Jonathanianism : An Appraisal of The Stockholm Syndrome

Jonathanianism : An Appraisal of The Stockholm Syndrome

Fool me the first time it’s your fault, second it is mine.

Anybody living in Nigeria or abroad should really know the glaring backwardness and regression the ruling party has caused to Nigeria fifteen years after the return of democracy. With the little hope of surviving infrastructure, emerging economy, power and water supply, security and somewhat functional institutions, the military left, although smelling the monster of corruption. Only to wake up into more deteriorating state when the democracy rule was installed back again and the ruling party PDP took over power. Since then, the word corruption, stealing, cheating and mismanagement and embezzlement and almost any word from the family of negativity fits to be synonymous with the word PDP. It has become a household word of admonishing a person not be harmful or bad, to tell him ‘No PDP.’  Many a time people in agreement would simply tell one ‘no PDP,’ and the other would say “yes no PDP”; meaning no cheating, no breach of agreement, no plotting and no any mischievous act. What comes first in our minds upon hearing the word PDP is nothing short of stealing, rigging and self-aggrandizement to a point that having giving the party fifteen years chances to rule over the country, we lost confidence in the party. No fools like an old fools. Nigerians for this long years of PDP rule, should be witnessing developmental projects everywhere, yet, the serial failure, regime after regime, Jonathan after Jonathan, is obtrusive. Despite the gross failure of the party’s 15-year of no electricity, no security, no water supply, no job opportunity, no transportation, no good policies and no everything; being certified failure, having giving them these years to rule, yet, some people seem complacent with the bad condition. To ask we should give the party another chance to right their calculated misdeeds is foolishness and that person requires seeing a psychiatric because of his excess in sycophancy and in appraisal of Stockholm disorder – defending his aggressor.

Mine isn’t hallow verbosity, an article filled with putrid words carrying stinking mood of hatred against certain group, “northerners”, “a fellow Fulani” envy, “a Muslim” hatred, “southern opposition politicians” admiring polarization, “to slow down the south in favour of the north to catch up” inciting and disuniting as well as demonization of a region, and you say you don’t play ethnicity nor regionalism in your treatment of politics.  Accept my defiance as politely as you can, your chaos of perception is glaring, could not pass such sharp-mind readers. I also forgive your, sorry, my ignorance and hollow understanding of the politics of the word ethnicity to underplay even a commonest intelligence. I will dwell a little on this matter of ethnic politics that some politicians play when they sense an eminent loss.  

Hopeless people have nothing to lose, after all they are looking for the death partner. They are just breathing their last. But why not just die alone? Anything within the vicinity is a weapon, religion, ethnicity and regionalism. So quickly they shout fear of Islamization by the backward Northerners who require “the South to be slowed down” for them  to catch up. I wonder how a backward society like the North with their almajiris with laptops, could be a threat to a Southern community. You see such an arrant bunkum in the fear of being Islamized when Buhari won it. But what if PDP presents a Sheik, Sambos and Dasukis from the Sultan of the Northern family to contest in 2019? God forgive Abubakar Rimi, one of the founding father of the PDP. He did not mean to create this monster, God, you know that. Some Jonathanians were babes in arms then, they didn’t know Rimi, they think PDP is the South-South political party. You know it won’t be Jonathan again, my dear paranoiac? Would these people shout fear for Islamization? Certainly there is something they are hiding, indefinable.

Nigeria under Jonathan has witnessed a rocking polarization on ethnic and religious divides as a political weapon. It’s Jonathan who once said one section of the country voted him thereby depicting himself as a representative of Ijaw nation (let me quickly acknowledge the worry of my big brother to hear me call Jonathan an Ijaw. You know the rule, in Rome be like Romans, I just have to appear like every Tom, Dick and Harry, like the president himself, who dumped his real ethnic identity. I just want to manage to pass the message across. You’ll believe that I know Jonathan is Ogbia), forgetting that in 2011 poll Goodluck Jonathan had got votes from the remotest villages of the Northern states as opposed to the closed, bigotted, paranoiac, insular, a state in the South-South where a candidate from the North had no, or little vote mainly that came from the fellow Northerners residing in the state who faced a tragic humiliation, beaten publicly for voting their candidate, yet in the 21^st century where people claim liberty and freedom.

