innocent personal statement, which subsequently suffered the misfortune of
being misinterpreted by the press and public, then we have to confront the
crucial question that arises regarding the quality of presidential counsel
surrounding the President. A senior Presidential adviser who does not hesitate
to make bold assertions about controversial matters regarding his principal is
clearly a bull in the Presidential china shop, and a staff that the President
would clearly be better off without. One wonders how many other such aides
surround the President, and how soon it will be before they cause him
irredeemable harm.

It is clear that
however we look at this incident, Mr. Ojougboh goofed. President Jonathan also
erred in more than one way: in not being more strident in his rebuke of his
aide; and in not clearing the air once and for all on his plans for the future.
He must be made to realise that years from now his legacy will be defined by
the way he has chosen to deal with touchy issues like this one.