JONATHAN: THE RAGE OF A LONELY MAN

The credit for Jonathan’s return to political prominence goes to the APC, reckons Paul Nwabuikwu

Based on newspaper headlines over the past three weeks, Goodluck Jonathan took the bait offered by APC, rolled it around his mouth for some heart stopping moments and then spat it out before it got hooked in his throat. The sigh of relief from supporters and fans around the country who saw the APC offer as a threat to his reputation and legacy could be heard from Abia to Zamfara. 

And thus ended, at least for now, the saga of the comeback of the former president who became a metaphor for pathetic, irredeemable failure in 2015 and then, a few years later, incredibly transformed into perhaps Nigeria’s most popular politician. Life, and especially Nigerian politics, is really stranger than fiction.

The metamorphosis of Jonathan is, of course, an indictment of the government that replaced his, an administration which promised so much and delivered not just little but exacerbated the country’s economic challenges and deepened long standing regional and ethnic cleavages. The primary credit for Jonathan’s comeback must therefore go to the APC. President Buhari is, in a very real sense, Jonathan’s PR manager. Seen through the mirror of his government’s performance, the Jonathan years now seem like paradise lost. The combination of rising poverty and escalating insecurity have made Alhaji Lai Mohammed’s trumpeting of the alleged poor performance of the immediate past government farcical, lacking in credibility. How do you argue against N7,500 for a bag of rice in 2015 vs N30,000 now? How do you spin the steep decline in every important economic metric?

The Jonathan story reminds me of the story a friend told me several years ago. This gentleman stumbled into a birthday event in the former president’s Abuja home. Maybe “celebration” is too grand a word for what happened that day. It was a “walk in and find something to eat and chat” affair. According to this friend who was invited by someone close to the Jonathans, there were about 15 persons present, a sprinkling of friends and relatives. There was no celebrity among them – political, religious, entertainment or any other flavour. It was very low-key affair. By the time this friend departed a couple of hours later, roughly half of the guests were left. What my friend remembers most about that day was Jonathan’s palpable gratitude for the visit and the attention. This was about five years ago, two years after the 2015 election loss to Muhammadu Buhari. He was still in political Siberia, a pariah tainted by loss and defined by failure. As the yawning absence of guests on that day demonstrated, hardly anyone of those who fawned over him during his six years in power considered him worth the investment in time on his birthday. He was very much alone and lonely.

As we already know, all that changed over the past two years as Jonathan’s return to political prominence, initially a rumour, became a reality as some powerful persons in the same political party that made his cluelessness and alleged corruption a winning campaign theme seven years ago made an audacious bid to get him the APC ticket for 2023. Things escalated quickly.

N100m was procured by a “Fulani group”, posters were printed, briefings held and supporters cheered. His political ward in Bayelsa announced that he had registered as an APC member. But the most credible evidence that the whole thing was not an April Fool joke executed during the wrong month was that the former president went on a well-publicized visit to the APC national headquarters to see the party chairman, Alhaji Abdullahi Adamu. His speculated mission was to persuade the party decision makers to accept him as the consensus candidate.

As subsequent developments showed, that mission was not successful. The party big wigs opposed to the move including Tinubu, Osinbajo and other APC aspirants were not going to stand by while the party ticket was handed to Jonathan. But the former president kept his fans, pundits and the public guessing until last week when he went on a foreign trip to escape the clutches of the forces in APC who were still determined to draft him into the race, consensus or not. And those insistent forces are obviously powerful and well resourced. Even though the “Fulani group” claimed that Jonathan’s patriotism and efforts made by his government to uplift their people inspired their support it was clear that the N100m paid for the form was not a contribution by local herders selling cattle. It was realpolitik and cold-blooded calculations. The four-year limit imposed on Jonathan by the constitution as a former president made him an attractive option because he would have no choice but hand over to a northern candidate in 2027.

The question is: why did Jonathan, a man who proved, by word and glorious example in 2015 that he is that rare politician who does not worship power, give serious consideration to coming back as president? Why didn’t he say a quick and outright “no!” to such a problematic offer? Even though he ultimately rejected it, his halo as Nigeria’s Mahatma Gandhi has lost already some shine. So why did he not see the obvious landmines?  Why did he consider it?

The man is in the best position to answer that question. And hopefully he will do so at some point. But while we wait, here a few thoughts. A lot has been said about the resurrection of Jonathan from the ashes of defeat and his rise again to political prominence and, for the past few weeks, electoral relevance. But often forgotten is the huge price he paid. Life after government can be brutal but Jonathan’s was worse than the norm.

The former president was abandoned by friends after 2015, derided and dismissed. Within the PDP, many declared him a coward for chickening out despite the publicly confirmed flaws of the electoral process in 2015. For many professional politicians within the former ruling party whose aspirations came to a crashing end when Jonathan lost, forgiveness was not an option. For the APC propaganda machine, he was the walking, breathing justification for “change”, the constant magnet for scurrilous condemnation. Bayelsa couldn’t have provided much of a refuge; it was no secret that he was not the favourite statesman of the Dickson government.

I suspect that Jonathan emerged from the experience with some version of political PTSD. And so when the tide turned, he was in no mood to listen to any of the fellows who treated him so poorly not so long ago. The whole drama may have been a middle finger to those who betrayed him. He had suffered alone and he was going to take a decision alone. The lonely man at that birthday event was not about to welcome new guests with dubious motives to tell him what to do.

Nwabuikwu is a member of THISDAY Editorial Board