People whose wicked actions in the past were dangerous to Nigerians caught themselves in the web of mockery in the media. The satirical and allegorical unveiling of their loathsome utterance cloaked in the roof of their tongue much to their imbecile and infantile remarks in the past; they receive the rewards of their past goofs and anomalies.
It is indeed an abysmal derogation of their essence in the human society! Weaving their influence in Nigeria in the parodical textile of vanity, history records them as people who stain their white robes with belated regret as their anticipation of a better Nigeria is choked in the blood of Nigerians who are gruesomely killed daily without government intervention! Hence, the phrase WHICH WAY NIGERIA coins itself in the caricature of a shadowy direction by these people! Do their acclaimed statesmanship sinks in the quagmire of cavil, disdain, and distrust as Nigerians review the media report of their past words with sadness?
The crackdown in their faculty displays itself as they failed to predict the myriads of evils, crises, and calamities that were naturally arranged to punish Nigerians through wrong choice of a president. Their lack of foresight beclouded their sensibilities and foreknowledge to have a glimpse of the barrage of troubles that would strike dart into the bones of Nigerians to make them yell stridently for help not from above but foreign powers with sad disappointment! It is therefore a valid statement that they unreasonably chorused General MohammaduBuhari (rtd) to power and they adjudged him to perform below their estimation and benchmark, hence their untenable remorsefulness and regret!
The murky characters of these people who were reputed as eminent Nigerians were woven in the charade of short sightedness as they chanted the change mantra in 2015 that ushered General MohammaduBuhari (rtd) to saddle the No 1 chair in Aso Rock. Surprisingly enough, they unwittingly turned their back against Buhari! Their belated change of mind to heap sheaf of abuse, discrimination, condemnation and blacklisting him on the platform of incompetence, ineptitude, ineffectiveness, corruption, cluelessness, tyranny, misrule, maladministration, and try in earnest to dethrone him through strikes, protests and revolutions is a clear index that they were deceived by their myopic mindset as their opaque lenses did not view that Buhari would fail to satisfy their whims and caprices! Disillusioned by the evil role they played in the build up of 2015 presidential elections that produced General MohammaduBuhari (rtd), the media, in the countdown to 2023 elections, reels in its sledge hammer to disgrace them before celestial and terrestrial beings.
These disgruntled Nigerians who are afflicted by the spirit of despondency, have quarantined themselves due to the disappointment virus (Covid-victim-2015) in APC-led government. Their undue alliance, which birthed the anti-Jonathan cabal in 2015, had the following people as their leaders: (1) Former President Olusegun Obansanjo (2) President MohammaduBuhari (3) ChibuikeAmaechi (4) BabatundeFashola (5) Lai Mohammed (6) Sheik Ahmad Abubakar Gumi (7) Wole Soyinka (8) OmoyeSoworo (9) ObyEzekwesili (10) Femi Falana (11)Kashim Ibrahim Shettima (12) Nasir Elrufai (13) Femi Adesina (14) AtikuAbubakar (15) AbubakarMilami (16) Chris Ngige (17) GarbaShehu (18) Rev. Fr. EjikeMbaka (19) Pastor Enoch Adeboye (20) Apostle Johnson Suleman (21) Dino Melaye (22) Northern Elders Forum (23) Arewa Consultative Forum (24) Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) (25) Isa Pantami and APC leaders of thought.
These people who were critical of Jonathan in 2015, cannot endure the lethal smoke of carbon in the political ambience which APC emits to suffocate Nigerians and therefore, among them the Northern Elders Forum openly registered their grievances in the media that they have regretted backing Buhari in 2015. Excerpt is as follows: “The Northern Elders Forum has said that it regretted throwing its weight behind then candidate Muhammadu Buhari in the 2015 presidential election, instead of Goodluck Jonathan, adding that Buhari has let down a majority of Nigerians who trusted in his leadership prior to 2015 polls.
“According to the NEF’s Director of Publicity and Advocacy, Dr. Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, the forum wants the next president of Nigeria to be one who would act in the “opposite direction” of the incumbent Nigerian leader.
“Speaking on Arise TV’s ‘The Morning Show’ breakfast programme monitored by The Guardian, Baba-Ahmed said: “Is there any Nigerian who is not disappointed in President Buhari including diehard APC people? Is there anybody who would not tell you he wished President Buhari had done much better?
