Against the backdrop of his massive victory at the 2011 Presidential elections, it is difficult to dispute the obvious popularity of President Goodluck Jonathan among Nigerians. Recently however, it is also getting clearer that those opposed to him are increasing.
Whereas the latter can be described as political opponents with some of them stretching opposition to enemity, it appears intriguing that some of his supporters are more of enemies than friends. The visit to the Presidential Villa last Tuesday of a delegation of the North East Forum for Unity and Development led by elder statesman, Adamu Ciroma to hold talks with the President is one event which throws light on the subject.
From the timing of the meeting and its confidentiality, any analyst could easily have deduced that the visit had to do with the unending insecurity in the region especially the abduction of hundreds of young girls from their school in Chibok, Borno State.
This rather sharp criticism should ordinarily not have been seen as enemy action but in Nigeria such postures are so seen. Others that may be similarly indicted would include Senator Ahmed Zannah who told the international media during the week that government did nothing about the information he personally gave on the movements of the Chibok abductors.
The same fate awaits another law maker, Abdulrahman Terah who similarly blamed government for the death of over 200 citizens in Gamboru village last Monday.
When added to protests in different parts of the country demanding better efforts to rescue the abducted girls, it becomes clear that there is anger in the land. Rather than appreciating the reactions to the precarious development, the ‘friends’ of Jonathan would hold on to the usual theory of describing the protesters as sympathizers, fronts and agents of the opposition political parties.
In earnest though, a real friend of the President would have spent quality time helping him to aggregate the bitterness of people especially as visibly displayed on the social media. Instead, the President’s men preferred to dismiss every critic as an agent of the opposition thereby inadvertently projecting the said opposition as more popular.
A little effort to check out the critics would have also revealed the hollowness of the agency theory otherwise distinguished statesmen like Kofi Anan; former Secretary General of the United Nations would be ridiculously indicted. Anan had told the BBC that Africa’s response to Chibok was slow just as he expected the Nigeria Government to “have shared a bit more with its own population”.
Anan and many other critics are in reality not the enemies of our President; his real enemies are members of the highly placed “Praise Singers of Aso Villa” who tell the President what they think would please him. They deprive him of knowing the reality on the ground as they shield him from several dimensions of a subject.
This powerful association has a few notorious permanent members who are always around either promoting issues like the third term agenda during the Obasanjo administration or preventing the President from interfacing with his Vice during the era of the late President Yar’Adua. Painfully, those in the group seem to believe that any planned government event is immutable. It cannot even be shifted to a more auspicious time.
To them, shelving an event in honour of people’s sensitivity is a sign of weakness. As a result, rescheduling the recently held World Economic Forum would in their view mean that Boko Haram was winning the terror war in Nigeria. So the conference was held and it was reportedly well attended ostensibly making Abuja the Davos of Africa.
But anyone who cared to monitor any international media network would have seen that the item which dominated the world was the slogan-“Bring back our girls”-a slogan also publicly displayed by the American first lady herself. Whereas to use the international nature of the forum to justify the need to go on with it is tolerable, there are other primitive events that would also not be postponed by government because supposed friends push for it. One such event was the Kano rally where former Governor Ibrahim Shekarau, declared for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
If Jonathan is not too sure of his enemies, the first to qualify are those who prodded him to attend the Kano rally hours after visiting victims of the first Nyanya bomb blast. The President as we saw on television at the location of the blast was naturally shaken and transparently sobre. He should have been allowed to consummate his mourning.
Knowing fully well that a rally in Nigeria usually takes the format of dancing and rejoicing, rather than political education, the President’s handlers owe him ample apologies for the height of their indiscretion. But for their undue pressure, it is unlikely that Jonathan would have allowed himself to be transformed overnight from mourning to rejoicing.
Worse still, the President was at the end of the day, the only one put under intense criticism for the event. In any case, did Shekarau decamp to the PDP because some new political philosophies suddenly emerged that made him and the PDP compatible? If not, was it expedient for the President to attend the rally and personally receive what one analyst described as an artificial decampee?
Our premise is that it is time for President Jonathan to rid himself of mercenaries purporting to be his supporters. Luckily, the new posture of securing the assistance of the United States, Britain, France and China is mitigating the hitherto adverse public opinion on the vexed issue of security.
This is because the President is beginning to convince some people that ‘bringing back our girls’ which is naturally the nation’s current priority will be so handled from now on. This will be hard to achieve if the President is not circumspect.
By Tonnie Iredia
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