On being Jonathan-man
Why is being a Jonathanman a crime in northern Nigeria today? What has the man done that previous leaders have not done or worse? Yet they have supporters in the south. Is Jonathan the first president to open the national treasury exclusively for his people? Is this the first time that nepotism and sectionalism are thriving in governance in Nigeria? These are the issues that need answers before we turn Nigeria into another Rwanda.
Already today, indigenes of some regions are moving home for fear of the looming violence that promises to engulf the north in the aftermath of the coming presidential elections. When I asked APC politicians why they advocate violence, they responded that Dame Patience Jonathan, the First Lady, also does so, pointing at her rallies for women in Cross River and Kogi states as examples. But their explanation made me sulk because two wrongs do not make a right.
In the last four decades, the north hadcontrolledpower at the centre under Yakubu Gowon, Murtala-Obasanjo, Shehu Shagari, Buhari-Idiagbon, IBB, Abacha and Abdulsalam. These have ruled for close to all of Nigeria’s nationhood and the heavens remained in the sky. In those cases northerners had abused power to the extent that when the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) took over from the military in 1999, the Yoruba, the bulk of the president’s people chanted “it is our turn”. And the nation complained bitterly. They dipped their hands in the pie for eight years and relinquished it to a sick and frail Umaru Musa Yaradua who abdicated it in death. But before he did, a cabal had dominated Abuja annexing everything in sight, including the conscience of the nation. His vice president, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, an Ijaw man,
I may be wrong, and I hope I am, but I know that in the event that the president pulls a victory at the end of the month, the street urchins of the north will rise in protest, killing and maiming everything in sight including the dignitaries that have been financing violence.
who leads the country now may not have been perfect but he has survived the most heinous conspiracy in the history of power-play in Nigeria.
Since he assumed power, the entire northern citizenry has pensively made it look like those who rule the country must be at their beck and call or must be axed. Those who disagree with this line of thinking are visited by angry and senseless thugs who maim and kill in the name of politics. Some of these deaths have taken place in the most unlikely circumstances and most of it has been unnecessarily blamed on Jonathan.
Why is politics so hatefilled if it is meant to better the lot of the people? Yesterday in Zaria, Kaduna state, a group of hooligans accosted a housewife with her three kids in the car and asked her what party she belonged to, APC or PDP. She chose the wrong party and they chopped one of her kids into pieces with machetes. No one came to her rescue. Eventually I heard the society including well placed news columnists blaming the incident on Jonathan.
The brutal killing of the child is either indicative of the mindless brutality of a mad party or more realistically, a nation of undeveloped people whose struggle with themselves or with others places a premium on violence as a tool for social engagement. I am driven by the courage of my convictions to ask if we are in politics for development or something else. I am not amused that those who play politics, not by the ballot but by the bullet, are in the majority in my region.
Northern elite will tell you that the people maiming and killing are illiterates who have been impoverished by the bad policies of government and are therefore making a statement. But that is where a problem with their postulations arises. Who is responsible for this incredulous attitude of this uncomfortable proportion of our lost population that is prone to extreme violence, illiterates who are usually left at the bottom of the social pile? It is the northern elite who have ruled for years but denied their own people the benefit of power. They know that an educated population cannot be a gullible bunch so they keep our brethren in darkness. And, these same people who have found violence as their first and ultimate saviour, who have never been nurtured by love and a sense of community, think that extreme violence is a necessity. And now they are Jonathan’s burden?
But why are the northern elite always backing them? It is because many of them are willing tools in the hands of selfish politicians. I was at the Yola Parade Ground otherwise called the Ribadu Square where a compeer for the presidential campaign of the APC incited the people, asking them to stone the devil in Gombe, the following day. All the dignitaries on that podium heard him loud and clear and not one of them raised a finger. Should we acquire power by killing our own people?
It was Du Bois who argued that the theory of democratic government is not that the will of the people is always right, but rather that normal human beings of average intelligence will, if given a chance, learn the right and best course by bitter experience. This learning curve has now been ill-treated in the north where offensive behaviour has been elevated to heroic culture. I may be wrong, and I hope I am, but I know that in the event that the president pulls a victory at the end of the month, the street urchins of the north will rise in protest, killing and maiming everything in sight including the dignitaries that have been financing violence. If they allow people to think that it is wrong to support Jonathan it will come to a time when it will be wrong to be a politician. And that time is just around the corner. Just wait and see.