Believing in his representation of one community over all other regions, as such he allows his people like that dangerous thuggish to throw threatening comments and insult on other people across Nigeria. I’ m not talking about the jet-owning pastor who despite being an unofficial kitchen-cabinet of the Jonathans administration and being a leader of one major religion in the country, preached disunity, in an unbecoming decorum, unguarded statement that could trigger deadly war in the country hadn’t the Christian communities became more rationale to disregard his call in which he urged them to kill fellow innocent Muslims. If he is so much passionate about the lives of the fellow citizens, he should have urged his friend in Villa to take effective measures including eradicating corruption from the  Commander-in-Chief to the rest cadre in the Nigerian Army and ensure they are well-equipped to face the challenge. But instead he participated in the $9.3 million arms deal illegally that shattered the image of Nigerians both Muslims and Christians. Stinking, a close friend to the president, himself  a president to the  Christian Association of Nigeria, involved in the arms deal which violated Global Arms Treaty using a company called Tie One which the authority of South Africa captured because the company which Nigeria’s officials claimed had no register with the National Conventional Arms Control. Some few days later, another $5.7m arms deal was also detected involving some top government officials which again the presidency claimed responsibility.

As part of the Jonathan’s anti-Northern sentiment, on the Independence Day in 2010, the exiled leader of Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta (MEND) told the press in South Africa that an aide to president Goodluck Jonathan called him the day after the bomb blast to withdraw the claim of responsibility, the presidency wanted to pin the blame on the Northerners. Okah’s assertion was culled in the affidavit presented before the South Africa’s Gauten High court in Johannesburg with case no A570/10. “On the day of bombing of the October 10 2010, I received a call from Mosses Jitubon, the head personal security to the President who solicited my assistance and cooperation with the president Goodluck Jonathan towards shifting the blame to the Northern Nigeria.”  Okah believed that this was a move by the president to scuttle the ambition of some Northerners in the 2011 presidential election. This also clearly depicted the deep rooted enmity of the president against some regions of the federation.

I sensed that the South-South is up to something very ugly and terrible if Jonathan fails in the 2015 poll. They threaten disintegration of Nigeria if Jonathan loses the poll. They are now preparing re-launch of terrorist activities to make Nigeria ungovernable to anybody who emerges a winner other than Goodluck Jonathan. To any discerning mind, what’s the Jonathans agenda when he allowed the para-official jet-owning pastor to buy arms illegally on behalf of the president, praying the deal would pass clandestinely if not with the vigilance of the South Africa’s authority who exposed them. It was after much denial, with the mounting questionings from the public which pressurized the President to acknowledge it, possibly delaying any further would dig up more pores. Yet with this volatile saga fresh in our minds, president Goodluck Jonathan released the control of our coastal area to a violent thug called Tompolo, for the Maritime Security of the Nigerian Maritime Agency, who was also recently arrested smuggling in warships and other deadly warheads illegally.  How could a terrorist secure the boarders of our country? For this, Jonathan must not be the trusted candidate  able to keep Nigeria as united entity.

Now I will come to the response of the article I have talked about full of ethnicity. Jonathan and his hangers-on are so much bigotted making everything to capitalize on ethnicity to further divide the country. Such ethnic patriots, too much bigotted and guilty of their conscience, they will quickly tell you “I am not supporting Jonathan because he is from South-South” as an attempt to mask, their conspicuous bigotry to cash in on the gullibility of their village boys trapped in such closed and wild bushes, making such confession unasked and unpressurized, yet again pleading guilty by comparing their stance with others. These people may be called deliberate fools, to be honest to them. They believe in the failure of the PDP governments, they don’t argue this because they try so hard to sell their candidate not on the credibility of the candidate or what he achieves as president for six years.  No. they only accept defeat, and brazenly want to compare the opposition as the same evil. “I don’t support Jonathan and I don’t support Buhari. They are all failure. I will not change the status quo with the status quo.” This is the most embarrassing acceptance of failure one can ever confess. They want in any way to want to make you appear their death fellow – they are commiting political suicide. Why not die alone? They try so hard to stop any forces of change. We have gone far already. We have future, taller than your dreams of having divided Nigeria. Buhari is not our only hope.We have lot of incorruptible persons, the Ribadus. Continue to support your Jonathan; it’s your convictions, though, not on performance but ethnic and regional affiliation. The truth is, they don’t vote a candidate based on achievements, they prefer a mediocre, a failure no matter worst and corrupt in as much as he “is one of our sons” even when he could not help build a standard primary school to his village.

