New, improved Jonathan

“Anybody that wants the presidency so much that he will spend two years organizing and campaigning for it is not to be trusted with the office.” David Broder, 1973

Students of power are taught to be sensitive to slight changes in persona, disposition, temperament and policy thrust of leaders. These changes tend to suggest that leaders are about to take critizens through some turbulence or crisis, or are maneuvering to overcome perceived threats. During these intense jockeying for space, advantages over adversaries, and all manner of tactics that seek to influence public opinion, leaders with a sound grounding in history fall back on received wisdom which cautions that honesty among leaders is the most fatal of all failings. In polite terms, they will be guided by George Carlins’ words: “honesty may be the best policy, but it is important to remember that apparently, by elimination, dishonesty is the second-best policy.”

If President Jonathan’s advisers do their jobs well, they may be crediting themselves with the appearance of a tough-talking President who dared elderly men to sign undertakings that young men who had killed, maimed and generally destroyed their lives will all lay down their weapons for amnesty. Since they could not give him the guarantee he needed, he flew away, leaving them with their war. The communities are in for the long haul, and perhaps some of them will hope that the President will be reminded by some of his knowledgeable advisers of the comment of American President G.W. Bush, a veteran of costly and unnecessary wars, that “war is never cheap or easy.”

Leaders set on achieving goals armed with massive coercive power and generally lacking in large quantities of respect for moral standards will tend to compound mistakes by making more. Perhaps the Borno-Yobe experience was responsible for the boost in confidence which resulted in the grant of state pardon to President Jonathan’s former boss, D.S.P Alamieyeseigha. Here keen students of cynical politics will be reminded of what W.S. Mangham said: “You cant learn too soon that the most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.” When the nation rose to denounce the action, legions of spokespersons set about proving that every critic was wrong, prejudiced, ill-informed, parochial and ignorant. The only thing they missed saying about those pardoned twice may have been that the quantum of their sins were so large, and their levels of remorse so inadequate that they needed to be pardoned twice. When arguments in favour of legality and against moral considerations couldn’t dent public outrage, a tactical resort was made to the indispensable value of the former felon in terms of his stabilizing influence in the Niger Delta.

Those who are angered by the fact that the only governor who was tried and convicted in Nigeria for swindling his people of billions have obviously not benefited from the wisdom of Oscar Wilde: “Always forgive your enemies. Nothing annoys them so much.” Most Nigerians are not eager to forgive the former felon, in whose stained hands now, we are alarmed to hear, the future peace and security of the Niger Delta lie. A shocked international community is brow-beaten, or an attempt in made in that direction.

A reinvigorated President Jonathan obviously has not heard of the advise that when you are in a deep hole, the first thing to do is to stop digging. Those who thought he should pause and take stock of the nation’s mountain of grievances against his administration have been dismissed as ranting opponents who would criticize no matter what he does. The demands to chase ideals of good governance, transparency and competence are dismissed as crass partisan prejudice. Jonathan’s critics who search in vain for the ideals that inform his administration could be told in the next few days that their definitions of ideal are defective. As John Galsworthy said, “idealism increases in direct proportion to one’s distance from the problem.” When the PDP begins to show serious signs of internal decay, its leaders chase the problem around, rather than find a solution to it. Governors who helped him to power are now hounded. Their attempts to challenge his powers are aggressively challenged. After all, an ancient philosopher once observed that “rights are in question only among equals.” Palliatives and tame gestures only serve to encourage them in thinking that the President is weak. “Men are either crushed or pampered,” Machiavelli wrote, “because they can get revenge for minor injuries, but not for fatal ones.”

The strategy appears to seek to expand the scope and power of President Jonathan. The comatose south-west PDP is told to arise, even if it has no feet. The opposition must never be given an inch to manouver. Every trick in the book must be utilized, so that the disarray caused allows the PDP time to heal its massive wounds and prepare better for 2015. There must be a few in the presidency’s corridors of power who read Gore Vidal: “Its not enough to succeed. Others must fail.” The experienced fixers will know that power must be served and serviced routinely, and on those rare occasions when it is threatened, genius is needed to scuttle plans and strategies. When errors or mistakes are made in the process, power does not apologise. In the words of P.G. Wodehouse, “it is a good rule in life never to apologise. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them.”

Power powers on regardless. The party endorses the Borno – Yobe outing and the botched pardons, while denying any role in attempts to scuttle or delay the merger of opposition parties. If all these give Jonathan too little attention, or, which is worse, too much negative attention, you organize a fund-raising event and generate N6b in support of a church fund in your village. Enemies and detractors are confused over how to deal with you. It is not easy, after all, to understand Frank Lloyd Wright when he says “less is only more when more is no good,” but some people around the President seem to have the hang of it.

President Jonathan appears set for the bruising battles towards 2015, and the nation is slowly coming to terms with this reality. Quite possible drawing inspiration from Oliver Goldsmith who said that “the first blow is half the battle,” he is striking first blows left, right and everywhere. High profile gambits divert attention from the fugitive Maina, from the subsidy and power sector scams, or even from brewing anger over alleged attempts to shoot down the 2013 Appropriation Act which has just been signed after a lot of heat and damage. The voices of praise singers and damage control apparatchiki’s are all over the nation, attempting to drown national outrage over serial miscalculations that will leave the nation even more exposed to a rampaging insurgency; or roll back the little victory gained over corruption with the conviction of Alams, or place a lid on damaging distances between regions and people with a lot of power.

The babel of voices which accuse Nigerians of bias against Jonathan on the only grounds that he is Ijaw is being challenged by the din from those who feel that Ijaw people should be apologized to. All sides blame each other for insincerity, forgetting the immortal words of George Barnard Shaw: “it is dangerous to be sincere, unless you are also stupid.” The nation seems set to trot on, with gaps in the integrity and credibility of leaders, and an astounding bravado from President Jonathan which defies all logic. Perhaps all Nigerians have to wait until 2015 to live the anonymous words found in a Lagos airport restroom: “the president taught me the greatest political lesson in my life: vote!.”