President Goodluck Jonathan is paranoid about his fate after he leaves office on May 29. Should we be worried? I think so. Such paranoia led many an African leader to sit tight in office in the recent past.
That option is mercifully closed to Jonathan. Tortured by his defeat and traumatised by his friends deserting him after the elections, his paranoia has morphed intoa persecution complex. That is dangerous.
In the last weeks of the presidential election, his wife, the very formidable Dame Patience, told one campaign rally after another that her husband must win his re-election because she was not prepared to take food to him in prison.
It was difficult to fathom where that came from. Why would prison be the fate that awaits Jonathan? Why would she entertain such grim prospects and fears? With Mrs. Jonathan, her youthful digital brain is always in a race with her tongue and the tongue does have the nasty habit of being the first to breast the tape.
As far as she is concerned, there was a precedent. When the generals toppled the Shagari administration in late 1983, General Buhari herded the former president, his vice-president, former state governors, former ministers, commissioners and special advisers into detention and slapped them with charges of corruption.
You could say Mrs. Jonathan’s fear of the same fate befalling her husband when he steps out of the impregnable Aso Rock fortress is not entirely unfounded.It is the same general returning to office as president. Armed with his considerable presidential powers, the woman fears he would do as he did in 1984. She also knows we are all rooting for Buhariclean up the country after her husband. Most people task him with taking oncorruption from the minute he steps into office.The monster has grown stronger and become more pervasive than it was in 1984 when the general first confronted it.
No one has accused Jonathan of corruption. He may be as clean as the whistle but under his watch we have witnessed some of the worst corrupt excesses and impunity in our history so far. Could this be the basis for his wife’s fear that he mightbe headed for prison?Maybe.
Someone needs to reassure her that the times have changed. Buhari is coming in to run a democratic government with its thrills and frustrations.
However, evidence that Jonathan and his wife are probably thinking alike surfaced at his thanks giving service at the Cathedral Church of the Advent, Abuja, last week. The president spoke of his fears for himself, his ministers and aides and the days of persecution ahead for them. He said he had taken “very costly decisions which I myself must be prepared to pay for.”
He said: “For ministers and aides who served with me, I sympathise with them; they will be persecuted. And they must be ready for the persecution.”
Where did I hear that? Ah, from the Nazarene, Jesus the Christ, who told his disciples they would be persecuted for his sake.
It may be a bit too much to suggest that the president sees himself in the same mould as the Nazarene and his administration in the context of the former’s excoriation of sin that brought him trouble.Jonathan is trying to portray himself as the likely victim of his good work as president. It is a stretch.
Persecution has never featured in our national political discourse because it is more appropriate in matters of religious intolerance. Why would Jonathan drag the word in here? I think it is his crutch in the circumstances.
Persecution is about victims and victimhood.If persecution becomes a complex it serves at least two fundamental purposes. It portrays he who complains of persecution as avictimised party. The world hates to see the persecuted cry in the wilderness.
Jonathan has served notice that he and his ministers would suffer for the sin of doing right by the public by taking hard decisions that proved unpopular with some powerful elements in the society.
He believes these elements are out to exact their own pound of flesh. They are only waiting for him to step out of the protective zone of the presidency. Fears of enemies, real and imaginary, feed a persecution complex.
My second point is that persecution complex is a good and tested weapon of blackmail. Jonathan’s paranoia was transformed into a persecution complex in the time it takes to say, in the mighty name of Jesus.
It suggests a calculated attempt by the president to tie the hands of the new administration and stop it from looking through the cupboards of his administration, even if it hears the rattling of bones in there.He is saying to the incoming administration, touch not me and my ministers and aides because my hard decisions were in the best interests of the country. Pure blackmail.
Of course, he knows this would not work. Nigerians are not baying for his blood or the blood of ministers and aides who served him. What Nigerians would demand from him and his ministers and aides is a full and satisfactory account of their stewardship. That does not amount to his persecution.
It is the age-old accountability in a democracy at work. Jonathan and his vice-president, Namadi Sambo, tell us that posterity would judge them aright. Their accountability at this time would be the basis for that fair judgment they hope for in the future.The president should have no fears of subjecting himself and his administration to public scrutiny. It is good for him and it is good for our democracy.
The combative national publicity of APC, Lai Mohammed, the man most likely to say it as it is, has clearly and unequivocally told the president that “..the hands of the incoming government will not be tied by those who have chosen to play the victim and exhibit persecution mentality.”
If it is any consolation to the president and his wife, Buhari is not an enemy but a political opponent. He and Jonathan probably seek the same things for the country. Their route to the same goals may differ but that does not make them enemies. In any case, both men contested the presidential election in a straighttwo-man race twice – 2011 and 2015. Jonathan defeated Buhari in 2011; Buhari defeated Jonathan in 2015. A draw, right?
I thought so.