A man in his right senses, not intoxicated by the opium of religious or ethnic, should acknowledge the failure of PDP’s leadership and Jonathan’s administration. It is a bitter insult to the parents in Chibok community to tell them that this government is a success, while still tasting the agony caused by the negligence of this administration, and its inaction to accept the fact on the right time to rescue their daughters. It is still inhumane to the families of deceased who are living in bereavement of their brothers killed in this insurgency as a result of the government failure to curb its avarice to allow the security votes be judicially utilized.

We would find anybody very inhumane, saying the air is still fresh while it smells blood ordour everywhere. Plus the anti-masses policies of the PDP and Jonathan’s administration. Somebody remembers the pain, years back how his life changed drastically as a university student because of the austerity measure set by a government, that was when things were not tough like these days where we struggle to avoid being blown by the Fresh Air. We have suffered in 2012 from the fuel subsidy scam. I’m afraid the gift Jonathan will present to Nigeria in the wake of 2015.  It might be a move to skyrocket the fuel price and de-subsidise tertiary education, healthcare and many other critical sectors against the children of the common man which will ultimately make life harsher than the hell with the thieving Jonathans looting the money from SURE-P accounts while the Otedolas and Faruq Lawans, all collective of PDP, enjoying their ill-gotten wealth, travelling freely, leading a life of luxury while the poor have to pay the bill.  

It’s an appraisal of the Stockholm syndrome to anybody insisting an aggressor to continue ruling the country. Nigerians from everywhere has smelt The Fresh Air: we are all victims of fuel subsidy scam, alarming  poverty and its consequence, and stampede of the Nigerian youths in securing recruitment as a result of alarming rate of unemployment. Whether you’re living in the North or South, the danger of the collective raping of the country has affected you already in a way the other, especially under this setting where leaders believe and advocate this doctrine of Abuja Convention  for the Legalization of Corruption 2014, corruption is not stealing. Jonathan and his team of looters won the country a trophy of corruption where they perceive public properties as a possession of somebody, a legitimate plunder that any official believes he’s that somebody. Nigeria has become a Queen of corruption under His Excellency President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan. Having untouchable people like Jonathan who have actively participated in the graft of public resources energetically, with their teeth open like human piranhas struggling in milieu to help themselves to the state resources. With people like Abdulrashid Maina as frontline team worker, who stole $20b of police pension funds. Aruma Uteh, serving under Jonathan as head of Security and Exchange Commission who bragged to spend #850,000 on food per day, incurring another #30  million as hotel bills. Minister of Petroleum Resources Mrs Diezani Alison –Madueke used #10b in maintaining her private jet at the expanse of taxpayers’ money. That unaccounted $7 b that missed way from the NNPC to the Central Bank Account which cost the former CBN governor his post owing to his anti-stealing whistle blowing. Back in 70s-80s Nigerian had not witnessed women in the male-dominated world of corruption. Stella Oduah, Ngozi Okojo-iweala, Dame Patience, these are the names that are untouchable in the Jonathan administration despite their unbecoming conducts in the public offices. A great success, in Jonthan’s admnistration, stealing has no gender!

Ranging from monumental fuel subsidy scam, to the massive corruption in high offices, to the scam in Pension Administration, Security Exchange Commission and Public Enterprise, and collapsing of infrastructure, non-challant posturing of the officials for righting them, government officials have been involved in various graft which Jonathan remained mute and frowning at any move of investigation unless with outrageous demands poured from the concerned citizens. It is this trend of condoning corruption we need change about.

