THIS MAN CALLED JONATHAN MAY DESTROY THIS OUR HARD EARNED DEMOCRACY: Even though he vehemently denies it, Goodluck Jonathan’s palm prints are engraved all over the incendiary legislative convulsions blaring in Rivers State. Any dog with a nose on its head can sniff him out. However, as a journalist, I am not the sort who wouldn’t give the other side its say and its way. So, while Jonathan was hobnobbing with the communist high echelons of the People’s Republic of China, I put a call through to Reuben Abati, his famously fanatical apostle of the new religion called “The Transformation Agenda,” to put me through to him. I was pleasantly surprised that the president abandoned President Xi Jinping and agreed to speak to me. I said, “Rivers State is going to pieces, Mr President, and, while you are shaking hands out there in China, everyone back home here is shaking his finger at you as the man behind the mask. They see your fingerprints all over the crime scene. Is that a fair comment?”. He cleared his throat and said, “Whoever is ever fair to Goodluck Jonathan? When it comes to stripping me naked in public, most people bring a pair of scissors to rip up my clothes, just to make me look ugly. Despite my efforts to transform that country, I still get pelted with verbal eggs just because the governor of Rivers State is a stubborn toad. How did we come to this?”. I said, “The prevailing opinion back here, Mr President, is that you are the hidden hand pinching and nibbling Rotimi Amaechi in the dark and inciting his own lawmakers against him. The weight of evidence seems to weigh against you on this occasion, Mr President. How do you respond?”. “Drag me before a judge, and I would prove my innocence.”. “Presidential immunity precludes anyone from handcuffing you before a wig and a gavel, Mr President. So it seems to me that you are trivializing the issue with a bit of sarcasm. Your spat with Amaechi is out there in the public domain. It is only natural and logical for people to reach the conclusions they have reached about your role in his troubles. Who doesn’t know how you have named and shamed him as an insubordinate dis-respecter of his superior? Most people think you are playing dirty with him from a dark hole.”. He said, “What else won’t people think about Goodluck Jonathan? Before you know it, they are going to be calling me any decayed name in the book. Some people even think I am a cold, calculating chameleon.”. I said, “Some people think worse. They think you are either a surreptitious autocrat, who hides behind presidential immunity to pepper-spray his foes, or a petty trader in vengeance doing it to them because they did it to you. Are you any of those, Mr President?”. “I am the president everybody spits on just because he was honest enough to admit that he wore no shoes to school because his parent couldn’t afford them. When did honesty become a travesty?”. I said, “The way I see it is that many people believe that your quiet, almost reticent demeanor is a cover for something leaner, meaner and Caligulan, a sort of silent authoritarian with a bite so severe the victims never know what hit them. The public brush with Amaechi seems to support that view. Look at all the trouble he had when he re-ran for chairmanship of the governors’ forum. Jonah Jang became his worst enemy – that is, second to you, of course – and everyone knows Jonah Jang to be your bosom friend.”. Jonathan retorted, “You are entitled to your opinion, but stop accusing me of things I know not, or there will be consequences.”. “Such as?” “Such as me giving a presidential order to protect me from people like you and that busy-bodied Wole Soyinka, who had the temerity to speak ill of my wife, the Honourable First Lady of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.”. I said, “It is not my place to defend the eminent professor, but, if I read him correctly, he was merely concerned that the first lazy needed to spend more time rearranging your kitchen cabinet than hugging the public arena and joining you to foment trouble for your real and imagined enemies.”. “What is his business in my domestic affairs? If I thought my wife was acting inappropriately – and going to Dubai now and then to replenish your trinket cabinet shouldn’t amount to acting inappropriately because a woman needs to remain beautiful or her husband might be tempted to stray – I would certainly tie her to my apron strings. Soyinka is just running his mouth.”. “You think so, Mr President?”. “I know so. His reasoning is obviously distorted by his lion’s mane, and just because he is a Nobel laureate doesn’t make him a priest and a judge over my marital affairs.”. I said, “People believe in people like him, Mr President. Don’t you think you should yourself?”. Jonathan said, “The day I start believing in people like him is the day I stop believing in people like my wife.”. “Are you ready to reconcile with Governor Amaechi?”. “I hugged him in public before, didn’t I?”. “Are you ready to hug him again?”. Jonathan said, “Is hugging not reciprocal?”. “I’ll call him right away.”.
Posted on: Fri, 12 Jul 2013 13:31:53 +0000
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