Worrisome Events That Prefigure 2015 By Tochukwu Ezukanma

The Goodluck Jonathan story is
prepossessing. It seemed a snippet off
a legend or fairytale. For it is only in
legends and fairytales that such
stupendous change in a man’s fortune
is common place. His glide from
obscurity to the pinnacle of national
power – that rapid and seemingly
effortless rise of a prior unknown
deputy governor to the presidency –
inspired the love and admiration of
many Nigerians.
Although nothing about him indicates
intellectual heft, he has a doctorate
degree, a level of academic
attainment that distinguished him
from earlier Nigerian presidents.
Although his message lacked
ideological depth and intellectual
penetration, it was poignant, and
thus, it struck a responsive chord in
Nigerian minds. He told us that he had
no shoes. To levitate from utter
poverty and deprivation (of having no
shoes) to prominence was
transformational. And his dazzling rise
to power was more revolutionary than
evolutionary. So, his campaign promise
of transformation appeared in
consonant with the transformation
and revolution his life, so
dramatically, epitomized. Therefore,
to many Nigerians, he came across as
a providential instrument for the
reformation of Nigeria from its
corrupt, lawless and disorderly past.
Unfortunately, he has disappointed
these expectations. He has failed to
make good on his campaign promises,
and consequently, Nigeria continues to
be plagued by the same problems he
had earlier promised to resolve or
ameliorate. Corruption, dysfunctional
institutions, decrepit public
infrastructure, unsteady power
supply, terrorism, etc continue to
beset the country. In addition,
Nigerians are dismayed by his
insensitive and inhumane economic
policies and dictorial tendencies.
Democracy does not inherently
guarantee the election of good
leaders. But, it empowers the people
to peacefully remove a bad leader.
Goodluck Jonathan is a bad president,
and therefore, should be removed,
peacefully, through the ballot box in
2015.
There are emergent indications that in
2015 Goodluck Jonathan may
undermine this fundamental
democratic right of the people to
change a bad leader. The invisible
hands of the presidency have been at
work in a number of the political crisis
bedeviling the country. To secure his
party nomination and ensure his
reelection in the 2015 election, the
president is scheming to control a
number of key political institutions,
including the Governor’s Forum. In a
concerted endeavor to dislodge the
present Chairman of the Governor’s
Forum, Chibuike Amaechi, the
Governor of Rivers State, an
influential political opponent of the
president, the president, through
proxies, has taken “do or die” politics
to a nauseating extreme.
In a recent election for the Chairman
of the Governor’s Forum, 35 governors
voted: 19 to reelect Governor Amaechi
as chairman and 16 for his opponent,
Governor Jonah Jang. The president’s
loyalists in the Forum abandoned the
precepts of basic arithmetic and
adopted a mathematical fallacy that
advanced the electoral victory of
Jang (with 16 votes) over Amaechi
(with 19 votes).
Again, to set the stage for the
removal of Chibuike Amaechi as the
Governor of Rivers State, five
legislators, at the instigation of
Nyesom Wike (a surrogate of the
president), in a riotously provocative
challenge to Nigerian democracy, took
over the Rivers State House of
Assembly, “impeached” the Speaker of
the House and imposed a new
“Speaker” on the House. Their take
over of the House was marked by
untold levels of violence: assault and
brutality. Their conduct was
disgustingly at variance from
expected behaviors of lawmakers. It
was more in conformity with the
barbarism and savagery of Amazonian
bush fighters. The Rivers State House
of Assembly has 32 legislators, and
the constitution dictates that the
Speaker can only be impeached by a
2/3 majority. Again, the president’s
proxies jettisoned standard
arithmetic, and in their voodoo
arithmetic, equated 5 to 24 (2/3 of
32). In these brazen assaults on the
tenets and institutions of democracy
and blatant breach of the law and the
peace, the culpability of the
presidency remains incontrovertible.
According to an Igbo adage, “a na esi
na nma obala we malu nwata di nko.”
This loosely translates to: you know a
sharp kid from a toy knife. In other
words, the way a child handles a toy
knife is a powerful indictor – actually
foreshadows – his future handling of
a real knife. Therefore, shades of the
future are held in this desperate,
unlawful attempt by the president and
his supporters to torpedo the political
lot of a political opponent and secure
the control of the Governor’s Forum.
The violence, disdain for electoral
verdicts, scorn for the rule of law and
contempt for the constitution they
prominently displayed in the
Governor’s Forum and the Rivers
State House of Assembly are
worrisome events that prefigure the
2015 presidential election.
The stakes in the presidential election
will be much higher than in the
present political need to control the
Governor’s Forum. So, it is reasonable
to expect that the president and his
surrogates will amplify their anti-
democratic and lawless modus
operandi in the 2015 election; and
thus, undermine, and possibly, scuttle
a free and fair presidential election.
And that will be sad, terrible and even
tragic, as it will severely retard the
country’s democratic evolution and
seriously jolt the tenuous peace of
this our politically volatile and
trouble-prone country. And for the
president, it will be immoral,
unconscionable, an inexcusable
betrayal of the hopes and aspirations
of Nigerians and unforgiveable
ingratitude to Providence, if he fails
to live up to the moral, legal and
spiritual responsibility of his office
which is to uphold the Nigerian
constitution, especially, its enunciation
of the inviolability of the will of the
people.

Tochukwu Ezukanma writes from
Lagos, Nigeria.
maciln18@yahoo.com
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