JONATHAN: NOT YET UHURU

Nigeria is a country of endless possibilities. One of such rare possibilities occurred last week. By last Tuesday afternoon, the country’s political melodrama occasioned by the long absence of President Umaru Yar’Adua came to an abrupt end when the country’s 36 governors suddenly woke up from their self-induced slumber and provided a solution. And before you could say ‘Jack Robinson!’, the simmering political crisis that had held down the country for several weeks became history when Goodluck Jonathan, the Vice President, was pronounced Acting President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic.

Later that evening, Jonathan made his first broadcast to the nation as Acting President. This time around, his broadcast was preceded by the national anthem to show that he was actually in charge. Remember that when he made a similar broadcast to the nation in January at the heat of the Jos crisis, the national anthem was not played. That error of omission or commission had landed some top government officials, including the Minister of State for Information and Director-General of the Nigeria Television Authority, in hot ‘ogbono’ soup as both were queried for not playing the national anthem before the broadcast.

Anyway, last Tuesday’s broadcast was probably the elixir needed by Nigerians to be assured that our democracy was still on course. It was obvious that both sections 144 and 145 of the 1999 Constitution were brushed aside in order to arrive at an amicable resolution of the crisis. Even the Federal Executive Council (FEC) members who had maintained a silly and unpopular stand on the issue had to concur with the “expedient political decision”.

In the absence of a letter from Yar’Adua and a commitment to transmit any information to the National Assembly by the FEC, the Yar’Adua’s interview granted to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in January was the platform on which Teslim Folarin, Senate majority leader, laid his motion calling for the Upper House of the National Assembly to proclaim Jonathan as Acting President. The Lower House wasted no time in passing the same motion a few minutes later. Thus, the BBC interview, which was designed by Yar’Adua’s spin doctors to ‘confuse’ Nigerians that the President was “responding to treatment” became the albatross used to finally nail his coffin in the manner of a boardroom coup d’état.

How did the actors of the latest coup in Nigeria arrive at their permutation? The President was said to have ‘actually died’ in the first week of December 2009 and a top official at the National Hospital got a call from Saudi Arabia to this effect. It was while they were pondering on what to do that another call came in to say that he had been resuscitated through life support machine. He has been permanently hooked to the device ever since.

By the early weeks of January, rumours were rife that the President had indeed passed on. Both the political class and the political wing of the military then became embroiled in frenetic manoeuvres to seek ‘solution’ to the festering political crisis. While the political class, particularly in the Northern part of Nigeria, became jittery because they opined that the President’s illness might engender a power shift so soon from the North, the ‘militicians’ were waiting in the wings to probably effect a violent change of government. In fact, it was rumoured that the arrowheads had set aside January 15, 2010 as their D-Day.

Historically, January 15, known in Nigeria as Armed Forces Remembrance Day, was the day in 1966 when soldiers carried out the first-ever military coup in Nigeria. That was 44 years ago. Since then, more than a dozen coups have taken place with more than half ending in disasters. In the orgy of violent overthrow of governments, the lives of many promising and otherwise brilliant military officers were cut short.

Obviously, it was this fear of a coup in the offing that jolted the governors and the rest of them from their hitherto lackadaisical approach to the crisis and stampeded them into action to avert an impending catastrophe. The thinking of the politicians was that any further prevarication over the political crisis could cost them their juicy jobs, hence the urgency to lay the crisis to rest. What this means is that selfish interests, rather than national interest, became the determinant factor in the resolution of the needless crisis.

It is true that Nigerians wanted a quick resolution of the political crisis. Perhaps, what they did not bargain for was the way and manner it was resolved. Already, Jonathan has proved that he could be his own man by moving against Michael Aondoakaa (Mr. I-don’t-care), the former Attorney-General of the Federation, who was swiftly redeployed from his highly sensitive position to a less visible one as Special Duties Minister, which is more or less the position of a glorified errand boy.

What is, however, worrisome is Jonathan’s recourse to holding nocturnal meetings with former President Olusegun Obasanjo at a secret location soon after. This is one area where Jonathan has to be careful. He should not be seen to be taking dictations from the former President whose attempt to elongate his tenure in office was only scuttled by popular dissent. After all, when other former Heads of State decided to pay him a courtesy visit, they did it in broad daylight and it was captured by television cameras and paparazzi from the print media. As I learnt, the visit by the former helmsmen was at the instance of former military President Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (retd) who felt that such a visit was necessary in order to send a strong signal to Obasanjo and counter his machination.

We have also been told that the governors’ move last week was to enable Jonathan effect the sharing of the Excess Crude Oil Fund, as Acting President, a thing he could not do as Vice President. True to speculation, he has signed off about $2.2 billion out of the more than $6 billion of the fund. Again, we are told that the governors were able to extract a promise from Jonathan that he would give them a free hand to nominate new members into the next federal cabinet to be soon constituted as opposed to the previous arrangement whereby Yar’Adua merely handpicked members of the council without input from the governors. My take on this is that Jonathan should not allow the governors, many of whom have hidden agenda, to suck him in. Eternal vigilance is the watchword.

The Acting President is free to tinker with anything he feels would make governance meaningful to Nigerians at this point, but he must do this with sincerity of purpose without necessarily pandering to the whims and caprices of those who do not mean well for this country. And if it is true that there were ripples in the barracks in the recent past, he needs to get to the root of such and uproot these roaring adventurers from their strategic closets to guarantee his own safety and the safety of Nigeria’s democracy. Like the Yoruba would say, ‘A kii fina sori orule sun’, meaning you do not put fire on your roof and sleep off. Delay could be dangerous!

By Dele Agekameh