When Chief Olusegun Obasanjo paired up the late Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar’Adua and Dr. Goodluck Jonathan for the 2007 presidential election, I was very excited about the partnership. The late president was governor of Katsina state for eight years (1999 -2007) and he did a good job. My wife’s cousin, a senior lecturer at the University of Jos, was on a mission to Katsina that lasted for close to three or so months in 2005. He was so impressed with the level of development of the state capital that he contemplated defection. He spoke about the road network, the cleanliness and orderliness of the environment, the modern structures that would give you the impression that you were in one of those highbrow locations of Abuja City. Water supply was guaranteed. So was electricity.
Despite the ill-health that plagued the late Yar’Adua, preventing him from campaigning effectively in the build-up to the 2007 presidential election, many still felt he was a good material for the job. At a point, he could not cope with the rigour of the nationwide campaign and fainted along the line. He was ferried to Germany for medical attention. Rumours soon began to make the rounds that he had kicked the bucket. At one of the rallies which Obasanjo was attending on his behalf, he put a call to Yar’Adua and wondered aloud: “Umoru, they said you are dead?”
The late president was an honest man, honest enough to admit that the election that brought him to the Aso Rock Villa was flawed and sought to reform the system by putting together the Electoral Reform Committee headed by the former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Mohammed Uwais. The report and recommendations of the committee must be gathering dust somewhere in the Villa.
He also came across as a humble and decent personality, prudent and thorough. Even though poor health weighed him down, he tried his best in the period that life permitted him to run his presidency… from May 29, 2007 to May 5, 2010 when he received his final summons.
Yes, I was personally excited about the prospect of a Niger Deltan becoming the vice president, believing that the combative militants in the region would sheathe their swords as soon as one of them assumed the second in command at the Aso Villa. How wrong I was! It was as though the emergence of Jonathan had come to pour ogogoro or Sapele water on the fire. Hostilities in the region escalated. Kidnapping of expatriate oil workers with demands for ransoms became widespread. No white man was safe. The heinous crime became so rampant that even albinos felt insecure because they were being mistaken for expatriates. So we heard.
It was the intensity of the militancy, culminating in wanton destruction of oil installations and its negative effects on the revenue accruing to the Federal Government that prompted the late Yar’Adua to come up with a comprehensive amnesty programme for the warlords and their vandals. For good measure, he established an organ – Niger Delta
Ministry – to oversee the affairs of the region in September, 2008. He also strengthened the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) he inherited from Obasanjo and made it a parastatal under the ministry… and they were hugely funded.
Yar’Adua did so much for the Niger Deltans within the short period that death permitted him to stay in office. The rest, as they say, is now history. After Yar’Adua’s exit, Jonathan rode on the crest of “Doctrine of Necessity” to grab the reins of power and completed his late oga’s tenure. He was expected to step aside for another northern candidate to continue the second term the region was entitled to in 2011. However, a pact was entered into with the power brokers in the north which allowed him to run the second term after which power would change hands in 2015. Big mistake!
The pact has since become a bone of contention. Jonathan and his PDP are insisting that there was no such agreement and that the Aso Villa occupier is entitled to run a second term as allowed by the constitution. They must have reasoned that the two years that remained of Yar’Adua’s first term which he completed was an introduction to presidency bestowed on him by good luck.
Jonathan’s renege on the pact was the major reason why some PDP governors furled their umbrellas and reached for the APC’s brooms, leaving the ruling party badly fractured.
Although Jonathan is yet to declare his ambition to run in 2015, his body language speaks volumes. His action speaks louder than words… his campaign rallies, his pulpit politics (in the churches he has so far visited). But I am afraid for Jonathan. This is because in most cases, when you renege on a pact like this, Nemesis, the goddess of retributive justice, who is always present, is always very, very furious.
History is replete with tragedies that have befallen men who lacked honour and integrity. Gen. Sani Abacha was a typical exemplar. The maximum ruler shoved aside the Ernest Shonekan-led Interim National Government (ING) put in place by Gen. Ibrahim Babangida after the June 12 ogre was put down.
To ensure that the ghost was totally exorcised, Abacha invited the acclaimed winner of the June 12, 1993 presidential election, Chief M.K.O. Abiola to the State House in November of the same year and swore to hand him his mandate in six months after he had tidied up the political space. Abiola was effusive about the arrangement and even gave Abacha names like Amb. Babagana Kingibe, who was his vice presidential candidate, Lateef Jakande, Ebenezer Babatope, among others to serve in the deceiver’s cabinet. By the end of the six months, Abiola was hounded into jail.
He had been betrayed. Nemesis was angry with Abacha for going back on his promise and pronounced his final summons in June, 1998.
It is the fear of what Nemesis can do to modern-day Judases that has moved me to ask Jonathan to run … but away from 2015. I know that he has no courage not to give a damn about what the retributive goddess is capable of doing. Let him also ponder on this quotation by Malcolm X: “To me, the thing that is worse than death is betrayal… I could conceive death, but I could not conceive betrayal.”