“We raised huge expectations, we told people, ‘Get rid of Jonathan, put Buhari there, he would fix corruption, he would fix insecurity, he would fix the economy’ (but) look at where we are now.
“How can anybody say they are happy with the record of President Buhari, even the people very close to him would tell you that they wished he could have done much better and he hasn’t.
“So, what we need to do now is to get ready to elect another President who would go in the opposite direction, a President who has a vision and a clear idea of what governance involves rather than just being a President. So, I am disappointed and that is why today, I am actively involved in trying to see that a new leader emerges in getting Nigerians a new lease of life,” added Baba-Ahmed whose group, it’d recalled, called for the resignation of Buhari in December 2020.”
Jonathan, a former governor of Bayelsa State, was Nigeria’s Vice-President between 2007 and 2010, and assumed the role of president following the demise of then President Umaru Yar’adua in 2010.
Jonathan, afterwards, contested the 2011 presidential election and won but failed in his bid to get re-elected four years later, losing to Buhari, a former military head of state who ruled between 1983 and 1985. Buhari came into power in December 1983 via a military coup that brought to an end four years of civilian rule.
Though out of Aso Rock, Jonathan has been seen working closely with the incumbent in his role as Special Envoy of the Economic Community of West African States.
With the 2023 elections fast approaching and the clamour for a power shift to the South, Jonathan, who is currently Buhari’s Special Envoy to the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), can have another shot at the presidency as the constitution permits all eligible Nigerians to be in office for two terms.
He has been receiving entreaties and visitations from many APC chieftains in recent time, with some, such as the National Secretary of the party’s Caretaker and Extra-ordinary Convention Planning Committee, John Akpanudoedehe, saying Jonathan would be given an opportunity to contest the 2023 presidency on the party’s platform if he decides to join the APC. However, Jonathan has not declared any intention to contest in the forthcoming election.
If he decides to join the race though, it would be in line with the wishes of the governors of Nigeria’s southern states who at their recent meetings in Lagos and Enugu insisted that power must return to the South in 2023.
However, Baba-Ahmed is of the opinion that the Southern governors should not make the 2023 presidency a matter of disagreement amongst Nigerians, noting that they should instead negotiate as the North had lived under Southern Presidents — Olusegun Obasanjo and Jonathan — since Nigeria’s return to democratic rule in 1999.
“We have lived under Southern presidents because we recognise that Nigeria is made up of sections, ethnic groups and interests. We recognise that, we are northerners, pluralism is in our DNA, we accept that, we live with it,” he said.
“Don’t make the issue of presidency a matter over which Nigerians would fight and threaten the country and the democratic process, that is very dangerous for this country,” the NEF spokesman stated.
Baba-Ahmed nevertheless insisted that what Nigeria needs is a President who realises the need to rebuild the country, secure Nigerians and check the downward trajectory of the country’s economy.
“The nation needs a leader that would do the things that President Buhari hasn’t done, create inclusiveness, address resentment and frustration in other parts of the country and in the north and speak and act for everybody,” he said, before adding that both the ruling APC and the leading opposition party, the PDP, have no answers to what Nigerians want in a candidate in 2023.”
He noted that the “smaller parties” should be given the opportunity to field candidates with the character and capacity to lead Nigeria out of all its current travails.”
Adversaries are servants, not masters; at last they will look for the man they pierce or stab with their swords to rule over them. As it was with the biblical Jephthah, so it is with Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan. In the barrage of words of abuse, insults, condemnation, rejection, accusations, and the threat of death, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, GCFR, shines in the dark world of politics in Nigeria.
He was a sought after man to fly the Nigerian flag as president in Aso Rock in 2023; and in 2025, the voices of Nigerians calling and pressurizing Goodluck Ebele Jonathan to come back to partisan politics to contest 2027 general elections against the incumbent President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, bombard and obtrude upon Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan ceaselessly! Should they had known that Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan would become an essential trustworthy FIGURE in Nigeria’s politics, they would not have ganged up against him 2015.God has turned Nigerians rejection of Dr. Goodluck Ebele in 2015 into a pivotal of His plan for him. “The STONE [Goodluck Ebele Jonathan] which the builders [Nigerians] refused is become the head stone of the corner. This is the LORD’S dong; it is marvellous in our eyes.” Psalm 118:22-23.
REV. (DR.) LAWRENCE S. OKORI
(Founder, Radical Prayer Network For Goodluck Ebele Jonathan)