Whatever criticisms anyone may make of President Goodluck Jonathan’s six-year presidency which will end on May 29 – and God knows there’s a hell lot – he cannot be denied credit for his statesman-like March 31 phone call to his rival, Major-General Muhammadu Buhari, in which he accepted defeat ahead of the formal declaration of the opposition All Progressive Congress’s (APC) presidential candidate as victor, the following day.
That simple call was possibly, even probably, the most difficult decision of the president’s political life, considering the unprecedented bitterness that had characterised this year’s general elections, thanks mostly to the hawks the man surrounded himself with, several of whom had sworn, presumably with a wink from him, that Buhari will never be elected president of this country.
However, while the president deserves the praise singing that has been heaped on him for that simple but, at the same time, difficult, phone call, it must be said that the country stands in the grave danger of over-exaggerating its significance, in the sense that it is being made to look as if it is enough to atone for the enormous sins the man, his lieutenants and his Peoples Democratic Party have committed against Nigeria and Nigerians the past 16 years.
No doubt the phone call averted the descent into chaos which many a doomsday prophet – not least semi-official American institutions that had predicted Nigeria’s implosion this year – had prophesied for the country. Even then anyone who thinks that that phone call alone has completely dispersed the storm that had gathered over the nation before and during this year’s general election may be in for a great shocker.
There are critics of the president who say his concession was forced. Perhaps it was, perhaps it wasn’t. However, a two-page statement issued on Monday by the Chairman of PDP’s Board of Trustee, Chief Tony Anenih, titled “Marching on with Hope” suggests that the phone call wasn’t so voluntary.
“President Jonathan,” Anenih said in the statement, “has worked, selflessly, to deepen democracy in Nigeria. His consistent advocacy of the rights of the people to freely choose their leaders had earlier yielded free, fair and credible elections in some States of the Federation. Now, a peaceful transition is expected to follow after the general elections.” (Note his phrase, “in some states”, presumably PDP).
Coming from a man who originated and popularised the notorious phrase, “No vacancy in Aso Villa,” the man must think Nigerians are idiots to believe his claim that anybody in PDP can deepen, or has indeed deepened, democracy in Nigeria; after all, advocacy is not practice, and no one resident in Nigeria the last 16 years will agree with “Mr Fix-it” that PDP chieftains ever practiced the principles of anything they preached. In any case by apparently tagging the election as half-free, it is obvious that his party, and certainly the man himself as its presumed conscience, did not accept Buhari won it fair and square.
Yet, in spite of Anenih’s dubious caveat about the credibility of the election, President Jonathan’s phone call may have been sincere. However, there are at least two tests by which the president can prove his sincerity beyond any reasonable doubt, one immediate, and the other during and after the transition.
The immediate test is his willingness to call to order the governors of PDP states and Abuja-backed PDP elements in opposition states who made it almost impossible for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to use card readers in their states and generally made their states hell on earth for the opposition in the March 28 elections through the use of thugs, army and the police, notably Akwa-Ibom and Rivers, the First Lady’s home but opposition state. The president should charge these governors and PDP Abuja politicians to allow for free, fair and credible governorship and Houses of Assembly elections in their states this weekend.
In addition, he should prevail on the PDP governors who lost their senatorial bids on March 28 – notably those of Niger and Benue states – not to resort to the Samson’s Option of bringing down the roof on everybody’s head they seem hell-bent upon adopting in the same election as punishment against voters in their states for their rejection.
The second, and bigger, test is how willingly the president cooperates with the in-coming administration in personally accounting for his six-year rule and how far he succeeds in persuading all his lieutenants to do the same.
General Buhari has assured that his administration will not “witch-hunt” anyone. This is as it should be. However, this cannot mean letting all bygones be bygones. To do so would be to teach the wrong lesson that all it takes for politicians and their sidekicks to get away with the kind of corruption and impunity we witnessed in this country in the past 16 years, the last six in particular, is simply for an incumbent to anticipate the formal announcement of his defeat.
