Casualties of Jonathan’s bloody politics

I t is essentially disturbing that Nigerians no longer see President Good­luck Ebele “Azikiwe” Jonathan as the nation’s saviour. His deceptive preachments, “My ambition doesn’t worth the life of anyone”, like the other swaddling hogwash, have been exposed for what they are: fraud. Since his re-election campaigns began, no one is left in doubt that the nation is under the iron control of his PDP-led government. It has been “brain, as demagoguery offered by Femi Fani-Kayode of this world, and fist”, as offered by his wife, Dame Patience Jonathan.

His second term bid has gener­ated indignation amongst the people who saw in him previously puritanical statesmanship and a fitting image of a liberal demo­crat. All that has faded now, even though he has been revving up and clashing down potent issues to show to the world that he is not as isolated as the opposition claimed. His government is truly a gigantic fraud. As we speak, the Senate has confirmed Musiliu Obanikoro as a federal minister, appointed by President Goodluck Jonathan, brushing aside allegations that Obanikoro played a key role in election fraud in Ekiti State.

There is greater anxiety than ever before that put the nation on the spotlight, and has generated the fear that Jonathan’s autocratic drift has been intensified. The “po­litical momism”, my coinage for Dame Patience Jonathan’s verbal diarrhoea deal devastating blow to whatever peace-pact reached by all the 14 political parties gunning for the presidency.

In case you forget, the Presi­dent’s wife told a crowd of sup­porters to stone to death anyone caught mentioning, “CHANGE”. She stated this in Calabar on March 2, 2015, while campaign­ing for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). “Anybody that come and tell you “Change”, stone that person. She continued: “What you did not do at young age, is now that old age has caught up with you, you want to come and change? she fumed.

She added a comical note: “Even though belle (pregnancy) is disturbing you, tell it baby, baby let me go and vote. Baby wait let me go and exercise my mandate. You won’t die,” she enthused.

Sad and abhorent as the above banal statement might be from the first lady, it shows how she and her husband have sunk into the pit of desperation to be returned to power. The opposition All Progres­sives Party’s slogan for March 28 election is ‘Change’, so Patience Jonathan is calling on Nigerians to stone the opposition politicians to death. Patience Jonathan has pre­viously mocked the APC’s slogan saying that the PDP does not tell Nigerians about change because they are not bus conductors.

As expected, President Jona­than has not said anything on the comments of his wife. Heeding the wife’s blackmail, Gen. Mar­tin Luther Agwai’ (rtd), SURE-P Chairman was given the boot for a lecture he delivered in Abeokuta at the birthday ceremony of former President Olusegun Obasanjo where he declared that “change is inevitable”.

“In life, you find out that ev­erything needs change; if that is what the community wants, what the people want, you must give it to them and, as such, it becomes inevitable.

That President Jonathan has maintained dignified silence over his wife’s open call to anarchy, didn’t come as a surprise. Nine members of the All Progressives Congress, APC, in Rivers State, were killed in two separate inci­dents in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital, a few days ago. While five of the men were killed in the D-Line area of Port Harcourt, the other four met their untimely death along the Eastern By-Pass in the Marine Base area of the state capital!

At the top of the swarming heap of carnage and bloodbath stands the son of canoe-carver-born PhD holder from Otuoke, ferried by Providence to power. His is pathetic governance, which, at the head of so great and powerful a nation, set out to attain its end. Six-year on, he is unable to create an enviable nation, burnish with abundant resources to the satisfac­tion of the electorate. Nigerians will be writing their page in the darkest of histories should Jona­than find his way back to Aso Rock in a country where second term in office don’t amount to much.