I understand those who earnestly insist we must vote Jonathan and PDP again, are doing so possibly because they believe corruption is a good norm, which is otherwise based on our home-training as sensible citizens. What they found  bad record on Buhari is his being very strict on corruption during his military regime. What most Nigerians complain about is not the genetic corrupt tendency in our blood but rather the lax and irresponsible leaders to implement the anti-graft policies that would enhance our progression. The restoration of discipline and sanity in the public institutions is what Jonathanians hate. They complain of Buhari being too tough and unfriendly to the corrupt officers. What of the use of such pitiless people to Nigerians, who hauntingly confessed that Nigerians “weren’t suffering because they weren’t eating from the rubbish dumps yet.”  To recognize with such persons is an insult to the sensibility and humanity of millions Nigerians. It’s  insensible to call an attempt of punishing this man-eating-man species viciousness. This alone, characterized the advocates as also vicious. So those complaining Buhari was a sort of rough person during his military regime, they should know that Buhari punished only those who thieved, looted and plundered the public fund. Whoever says that he or she is the victim or their parents or grandparents were victims, they should bear in mind that they are the sons of people with such dubious character of rats.

Recently the Transparency International had published its 2014 Corruption Perception Index in which Nigeria ranked the 136^th   of the most 174 corrupt countries over the world. Jonathan has really achieved.    The most effective way of eliminating this rotting behavior is by a strict application of anti-graft laws; unlike what pro-Jonathans are advocating because that is what their Oga believes is the best for Nigeria, under the slogan corruption is not stealing where the Jonathans abuse public fund. Now hear what Jose Ugaz the Transparency International Head is saying: “corrupt officials smuggle ill-gotten assets into the safe havens through offshore companies with impunity. Countries at the bottom need to adopt radical anti-corruption measures in favour of their people.” Let me emphasize his words; “in favour of their people”, if only Jonathans is ruling in favour of the whole Nigeria’s people, I mean the whole communities across Nigeria, not the Ijaw nation, he should be averse to grand stealing in high offices. But Jonathan is a career thief, few weeks after is inauguration in 2011, he ordered the payment of $155m to Malabu oil, a firm owned by an ex-convict and former petroleum Minister Dan Etete after which the company transferred the money into various accounts including that owned by a man with link to Jonathan. All epitome of corruption is there around you, you stink it.

Jonathan is ruling more or less like zoo curator, very rude and disrespectful of the rule of law (forgive my language) turning the country like an animal kingdom. The harassment of members of the then new PDP and defecting governors. It’s Jonathan’s administration that gave convoys of the state security to prevent the arrest and investigation of some cabinet members accused of corruption or ensuring the entry of the alleged government appointees access into their offices even when the State Assemblies ordered their closure pending the result of the legislative investigations. This has been a scenario in the case of Arunma Uteh as head of Security Exchange Commission and Abdulrashid Maina who played hide-and-seek with the anti-graft enforcement agents  before some dubious sycophants in Judiciary with the complicity of the presidency declared any arrest of Mr Maina a crime. The prevention of state legislators from performing their duty is very embarrassing where the president  messed up the country into police state that got  some observers have concluded the Inspector General of Police should be changed to Inspector General of the President, after all the P is still there. 

Lot of unconstitutional acts. Trouble started with Andrew Yakubu when he cancelled the proposal to release the money for the lease of private jet for the 2014 which cost $10m for the Minister of Petroleum Recourses. The extrajudicial removal of Justice Ayo Salami and the heedingless gesture of the presidency to reinstate him to his position after a court ruling. Jonathan had gone to a length, shamelessly, attempting to change the name of a university in Lagos overnight because of his personal odds with an individual.

They dug into Buhar’s past record and could not find an evil close to the least that of Jonathan, yet they complain that APC is as evil as PDP, which means they really believe PDP is an evil of some kind. They believed APC’s top politicians are the old wine in a new bottle recycling themselves to form another party. Yes we see them, the smooth criminal and former looters garbing to camouflage in the APC.  Troubled by their conscience of being collaborators of raping the country, some of the former looters have developed a sympathy for the entire nation (which Jonathanians don’t yet have), and begin to feel that it’s right time to seek a bright future, while some with criminal and kleptomaniac minds do not agree. Unlike the heartless Jonathans, these people felt bad for what they have been doing and don’t have the hearts to continue hurting the Nigerian masses. We want them here, the former rigging accomplice to show us the points where PDP starts it political maneuvering. The largest party of rigging on the whole African continent.

