Nigeria Content Online

While
President Goodluck Jonathan plays Hamlet, others are not so coy. His
former boss and mentor, Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, who said, “he calls my
wife mummy and my wife takes him as a son,” warned that if Mr. Jonathan
does not run, “the Ijaw man will be disappointed. This is not a threat;
we shall wait for him to come home. So let him listen to us as his
people.” Anyway, it is almost certain that the president will run.
Aides hint that an announcement will come after Ramadan, and his wife,
Patience, was not too subtle when she visited Delta State recently. “If
you love my husband, then go and register so you can vote.” They say
she is the ‘real’ politician in the family so emissaries from Bayelsa
State, led by the speaker, Werinipre Seibarugu, went to plead with her
to forgive the state governor, Timpreye Sylva, for failing to fall
behind her husband fast enough. According to reports, “though she is
still angry, feelers indicate that she is already reconsidering her
stand against the governor.” So run Mr. Jonathan will, for a rash of
reasons, and pressure so unreasonable he could claim, like Tony Blair,
“I can only go one way. I have not got a reverse gear.” Besides, said
Cairo Ojougboh, his special adviser on National Assembly matters who
first broke the news, “there is no moral justification to ask Jonathan
not to run.” There is no moral justification for him to run either. He
cannot claim that he is the best candidate for the job; that he has the
will and wherewithal to solve our economic and social problems; that he
could superintend free and fair elections while running his first
presidential campaign; that his anti-corruption war is not
circumscribed by the charge that his wife was caught trying to launder
13.5 million dollars. Or even that his candidacy will not deepen the
schism within the polity, making the north feel short-changed, betrayed.

“What that will
create is a serious problem in the future,” said Audu Ogbe who chaired
the 2002 meeting where 47 PDP chieftains (two abstained) voted for
zoning to allow the south complete an eight-year tenure. “Because if it
means ‘when we have it, we keep it, it can’t move’ then a suggestion is
being made to the northerners that ‘you’re a bunch of fools for
agreeing to do it in the first place.’” Besides, since he became
president, Mr. Jonathan has not ruled with any vigour, nor shown the
ability to bring new ideas or people to bear on perennial problems.
Even now, one gets the sense that he is being told to run simply
because he can, because he is there now and it is ‘their’ turn. He is
to be the torchbearer of the Ijaws, one chosen by divine grace to
cancel the injustice done to his people. These are hardly lofty reasons.

There is no sign
that Mr. Jonathan, himself, truly desires the job. He appears to be
running to avoid the consequences of not running. But this country does
not need another reluctant president, one pressured into office by
primordial forces. What other pressures will he succumb to when he gets
there?

Some say he wants the job but it is not in his nature to rush; he prefers to tread softly, feeling his way through the maze.

We are supposed to
believe that the fact that four months to elections a sitting president
is too timid to declare his candidacy, is a strategy. As one of his
aides told Reuters, “The president will not declare until he is sure
that he will win.” He is reportedly frustrated by PDP governors who
have refused to give him that kind of assurance. Governors Rotimi
Amaechi, Bukola Saraki, Babangida Aliyu, Mr. Sylva, Emmanuel Uduaghan,
Gbenga Daniel, and Danjuma Goje continue to hedge their bets and to
allegedly chip away at the support of their colleagues. “They will come
to me to pledge their loyalty and endorsements whereas intelligence
reports from their states indicate they have other agenda,” Mr.
Jonathan was quoted as saying at a recent meeting.

This is not good;
it does not show a mastery of the use of power. Mr. President must also
see how his vacillation allowed people like Ibrahim Babangida and Atiku
Abubakar, consummate players, to exploit his weak grasp of the reigns,
challenging him on the platform of his own party.

“The deal I have
with IBB” said Mr. Abukakar, “is that when this has been resolved, we
will enter into a room and then, one person would emerge.” Still, the
president waits, craving the support of powerful men, sending
emissaries to ‘key traditional rulers’, governors, party chieftains,
senators, and other ‘important people’. One day, perhaps sometimes before the elections,he may yet deign to meet with the rest of us, Nigerian people who, presumably,are the ones to vote him into office.

No, Mr. Jonathan is not the one we have been waiting for. Hamlet
should please take his bow, “Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.”