The perfidious have learnt to deceive boys with toys and men with oaths. When their quarry is a former president, they get creative, and frantic perhaps, appealing to the latter’s innate conceit. They understand that arrogance functions on the oxygen of its own modesty and that the self-confidence that is part of being vain is morbidly pliable. Hence when the perfidious approached former president, Goodluck Jonathan, to lure him into the 2023 presidential race, their intent wasn’t borne of love. Sadly, Goodluck Jonathan does not know that.
There is no gainsaying the men who approached Jonathan and sold to him a dandy dream of emerging as the ruling party, All Progressives Congress (APC)’s consensus presidential candidate had shady intentions. What started as mere speculations about his likely adoption by the APC in the forthcoming presidential election eventually snowballed into a desperate rumour. For context, Jonathan, the People’s Democratic Party, PDP candidate in the 2015 election, was defeated by the APC’s Muhammadu Buhari. Jonathan remains a frontline member of the PDP, or so it seems on paper.
In the run-up to the 2015 election, Jonathan was labelled every unwholesome name by the opposition; from clueless to incompetent, and colourless to corrupt. He bore them all with gentlemanly equanimity. He recalled that one of the most harrowing days of his life was seeing his mother cry as she watched on TV a coffin bearing his name and being borne with gusto by irate youths.
Seeing the ruthless desperation of the opposition to do everything to remove him from office, Jonathan was famously quoted to have said that no Nigerian life was worth his ambition. He conceded defeat even before the final results were announced.
For the first six years of his administration, President Buhari and his aides hurled abuses at him, blaming his administration for Nigeria’s systemic failure. At a point, Jonathan had to release a statement claiming that the harassment of him and his family by the presidency had become unbearable. It, therefore, beats any logic that the same Buhari-led APC that persistently pilloried him would now want him to be his successor in a new zoning arrangement that favours the South (Southsouth, southwest, and southeast).
The Capital findings, however, revealed that the rumours are unfounded. At the backdrop of the intrigues, the Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike, has urged the former President to remain in the PDP and rebuff any overture by the ruling All Progressives Congress.
According to Wike, the PDP is a better political platform for the ex-President to run for the 2023 Presidency if he chooses to. Wike warned Jonathan not to be enticed by moves by the APC to lure reputable members of the PDP, adding that the ruling party offers nothing but destruction.
Speaking in an interview aired on Friday on BBC News Pidgin, Wike said, “If I see the former President, I will tell him what I heard. I will tell him, ‘Don’t go anywhere because these people want to destroy your reputation. They don’t like you; you should know.
“What APC is doing now is to bring reputable people from PDP and when they bring them, they destroy them so that they won’t have anywhere to go again. That’s what the APC is doing.
“I respect the former President because he is a man of integrity but if I am to advise him, I will tell him, ‘Sir, don’t make that mistake. If you want to run for President, run under PDP. Nigerians cherish you more than this government. They have seen that all the things the (Buhari) government promised them are lies. So, please don’t join the APC for the sake of your reputation.”
Wike’s admonition seems apt against Jonathan’s perceived silence as the rumours persist has been interpreted in certain quarters as tacit approval by the former president. Who would blame him? For a man who had tasted power at the highest level, he would not mind another shot at it perhaps. He has seen betrayal in its most brutish and barefaced form. Many of those who swore by him stopped taking his calls the day after he conceded defeat. He was deserted. Now that some people are pushing for him, there’s no doubt that the soap-opera crowd will return.
But what does that tell of the vaunted anti-corruption graft of Buhari?
The United Kingdom’s Department for International Development said that about $32bn was lost to corruption during the administration of ex-President Jonathan. The agency said the huge amount represented 16 percent of the previous government’s resources that could have been channeled to development.
Similarly, many members of Jonathan’s administration are under one corruption investigation or the other. The most noteworthy being his former Minister of Petroleum, Diezani Allison-Madueke who has featured either as the main defendant or an accomplice in numerous corruption cases filed in court by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, since her exit from office in 2015. She is particularly under investigation for her role in the multi-million dollar financing of the 2015 elections. She had earlier had to forfeit jewellery worth about $40million, which were reasonably suspected to have been acquired with the proceeds of unlawful activities, to the Federal Government.
In January, a Federal High Court in Abuja issued an arrest warrant against Diezani who is believed to be residing in the UK. The EFCC had accused the former minister of fleeing the country for the UK to escape justice, among others. Abdulrasheed Bawa, the EFCC Chairman, disclosed that the anti-corruption commission recovered $153 million from Alison-Madueke and also recovered the final forfeiture of over 80 properties in Nigeria valued at about $80 million from her.
Meanwhile, just this week, the Federal High Court in Jos, Plateau State, convicted a former Minister of Water Resources, Sarah Ochekpe, and two others for money laundering involving N450 million traced to funds said to have been fraudulently distributed by Diezani in 2015. According to a statement by the EFCC’s spokesperson, Wilson Uwujaren, Ochekpe, and two others – Evan Jitong and Raymond Dabo – were jailed for six years with an option of fine.
While Jitong served as a deputy director for the Goodluck/Sambo 2015 election campaign, Dabo served as an acting chairman of PDP in Plateau State. The three convicts were accused of receiving N450 million from Fidelity Bank Plc through cash and wire transfer by some oil companies and the former Petroleum Resources Minister to influence the outcome of the 2015 presidential election.