Buhari hasn’t bagged useless degrees in zoology, (I heard in the town, true or not, they are scraping zoology departments in the universities and sending the poor students to the psychiatry), yet he ruled the country between  December 31, 1983 to August 27, 1985 and had brought significant positive changes, discipline and sanity in public affairs – something that is much needed by all Nigerians during this time of reign of terror and corruption. If you still believe the prefix added before a name means being intelligent, Buhari hasn’t come from the ‘folk’ who gain their degree certificates from some pirate street printers to rise up to the metre, nor from a family whose other siblings make do with the forged copy-copy certificate of a brother. You are also as a mere gullible as to not know that Doctorship can be obtained through organized politics in places like the Animal Kingdom. Don’t forget that we have some Mallams more intelligent than professor Soludos. Does this one ring a bell? Buhari is genius having the brain as part of his effort to beat counterfeit and to force the Jonathans “suspected of hiding huge amounts of stolen Naira to come to change and be nabbed or not change them and lose them all.” Isn’t this a good idea, my dear?

Buhari is a human being with his own foils, but he only appears saint because of the too much Jonathans on the ground. Supposed the 2.8 billion Naira allegation had ever happened under Buhari’s watch as petroleum Minster and NNPC boss, yet Nigeria had not witnessed the collapse if its refineries and the indiscriminate long and endless queue in fuel stations before one could drive to his village to celebrate Christmas. Something the Jonathans failed to overcome for years after assuming power. The allegations sound much of fiction and untrue, filled with melodramatics of fiction and surreal from the super ego of an all-knowing narrator such that the story flows from the mouth of wangled characters. PTF had no auditor, while later in the story the narrator quickly invented,  all of a sudden we were presented with, auditors during Pilot Phase and Main Phase “that looked at the three main accounts.” We read how Buhari promulgated  Decree No 4 banning press about anything that would embarrass government officials, yet we also heard Atiku Abubakar on air saying the bags was in fact 53 not 35. The figures itself seemed anagrammed!

Had the allegation confirmed as true, due to the nature of Nigeria’s murky politics inhabited with dangerous and malicious sharks, people like Alkalis, Okupes and the Abatis, yet they could not pin him down through the EFCC, a powerful political weapon of the PDP under Obasanjo through Jonathan, a simple way to drown Buhari down from resurfacing again to stand as presidential candidate long ago. The worst dreaded fear of the PDP is having somebody very averse to corruption and this man is one, then why going all that complex process of detonating bomb on the Independence Day or rigging? If they have had any way of killing this man politically, this scandal would be the best option mechanism at hand. Immediately after the collapse of Abacha’s junta, the Etetes and Abachas were arrested for their stealing, and because of the culture condoning corruption, now they are the parley of the tenant of Aso Rock.

Buhari could be a serial loser and the bunch of collective PPD as serial thievers.  I have this belief that you could not read well that post election violence 2011 is not the creation of the General. Like the usual of the massive and systematic rigging by the PDP and of course Jonathanians, people of the North believed that their votes were stolen and had to chase the thieves to reclaim it. Most of those on rampage were the products of the PDP’s malfunctions of stealing the fund dedicated to the welfare of the citizens.  How could you make a scapegoat on the innocent man? Being a Northerner comes with great responsibilities. You’re like the CEO of the country where the junior staff and less brilliant employees come to lord it over you, the whole of their problems. So being a Big Brother, remember you’ve been ruling since Adam, (I know this one kills them) you just accept it, you are the leader of the house. After all they expect you to always lead and they follow. They don’t doubt it, why they come? As peaceful as he always be, Buhari came and condemned it for the sake of the unity of Nigeria.  Everybody knew this except a deliberate fool or an unschooled corner-grocer who could not read a page from the national dailies.

If you are rather mischievous enough to think that Buhari’s stance against government approach to the ending of the insurgency is anti-Jonathan, you’re tapping on ethnicity and regionalism here again to gain the sympathy of the public and generate anti-Northern sentiment to hide your mischief. If it’s utter docility and close-mindedness to aver this. Then hear this words from Lisa Hajar. Don’t know her? google her. I won’t lend the article but left it as an assignment to find out if you can end terrorism by clamping down on them once and for all. The US officials would also tell you the futile use of drones in decimating insurgents. They are being droned for years now but not completely erased from the surface of the earth. Look internally and consider what president Umar Yar’adua did to the terrorists under your nose.

