Opinion: 2015 – For President Jonathan, the die is cast

by Chuka Nnabuife

Asari-Dokubo-at-the-venue

With that he achieved one vital thing – openning our eyes to the fact that Jonathan is not as lacking of dangerous followership as some escapists among us opt to assume. Secondly, he seem to have bared his chest in frontrow and some hitherto intimidated or lurking-in-shadow pro-Jonathan politicians are saying a bit of what they had felt like saying long ago.

Having condemned the unnecessary comments of Alhaji Mujhaid Asari-Dokubo and Kingsley Kuku on the presidential poll of 2015 which now charges up the polity, it becomes neccesary to establish my grounds for the position without pretending to ignore the fact that Asari has a cogent point.

The worst truth to tell is to state things as you know them and make a drama of it. In politics, this is sacrilegious as somebody like Alhaji Mujhaid Asari-Dokubo would have known with his comment on Nigeria becoming very hot after 2015 Presidential election if current president Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, a fellow Niger Delta man from South-South, fails to secure a second term.

Immediately the statement left his mouth, it began to reap condemnations and commendations. Currently, it piths the South-South (and to an extent a large chunk of the south of Nigeria) against a major aggregation of the north. And in the wake of the statement, hurting, daggering statements are flying like late night vampires with desire to draw blood and punch noses.

But Asari-Dokubo sticks to his guns, insisting, in a direct reaction to the northern politicians who now call for his head, that the truth is bitter. Yes, by Nigeria’s political reality, Asari was real. It will be beckoning trouble if it appears to the man on the street that President Jonathan was bullied or yelled out of contesting in 2015.

Only a daydreamer would think that should Jonathan fail to run militants in the Niger Delta won’t get so agitated as to kick violently and rumble the creeks where Nigeria drills most of it’s oil. Surely, in the contest of real politik, if the President really has the backing of those gun-trotting stupendously rich blood-thirsty oil smugglers with mafia-like forces in his native Niger Delta, and he is unfairly forced out of Aso Rock there will be trouble.

We cannot go to sleep and assume that if bullied out, we can run off to the creeks and freely drill oil and gas, the mainstay of Nigeria’s economy. So, problem beckons if we have decided that Jonathan be done away with in 2015 poll without allowing him to contest the poll and see clearly that he got his due constitutional chance for a second term was expressed.

In that sense Asari like the President’s aide in charge of the Niger Delta nillitants’ Amenesty programme, Kuku, was right to foresee danger.

But one lesson Asari did not take seriously in the matter is the nature of truth in politics. What one deems as truth may not really be that when partisan matters are on board too. In politics, once you are right, you are damned because everybody, while waiting to hear when you will say it is fashioning out how to react when you say it.

The fox in all politicians would neither let him accept truth openly nor condemn it. Rather, once the comment is out, he would watch the wave of reactions it generates, and follow the overwhelming and most influential tide. Just a hand-full of them would note the truth in their dairies or write memoirs on it which they would publish when they retire or die.

That is why things seldom move smoothly with politics. Partisan politics’ antics, like hurdles and elimination-prone posers in a reality show are heartless and drily lacking in conscience. Hence, the dyed-in-the-wool politician cares more about pragmatism and fitting into the winning bloc than about truth or whatever issues it address. Whatever it portends to society is almost inconsequential.

But Asari spoke in a language that is allien to politics. Asari’s main sin is using a street tongue to address sensitive political matters. He needed a lesson in what in a Washington Post analysis, F.A. Hayek described as art of political-speaking – “the complete perversion of language,” and “the change of the meaning of words.” That is why his’ is reaping the turnado now.

Even his older cousin’ Prof Tam David-West who served as a federal minister under former Head of State but now opposition party leader, Gen. Mahammadu Buhari (rtd.) has called for his trial on treason charge. said Penultimate weekend, in Warri, Delta State, Asari spoke in a public memorial event in honour of the late Ijaw frontline leader, Major Isaac Jasper Adaka-Boro.