Re: “Buhari- Fourth time lucky”
Sir,
Let us join hands and thank God for Saturday March 28, 2015. We asked for it, and He graciously gave it to us.
Chief Tony Chigbo,
+23450494477.
Sir,
APC has won the elections. Let sleeping dogs lie.
+2348057366302.
Sir,
Your piece today (April 1) is as usual solid but for the constant recourse to religion and ethnicity. It’ll be good if you could stop looking at the Nigerian crises from the prism of ethnicity and religion.
Chijioke Uwasomba,
OAU, Ife,
+2348037058775.
Sir,
I don’t know the inner workings of our darling APC, but to ascribe the ‘poor outing’ in the South-South to Gov. Amaechi’s failings is disingenuous and cruel. Please we need to close our flanks.
Mikefe Tanno
+2348062322295.
Sir,
I hardly reply to articles but in your case of Wednesday April 1, I couldn’t hold myself. Please don’t set a dangerous agenda with your attack on Gov. Amaechi. The fact that GMB won is a testament to the good job he did as DG. You must appreciate the high risk he took in his fight with the presidency on behalf of GMB. Even some of us who were unknown supporters were nearly mobbed in several quarters.
The point I am making is that it was not easy being a Buhari supporter down south. Therefore, your early attack on Amaechi’s style is unwarranted and uncalled for.
+2348030784586.
Sir,
Your article, “Buhari: Fourth Time Lucky”, was another insightful piece. However, permit me to strongly disagree that Governor Rotimi Amaechi, the Director-General of the Buhari campaign team, “came highly recommended”. If truth is not to be turned on its head, Amaechi came to the position with more brawn than brain. That was why he found it almost impossible to run a cohesive campaign where all the various tendencies could have been carried along.
Yes, Amaechi may have been right in trying to check the over-bearing excesses of some leaders, but the limited presence of the other serving Governors and party leaders in the campaign, would have brought Buhari’s electoral bid to grief, but for God’s grace. This is why, without doubt, many discerning minds rightly say the triumph of GMB was hardly due to the efforts of his party.
Segun Adewale
Sir,
There you go again trying to cause schism among APC leaders and followers. Amaechi never alienated Tinubu and others. They worked together as a team. APC lost the S/E and S/S to money politics, the army and corrupt INEC officials.
+2348075476140.
Sir,
Thanks for your usual great attempts at an equilibrated presentation. A word, however, on the perennial suspicion of GMB for Islamic fundamentalism.
He is said to have made the application for the thorny membership of Nigeria with the OIC, which IBB later ratified. On the other hand, I read from factchecking.ng in GMB’s defence, that the OIC Conference of Minister, the OIC organ responsible for treating application did not discuss Nigeria during GMB’s military rule, and therefore it was not he who applied for it; in fact, that he refused to sign to full membership of Nigeria because Nigeria was a secular state. In any case, since secrecy has surrounded the ratification of full membership, some of us are still unaware of the details.
Be that as it may, could GMB add to his top restoration agenda the restoration of that secular status please?
I believe this message can reach the president-elect through you.
Sincerely,
JOSEPH AKAA
Sir,
I have watched good writers of our time like you doing good job. But personally, I would like you people, using your influence and contact, to ensure that that patriotic and uncompromising army captain who leaked the rigging of Ekiti governorship election is reinstated in the army.
This captain must not lose his job. He is the unsung hero of our time.
Alhaji Abiodun Hussain,
+2348023311676.
Sir,
FFK (Femi Fani-Kayode) is Publicity Director, not Director General of PGEJ’s (President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan) campaign organisation. The DG is (Col) Ahmadu Ali.
+2348073647104.
I stand corrected. The error was inadvertent. Another error was my reference to Buhari’s running mate as Professor Femi Osinbajo, instead of Yemi. Both errors are regretted.
MH.
