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Today September 18 2010, Abuja will be
agog with the confirmation of the year long known secret
that President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan would present himself
as a candidate in the 2011 Presidential Election. His body
language had left no body in doubt that he craved to
continue till 2015. The manner he went about dismantling
obstacles on his way confirmed that all those faceless
organisations urging him to present himself for election
were not doing so based on patriotic conviction but because
it was the sound that gladdens his heart.
To put machinery in motion, the obstacle
called Zoning had to be uprooted. There was no better means
than to axe the custodian of PDP Constitution in the person
of former Chairman Vincent Ogbulafor. During the twilight of
Yar’Adua, Ogbulafor spoke before thinking, that the North
has the presidency till 2015 based on PDP Zoning of elective
posts based of its Constitution. This diarrhoea of the mouth
needed to be cured and the vindictive nature of Goodluck
Jonathan came to the rescue. An old case of corruption
against Ogbulafor was exhumed, only for the Chairman to be
replaced by a tinted Okwesilieze Nwodo, who speedily gave
zoning a worrisome burial despite his appointment being a
vote for zoning.(Both has corruption cases hanging on them,
both are from the same geo-political zone, both are chief)
The second part of the machinery was to
swindle public opinion. His spin doctors went to work like
in the transmuting days of Late General Sani Abacha when all
faceless groups were telling Abacha that he was the only
Nigerian with a customised head that will fit permanently
into the cap of leadership. Groups started encouraging
Goodluck Jonathan to present himself and patiently spread
his Goodluck into the lives of Nigerians beyond 2011. Not to
be beaten to it by others, Mrs. Patience Goodluck, who had
been docile and living under the shadows of Turai Yar’Adua,
became a Trojan and infested the entire Nigeria in a bid to
whip up support for her husband, under the guise of her
NGO-Women For Change Initiative. In all these gatherings,
she pledges support for the incumbent governor-except
Rivers, which brings the old African saying scratch my back,
I will scratch yours to a contemporary political tool..
Another group that got onboard to mend
the machine for Goodluck Jonathan to run were bunch of
questionable intellectuals. These group started by
illogically explaining that Goodluck Jonathan and late Umaru
Yar’Adua are Siamese twins and at the demise of one, the
other should complete the live expectancy of the dead one.
Hence Goodluck’s quest to continue was seen as a
continuation of the agreed North’s mandate to rule till
2015.
The final greasing was the special Church
service held to dedicate his ambition to God. This was to
give the spiritually inclined Nigerian the impression that
it was a divine mandate. If not to decisive people, why
didn’t he do it in the privacy of his home or the Aso Rock
Chapel without the press? The quest for this special service
and attendance of his declaration was made an Episcopal
mandate in Anglican Church on Sunday September 12th
2010. There is no Nigerian politician who is not religious
either directly or by proxy (engaging the services of dibia,
prayer intercessors and Marabouts), yet there are corruption
in high places. God will judge Nigerian politicians by the
way they treated Nigeria’s treasury and Nigerians and not by
how many times they dedicated their intension to “ruin”
Nigeria.
Having traced how Goodluck Ebele Jonathan
got the liver to declare, let us dispassionately ask what he
has to offer apart from mother luck manipulated by OBJ?
Goodluck Ebele Jonathan had been in government or corridors
of governance for a long time that one would have thought he
ought to know how to solve the problems of Nigeria and would
have hit the ground running after the coup of doctrine of
necessity that made him Acting President. But what do we
have? In Abuja subs, electricity is still rationed, roads
across the nation are still death trap, unemployment is
hitting the roof, healthcare is a nightmare and the almighty
educational sector is epileptic. He failed to build on the
amnesty granted to the militants in his backyard. Goodluck
Jonathan had failed to build on the goodwill of Yar’Adua all
because from the word go, he was busy plotting on how to
manipulate his party and Nigerians into allowing him contest
2011 Presidential election. An election he knows he has the
greatest odd against other candidates, which is incumbency
and its attendant monopoly of agents of coercion.
Che
Oyinatumba
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Published
September 18th, 2010