Asari’s words: “We have to demand what belongs to us, 2015 is not about Jonathan, but about our destiny, if you allow them, they will crush you when they come. I am ready for them bullet for bullet.”

He said that the people of the Niger Delta region would no longer accept playing second fiddle to the people of the North.

The ex militant said if he could be as courageous as to stand boldly in support of Abacha’s government when it was so unpopular to do so, he would not be ashamed to support Jonathan who is from the Niger Delta.

To some people, especially, bodies of Ijaw professionals, activists and such old folks as Chief Edwin Kiagbodo Clark and Chief Diepriye Alamiesiegha, the Asari man is right.

Clark who was in Lagos on Monday, said President Goodluck Jonathan will continue in office for a second term in 2015. While the former governor of Bayelsa State, Alamieyeseigha, said there is no vacancy in Aso Rock in 2015, adding that northern agitators would, at the appropriate time, join the moving train to vote Jonathan for a second term in office.

Condemning the Asari and Kuku statements without noting how the source of his grief ventilate will be pretence. Knowing the grounds for the former militia leaders’ fury would also explain why the Ijaw leaders, except the likes of David-West are rallying support for him and now finding a vent to boldly route for Jonathan.

We can say safely that Asari was bullying the society by saying things (read the truth) the way he said it but in the words of the great American novelist, Ernest Hemingway, “However you make your living is where your talent lies.” He knows the gun and spoke in the imagery of the bullet.

With that he achieved one vital thing – openning our eyes to the fact that Jonathan is not as lacking of dangerous followership as some escapists among us opt to assume. Secondly, he seem to have bared his chest in frontrow and some hitherto intimidated or lurking-in-shadow pro-Jonathan politicians are saying a bit of what they had felt like saying long ago.

Moreover, it had been long that Jonathan had been the butt of bullies that now with Asari has coming bullishly in the manner of an attack dog too, the build-up to 2015 is getting real as coocoons gradually break open. Remember, prior to now all we heard from the President’s circle is: Please, don’t talk about 2015 yet!

Supporters of Asari in the current controversy also have some ear when they claim his was a reaction to earlier comments made by leading politicians in Northern Nigeria such as the former Head of State, Gen. Buhari who has, according to a Vanguard newspaper report of May 15, 2012, ‘2015 ‘ll be bloody – Buhari’, said: “God willing, by 2015, something will happen. They either conduct a free and fair election or they go a very disgraceful way.

“If what happened in 2011 (alleged rigging) should again happen in 2015, by the grace of God, the dog and the baboon would all be soaked in blood.’’

Similarly, in a Nation Newspaper interview article of March 17, 2013, entitled: “2015 May be Nigeria’s last election – Junaid Mohammed” it was stated that “the National Coordinator of the Coalition of Northern Politicians, Academics, Professionals and Businessmen, Dr. Junaidu Mohammed said yesterday that unless efforts are made to ensure that the 2015 general election are free and fair, it may turn out to be the last election in the history of the nation.”

As bodies such as the Ijaw Media Forum argue, at seperate occasions similar statements have been made on behalf of Northern Elders Political Forum by Lawal Kaita. Among the examples cited is the reports entitled: ‘We’ll make Nigeria ungovernable for Jonathan – Lawal Kaita (October 2010 ‘2015) and ‘North Will Confront Jonathan – Lawal Kaita’ (Leadership Newspaper, March 29, 2012) in which Kaita is reported to have said: “We hear rumours all over that Jonathan is planning to contest in 2015. Well, the north is going to be prepared if the country remains one. That is, if the country remains one, we are going to fight for it. If not, everybody can go his way.”

So now that Asari et al have hinted that Jonathan should run the dice is about here, to be cast. But as Oscar Wilde wrote: “There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.”

I hope all the crisis-drum beaters note that?

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Read this article in the Compass Newspapers

 

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.

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