Jonathan’s Macabre Dance In The Cemetery

Jonathan’s Macabre Dance In The Cemetery
Kunle Somorin

He that lives upon hope will die fasting - Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790)

My earliest recollection of the association between governance and morbidity was when Ambrose Alli, a professor of Morbid Anatomy was elected Governor of the old Bendel State in 1979. Flirting with morbidity has now transcended the late professor. Since his exit, the art has become statecraft. Each time a new regime replaces an old order, dead political actors are heroically remembered, frenetically fetched out, penitently dusted out of their graves and soulfully brandished and garbed in the toga of martyrdom and impressively saddled with ‘new’ responsibilities and the business of governance remains inchoate; business as usual.

Every government in power is a syndrome that has become endemic with Nigeria. The sports arena is not left out. Last month, when it became obvious that the Super Eagles was not going to do well in The World Cup Mundial, a long forgotten, jaded 60-something year-old Swede by the name Lars Lagerback (it sound more Lager beer than lagging behind)was thrown to international prominence as the Technical Adviser. Does it mean there are no vibrant young and creative minds that could do the job better? Don’t ask me. It has become a way of life in Nigeria.

That’s why I sympathise with our dear amiable Acting President about the people he romances openly and secretly. In spite of the tremendous outpouring of emotion and scintillating goodwill of Nigerians and the international community, he has elected to take the road usual, in a patently unusual world and circumstances, by romancing the politically dead; people whose days of delivering the goods are gone. I understand the theoretical ambiguities in matching science with the art of politics. Acting President Goodluck Jonathan is a botanist and zoo scientist, trained in my alma mater, but obviously, we are not in the plant and animal kingdom.

Youth-pessimism seems to have beclouded his sense of propriety as soon as he transformed to the Acting presidency. I cannot understand this obsession with morbidity that made him travel the same route to perdition - the road that has failed all his predecessors, including the last one. How on earth would a young man like Goodluck, with all his supposed education and years in the ivory tower not know that the wisdom of yesterday is today’s stupidity. (Just tell me what new things will the Obasanjo, Danjumas, Nwabuezes, Uwais’, Anyaokus, etc bring to the table to help Nigerian that they forgot all these years. Remember they used to recriminate themselves about what they forgot in office). Knowledge is fluid, so the generational gap will rather take us back to the days of yore.

It was reported and nobody has denied that he keeps licking the arse of a former President right from Day One, at the mid-night on the day history beckoned on him to lead us away from political logjam. That’s unconscionable. One wonders what the character has to add that he couldn’t in all the years he was privileged to lead Nigeria.

At a time many of these new-found clique of advisers were on the saddle, so were Generals Chung-hee Park of South Korea, Gamal Abdel Naseer of Egypt, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk of Turkey and Mr. Lee Kwan Yew in Singapore. So were the leaders of the Asian Tiger’s economic revolution. They have since moved on and bequeathed prosperous countries to the successor generation. And the good work continues. From being the world’s second poorest nation in 1953, at a time colonialists were afraid to leave Nigeria, because of the fear that the world’s most populous black nation had potential of ruling the global economy, South Korea’s fortune has turned. So has Nigeria’s. You can hardly water a burgeoning humanity from the carcasses of the dead. With ‘new knowledge’ powering the global economic order, hardly can a cabinet, peopled by analogue men and women drive a competitive process. It’s just impossible.

I will not be terribly shocked if in reshuffling his cabinet, “a new improved” E.K. Clarke returns as his Minister of Information and Propaganda or Richard Osuolale Akinjide as his Attorney General. Was it not rumoured that he wanted a great grandfather as his Vice President to replace the ailing President? It would not be preposterous for Dr. Alex Ekweme, Olaniwun Ajayi or even Alhaji Shehu Shagari to become Ambassadors under this brand new Acting President; after all, there had never been one like him.

If in all their over 50 years at the corridor or in power they could not generate more than 3,000 megawatts of electricity, whereas a single Steel plant in Korea consumes about double that figure, I don’t understand the “Miracle of Damman” that will happen in less than 8 month rule of Goodluck. While we cannot wish away their contributions, we thank them for what they have been able to undo. The truism of our esoteric existence now requires that they take the back seats and throw up new Turks. Goodluck owes us a duty to identify new leaders with a 21st century mind-set. If the fading generation has anything to contribute, I admonish them, if they have not done so, let them begin to compile their memoirs and with the knowledge of hindsight, let the unborn generations know what they did right and acknowledge their transgressions. With age comes sobriety. They need not regret. Let them remorsefully re-chart a roadmap to our collective redemption. Only through that, can they honestly roadmap to a better Nigeria. That is what I call patriotism.