Besides, it’s the Jonathan who told Nigerians he knew the insurgents and even went on to say they infiltrated into the State House, he dined and wined with them but refused to mention their names. The truth untellable. Yes indeed he did not create Boko Haram and did not come to its full-blown under his regime, but came to the worst by his posturing in handling the security challenges. “I did not create it, why hurt my bones to stop the killing of others.” But even this does not justify the carting away of the colossal security votes. Leadership comes with responsibility. One must be responsible for any situation of the country. If you just cannot bear it, vacate the scene! Nigeria’s presidency is not a place for the irresponsible.

I keep the reader suspended over the definition. Jonathanians are those aspiring thieves, the street and internet sycophants, the all and sundry and other poor corrupt-minded downward. While Jonathans are the office-based looters, those already enjoying the loot who are averse to weaning them away from such misdeed. Jonathanianism a feeling of hopelessness that the future is always bleak, despair that no effort would cause a bright future such that some people affected with the syndrome are succumb to eternal doom and failure. A feeling of ethnic inferiority that members feel psychological weak and defeated where they develop an intense and excessive fear of change of the status quo, with a sense of extreme and unreasonable suspicion of other people, of someone willing to liberate them from their captor who they feel is one of them. It’s also an appreciation of mediocrity and condoning of unnecessary suffering where worst condition is perceived as good and welcoming as opposed to the best and better change. So they embark on any move to the victory or myterdom in protecting ethnic interest against any arrangement for the better change. In fact, it is a belief built on a diseased mindset, the enemy of progress, political terrorism, biological Boko Haram.

It’s also advocacy of ethnic mediocrity and inferiority complex, people advocating this doom of failure are mainly from one section, ethnic group or region, believing that they could never produce a competent candidate to offer to Nigeria. Providence is what brought Jonathan to power, such rare incident, a luck to the luckluster might not happen again because of the improving awareness of democratic principles of some forces who do not believe in the norm of the ruling party to force an interest over the larger members of party.

Despite the serial failure caused by the successive PDP administrations, some ethnic bigots would brazenly tell you they support Jonathan not because his being their folkman, trying to mask their ethnic patriotism, they become hapless and believe can’t present Jonathan as achievement but rather cling to the ethnic bigotry.  As helpless as they are, they are characterized by what one may call schizophrenia, a severe mental disorder of emotional instability, detachment from reality and withdrawal into self. This is why the whole region which the president belongs to, folded into self to support what they regard as “one of them” rather than the reality, the right person that would change their life and their children’ children for the better. Victims  became emotionally attached to their captors, reject assistance from liberators and defence the action of their captor and even begin to sympathise and justify the aggressor’s actions on the basis of ethnic affiliation.    Here we are, like Japanese in Paris, struck by the staggering dizzy of culture shock, of being complacent with a disaster and the acceptance of gross failure on ethnic ground. I tell you loud and clear, these people are ethnic comrades!

One important point I want to emphasize is that the conviction of the Jonathanians is that they believe in their candidate’s failure, he is not only corrupt but also incompetent, now all they embark on a matchmaking spree demonizing anybody contesting against Jonathan to be also corrupt and dishonest. I’m happy that even the harshest critics could only tell you Buhari “ is being used as a Trojan Horse by a predatory class ready to unleash their super greed on the nation,” the Jonathans around “sharpening their clowns and talons to attack our commonwealth.”

Contrary to the public expectation, we are dead if only Buhari is the only Messiah to Nigeria. To be honest, he could not turn Nigeria around within just four years while the Jonathans messed it up for that long. He could only put the country to a right direction so that his successors might continue towards the development of the nation. My only case with PDP is its failure to do something reasonable in its fifteen years of (mis) management other than looting the state resources that one could expect this is the party’s manifestos. This is my only indictment and need somebody who can do something for the better. Had APC presented somebody with bad record of leadership and poor governance, and PDP presented somebody like Onyebuchi Chukwu, my vote would definitely go to a person with commitment to Nigeria’s progression. You hear. I’m not damn bigot!

 Abubakar Sulaiman Muha, is a Nigerian blogger and  public commentator. (tiwitter @ abubakarsulai13)