February 27, (THEWILL) – The campaign to get former President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan to run for the 2023 presidential election on the platform of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has been making news headlines. By Wednesday last week, the subject matter, which I initially considered to be the ambitious kite-flying of some paid hands, had morphed into a full-blown social media campaign that was going viral under a handful of hashtags.
It became obvious that more than a coterie of online foot soldiers were at work flying kites to attract attention, but the very dedicated drive purposefully backed by some insidious dramatis personae with a doubtful wherewithal to pull off what will amount to a civilian-on-civilian coup never before seen in the annals of Nigeria’s political practice.
How else can it be framed, that within a brief span of political life, with most of the maligned condemnation of Dr. Jonathan, which formed the basis of the ruling party’s campaign against his administration in 2015 under the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), still fresh in the contemporary consciousness, we are witnessing the teething moves to draft the former president into this same party to compete in the primaries against his main arch-nemesis in Transportation Minister, Rotimi Amaechi and Bola Ahmed Tinubu? How can the irony not be lost on those whose convoluted minds crafted such an elaborate, yet disingenuous plot?
There are very obvious and straightforward reasons why this is unfortunate for the Jonathan legacy, if I’m being generous, on the one hand, and the party at the centre of the scheme, the APC, which is struggling to conduct a rancour-free national convention, just as the former president wobbled into a devastating and bitter defeat in the 2015 presidential election.
This is why I think it is such a terrible idea for those behind this plot and for Dr. Jonathan and his legacy.
A good place to start will be the farming and fishing suburb of Otuoke in the Ogbia Local Government Area of oil-rich Bayelsa State in the Niger Delta region where a little known politician with a doctorate in zoology, who would later rise to the highest office in the country, began life with nothing of the fame that will forever become synonymous with his christening as “Goodluck.”
The luck for the country appeared to have started around the time Jonathan was born to an impoverished family of canoe-makers in the remote district of Otuoke who scrimped and saved to put him through school. In the late 1950s, oil was first discovered in the mangrove creeks around Otuoke.
Long before the circumstances that brought him to reckoning at the state and national levels, the erstwhile lecturer at the Rivers State College of Education, who earned his PhD in zoology in 1995, aspired to the exalted position of chairman of a local government area, as the modest ambitions of his level gave him the gumption to pursue. Yet, before he could actualise this dream, he was taken from his job as an environmental protection chief at the now defunct Oil Minerals Producing Areas Development and Commission (OMPADEC) to serve as running mate to the PDP governorship candidate in Bayelsa and later, governor of the state, late Diepreye Alamieyeseigha. This was part of a series of events that showed the hands of fortune were turning him in a direction other than he anticipated for himself all the way to Aso Rock in 2010; first, from deputy governor to governor and then from vice president to acting president and finally to substantive president after his election and swearing-in in 2010.
This fortune-based elevation of Dr. Jonathan, in my opinion, happens to be his weakest point now and the reason why the scheme to bring him back to Aso Rock is designed to further humiliate him. Sadly, the former President appears to have caught the bait of the schemers, who appear adamant on leading him on another self-inflicted political misadventure and ultimate defeat at the presidential primary of the APC.
Jonathan and those plotting to make him the presidential candidate of the APC are banking on President Muhammadu Buhari’s endorsement. This is a very long shot in my view and not worth sacrificing his statesmanship for.
From widely available facts, it is conceivable to conclude that Jonathan lacks the political craftsmanship and sagacity to form a coalition that can defeat the likes of Tinubu, Amaechi or any other notable presidential aspirant in the APC. This is because the former President is devoid of the sort of political currency that can command respect within the APC. He does not even command any respect in his current party, the PDP, a disappointing legacy for a former President who led the party for at least six years.
Even as President and supposed leader of his party, Jonathan did not have the kind of influence and firm grip on power that his predecessors, former President Olusegun Obasanjo and late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, had.
Even calling President Buhari, after the latter was declared winner of the 2015 elections, was viewed by many in his party as a rookie move that finally nailed the party’s fate in that election. In the days after leaving office, his status within the PDP has shrivelled into insignificance. He is neither consulted when necessary nor accorded the respect due a former leader of the party on whose platform he started his political journey that took him to the seat of government in Abuja.
An exact exemplification of how lowly Jonathan is regarded is on display ahead of the Bayelsa local government elections slated for May 14. The party is organising its campaigns and preparing for the polls at his own backyard without as much as bringing someone of such clout as a former president into the fray because as far as the party’s leaders are concerned, he does not have much to offer them and they are better off without involving him. It is but the starkest indication of how extremely low he is valued as a political interest in his home state. How much more across the country? Obviously, there are fans of the former President, who still believe he was the best thing to have happened to Nigeria since the return to civilian rule but that flies in the face of facts.
It takes more than a cursory look at the slew probes the incumbent administration has launched into the endemic corruption that hallmarked Jonathan’s government, from the National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki (retd.), who was accused of siphoning USD2.1 billion arms money benchmarked for prosecuting the deadly war against Boko Haram insurgents, to former Minister of Petroleum Resources, Diezani Alison-Madueke, whose entire haul is believed to be in hundreds of millions of dollars, among several others who are being prosecuted in various courts for graft and theft of public funds. That Jonathan himself is not under probe is simply due to a gentleman’s agreement among incumbents to refrain from prosecuting their predecessors in government.
There is also the constitutional hurdle that may preclude Jonathan from running for president a second time. This is because of an amendment to the 1999 Constitution that many constitutional scholars believe makes Jonathan ineligible to run and emerge as president again, having taken the Oath of Office twice for the same office.
The contention, which was brought forward ahead of the 2015 polls, was that Jonathan had previously had his first term to conclude the unexpired term of the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua between May 6, 2010 to May 29, 2011 and a second term from May 29, 2011 to May 29, 2015. Therefore, he was rendered ineligible to contest again based on Section 135 and 137 of the amendment. How this hurdle is surmounted will play a role in determining if the Jonathan gamble will fly.
I still ponder how a Jonathan candidacy in the APC will be sold to the voting public, considering the damage that the Buhari administration has done to his brand. Since he lost in 2015 and now, there has been nothing to show that he will be any different as president if he is given another chance to lead the country again. He may desire to do things differently, but the acumen to lead men and marshal resources for a country as intricate as Nigeria demands brinkmanship and craft, which is something he still lacks.
The entire campaign, therefore, is a pointer to what can be queried as the character of the man himself. Why will anyone who values themselves consider flirting with the idea of running for the top job in the country on the ticket of the same party that maligned their integrity, questioned their forthrightness, cast aspersions on their name and destroyed their legacy?
If there was any iota of value left to Jonathan’s name, he will never be caught hobnobbing with the APC for anything politically. No one can prevent him, as a private citizen that he is, from running either way and he is entitled to the platform he decides to jump onto, but, in the same vein, we are entitled to question his rationale and judge his character by his actions.
If Jonathan defects to the APC and presents himself for the presidency, then he stands the danger of forfeiting the statesmanship he earned for being the first-ever incumbent in Nigerian history to suffer defeat and peacefully hand over power to his opponent, having been pronounced the vanquished. A defeat at the APC primary will bring his unenviable trajectory to an end.
Yet, a redeeming opportunity knocks for Jonathan. He is better off flaunting his credentials as a statesman of global reckoning than swimming in the dirty murky waters of partisan politics.
Dr. Jonathan must categorically state on record that he has neither the intention to run for president nor the desire to do so through the APC. He should finish by asking Nigerians to interrogate those offering themselves for service thoroughly and choose wisely at the next general election, while wishing the country well going forward. But I am doubtful that Jonathan is even able to do this.
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