Is Goodluck giving the impression that, that generation remains the best and irreplaceable? That definitely is not the wish of these men and women. I would have wished that they reject the appointments outright and allow today’s people instead. Vibrant, intellectually-laced, progressive-minded Nigerians, at home and in the Diaspora, are legion. No matter the set-back of the previous administration, the people that made the critical difference are the ICT-compliant few young men and women. While their older cabinet counterparts were approaching governance the usual way of the ‘cemetarians’, they took solace in the unusualness of times and impacted the political landscape.

The Ngozi Oknonjo Iwealas, the Oby Ezekwesilis, the Dora Akunyilis, the Nuhu Ribadus, and the Nasir El-Rufais remain indelible in the consciousness of contemporary political discourse because they showed us the other side of governance. Don’t get it wrong, they are not in the pantheon of saints, neither did they live like some people from the angelic azure, they are Nigerians, who came, contributed and left the stage better than other actors in the same government.

For being soft-spoken and gentlemanly, Jonathan scenario builders would have inundated him with the desiderata for calling on board tough guys to checkmate the marauding power base of the nation. They would have assailed him with the logic and need for self-preservation to justify their submission. The security infractions woven around his commander-in-chief’s status when President Yar’Adua sneaked in and was welcomed by deployment of troops is a steady alibi to toughen Goodluck. So could the recurrent Jos carnage. Our dear Acting President could stretch his imagination further to bring Chief Chukwemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, as his special envoy on the Jos crisis, because he had led a war never to be forgotten than any other in the country’s history.

Sermonisation has never changed anything. You can hardly water the living with a fountain from the graveyard of politics? By engaging the diggers of the trenches where the strategies for perfecting political self-preservation is always adroitly plotted, patented and sold to the undertakers, Goodluck is further pulverising the living by his morbid anatomy.

Without doubt, Jonathan’s display of naivety and timidity is being exploited by people whose subjective preferences would be elevated to statecraft. I expected much more from someone from the furnace of the Niger Delta and the marginalised constituency, his approach could have been better informed by the need for equalisation of opportunities and even development.

Whether he likes it or not, fortuitous circumstances have thrust on Goodluck a responsibility not fit for the lily livered; definitely not because the incumbent lacks functional kidneys did we replace him. Jonathan must embrace history and write his name in gold. That’s why Goodluck doesn’t have to rely solely on good luck. The requirements of a presidential office are as meekly as they are apparition. He doesn’t have to go to the graveyard of political history to exhume the carcasses for this all-important assignment.

A power-that-be mind-set cannot carry the burden of statesmanship. A statesman is a brinksman. This Jonathan is just not exhibiting enough of the traits. Pandering to primordial sentiments and not being his own man will rather mar than make his historic government.

What made these new bodies expedient as we found our nation at the crossroads again? Is it because the presidency’s team of advisers is incompetent or unpatriotic? Has Goodluck lost confidence in the National Assembly that promoted him through the ‘principle of necessity’? The constitutional bodies: the Federal Executive Council, the National Council of States and the numberless security apparatchiks cannot be trusted or what? Simply put, the Acting President is displaying palpable fear; developing cold feet at the sight of nothing.

At the heart of Nigeria’s streak of crises are the critical mass of able and competent leaders with the requisite discipline and commitment to genuine national pluralism, popular participation, responsiveness, official accountability and transparency. He needs to change the warped leadership recruitment processes and structure and the emplace thinkers and doers. That’s the minimum legacy Goodluck can give to Nigeria come 2011, not the entrenchment of status quo.

That is not the future of Nigeria. Is Jonathan telling us that the future belongs to the gerontocrats? Will equilisation of opportunity come with the crass opportunism of those who have cornered what the successor generation should tap for the fulfillment of their destiny as a potential world power? Can a redeeming feature be found in the hands and hearts of ethnic zealots, bigots and warlords, people who have in one deal made N17.5b when more than 100 million live on $1 per day.