Several stories have it that when the cronies and those who were feeding fat on the regime of Charles de Gaulle, the former and foremost French President urged him to continue in power, he was said to have told them that, “gentlemen the grave is full of indispensable people and therefore I am going to my village” and hence he left the Presidential villa for good.
I see President Gooodluck Ebele Jonathan, GEJ replicating this same move, but on the reverse mode.
Ordinarily, President GEJ, in my own unbiased assessment, may, on his own wish to tow the step of Charles de Gaulle, but the political hawks, spin doctors, cronies who also feed fat on this regime will trudge him never to imagine such ‘inglorious step’. I am by no means suggesting that President Goodluck Jonathan should not contest the Presidential election in 2015. After all, it is his inalienable right to do so.
GEJ, a former Deputy Governor, former Governor, former Vice President, who also had the fortune of completing the joint tenure that fate and by implication, Nigerians thrust on him and his former boss, late President Yar’Adua first as acting President, then President before the elections of 2011 finally ushered him into the No. 1 office of the land as the substantive President and Commander in Chief of the Nigerian Armed forces.
I may not tell the story of GEJ’s metamorphosis with the lucidity that many of my readers may wish, but I will do my best to recall as many of the events as possible. Much of such events have unwittingly earned Mr. President the sobriquet of one of Nigeria’s luckiest men.
President Goodluck Ebelechukwu Jonathan, the man who had no shoes in his growing up stage in life is also one man whose every day event is a replication of the good fortunes associated with his first name.
Also talking about luck, Rt. Hon. Governor Rotimi Amechi, the Governor of Rivers State of the South-South geo-political zone of Nigeria has had his fair share of good fortunes and good luck too. Reports have it that fate and ‘luck’ played a significant role in his emergence as a onetime Speaker of the Rivers State House of Assembly. His tenure, though chequered, he still managed to weather the storms. Luckily, he completed 8 years as the Speaker of the Rivers State House of Assembly.
What else can you attribute to this but mother luck, more so; when threats of impeachments against him cascaded like the late October rain.
In 2007, the Rt. Hon Rotimi Amechi emerged as the PDP gubernatorial candidate, but he did not find favour in the sight of a vast majority of the upper echelon of his PDP, but mother luck still played a good fortune to favour him. Amidst threats to his life and some members of his family, he fled to Ghana to take refuge and after the gubernatorial elections; a certain Celestine Omehia emerged as the ‘Governor’ of Rivers State, even though Rotimi Amechi was the duly nominated candidate of the PDP.
Mother luck searched him out from his hiding hole in Ghana and thrust the Governorship position on his shoulder via a Supreme Court ruling which discountenanced Omehia as an impostor and ruled that Amechi should be sworn in as the duly elected Governor of Rivers State.
The most recent being his re-election as the Chairman of the Nigerian Governors Forum, NGF polling 19 votes over and above his opponent, Governor David Jang of Plateau State who polled 16 votes.
Good luck and good fortune really beckoning on gentleman Rotimi Amechi in the same measure that President Goodluck Jonathan found himself in the highly exalted position of Nigeria No. 1 citizen.
Whereas Goodluck Ebele Jonathan is the No. 1 citizen of the entire nation, Rotimi Amechi is the No. 1 citizen in Rivers State, and here ends the shared characteristic or quality of both leaders.
The thought which I want to untangle is why Rotimi Amechi will spare no thought to challenge Mr. President at every given opportunity, without much about recalling that he is the leader of the PDP, that he is the No. 1 citizen of the nation, that he comes from the same geo-political zone as he and most importantly, that ever since the contraption called Nigeria came into being that this is the first time that a President from that geo-political zone has emerged.
To some discerning minds, it tantamount to a coup de grâce on the part of Rotimi Amechi to engage Mr. President in a senseless, nay, unrealistic war that is also capable of affecting his electoral fortune in 2015.
It is unimaginable that Rotimi Amechi will put a stud towards the second term ambition of Mr. President, more so; the South-South zone where the two gladiators come from have never smelt the No. 1 position in Nigeria.
It is the more, deprecatingly inexplicable that Amechi would become a willing tool in the hands of Goodluck Jonathan’s traducers whose unwritten rule and barefaced agenda is to thwart GEJ’s second term (or is it third term) attempt at the Presidency.
A careful study of the build up to the current political misunderstanding and outright mudslinging between the two camps of Mr. President and the Rivers State Governor indicates an attempt by one camp to muscle and sometimes emasculate the other camp from taking political positions at variance with the Presidency. Whereas Mr. President is didactic, sniffy, virtuous and sometimes foxy in his approach to issues, Rotimi Amechi is not one given to pretenses, sometimes; incautiously assertive, frank and blunt and this has often led to misunderstanding, unnecessary altercation and show of strength, especially by the camp of Mr. President.
It’s important to remind the handlers of Mr. President that politics is about give and take, as distinct from the winner-takes-all attitude associated with our own brand of politics.
Grandstanding for what it is will never be the alternative no matter how politically astute one may claim to be.
Grandstanding will only beget an equal proportion of grandstanding from the other side and in the end, the thermodynamics of politics in both camps will continue to fester as we presently experience in Rivers State.
As the number 1 citizen of the nation, Mr. President should shun the counsel of some of his self-seeking aides and reach out immediately to Governor Rotimi Amechi for immediate settlement of this ‘roforofo’ war that is taking its toll on Rivers people and by extension the neighboring states in the South East.
The Deputy Minister of Education, Nyesom Wike, the Rivers State Chairman of PDP, Mr. Obuah and the Rivers State Commissioner of Police should be cautioned to sheath their entire war arsenal towards a rapprochement. All the other foot soldiers from both sides should embrace a No Victor, No vanquished position.
On the part of Rotimi Amechi, he should find a way to change and adjust his tactics and methods towards finding an end to the political temperature of Rivers State, which is already all time high.
Rotimi Amechi must also find a way to appease Dame Patience Jonathan. She is a woman, a mother as well as the wife of the President, so, he should defer to her, no matter how hurt he may feel. The two camps should stop playing into the hands of some unseen political hawks whose evil intention may be to cause disaffection in the South-South.
Finally, Rotimi Amechi may wish to review his hurried decamping to APC, but if he feels so strongly against my opinion, then let him follow his mind, as long as such position does not cause avoidable political conflagration in the country and like this, 2015 which I have gathered is the root cause of all these may be an easy sail for either party.
May God bless Nigeria!!!!
