Nobody doubts President Goodluck Jonathan’s meek demeanour and amiable exterior, often adorned with an admirable smile. These qualities and his comportment during the power transition crisis of 2010, no doubt, earned him the people’s support when his constitutional right to be the Acting President was being denied by a cabal loyal to the late President Umaru Yar’Adua. The same qualities attracted many voters, especially the young ones, to him when he ran for President in 2011. What was not expected was that this amiable exterior would mask a divisive leadership style that would tear apart the country, geographical zones, several states, the Nigeria Governors’ Forum, and even his political party, the Peoples Democratic Party. So divided are these entities today that many more forces within each one are determined to work against him than ever before. We should have seen it coming when Jonathan stood behind the curtains as the zoning debate raged on in 2010, preparatory to the 2011 Presidential primaries and general elections. At the end of the debate, the zoning policy of the PDP was jettisoned so that Jonathan could run for President. Many Northern political leaders hooted and cried but to no avail. No matter how one might have interpreted their boast “to make the country ungovernable”, two catastrophic events followed Jonathan’s electoral victory, which have kept the country divided along regional, ethnic, and religious lines. One is the post-election violence that ravaged the North, targeting especially Jonathan’s supporters in the presidential election. The other is the escalation of Boko Haram’s activities from sectarian violence to full-blown terrorism. True, the destructive terrorist activities, which have claimed thousands of lives and destroyed trillions of naira worth of property, have been limited largely to the North and Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory, their effects on Jonathan’s ability to govern effectively cannot be denied. Besides, the terrorist activities and some pronouncements by the terrorist group set the North against the South and Muslims against Christians. While dealing with these crises, Jonathan participated in the background, as usual, in fuelling the division within the PDP in his own state of Bayelsa, by pitting one power bloc against the other.The target was the then incumbent Governor of the state, Timipre Silva. True, Silva did not deploy his tongue well enough toward Jonathan, thus allowing the latter to capitalise on what was reported in the media then as the former’s “sins”. At the end of the day, Silva was prevented from participating in the primaries for his reelection and he eventually became a guest of the EFCC. Ironically, Silva’s EFCC travails came on the heels of Jonathan’s controversial pardon of Diprieye Alamieyeseigha, a convicted fraudster and London jail breaker. Silva’s replacement, Governor Seriake Dickson, would later appoint Jonathan’s wife, Mrs. Patience Jonathan, as a Permanent Secretary after a decade of severance from the state’s civil service. And many more... 2015 a high expectation.
Posted on: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 23:32:58 +0000
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