*Why they are scared of the ex-president’s return to Aso Villa
*How the evil they did haunts them in real-time
Men shut their doors against a setting sun. Ask Goodluck Jonathan. The former president knows what it is to be deserted at the twilight of a presidential career.
The native of Bayelsa experienced firsthand, the cruelty of disdain and desertion by his trusted friends, political/business associates, and aides.
Jonathan’s presidency fell apart to crushing defeat in unexpected hours, and his vast coterie of friends, hangers-on, lobbyists, and political associates deserted him like crushed knights fleeing the gates of a fallen fortress.
More devastating was his desertion by the billionaire magnates who profited immensely from the former’s president lax business policies and regulatory measures. For their sake, the former president allegedly bent the rules, thus enabling them to record obscene profits often to the nation’s detriment.
These magnates conveniently fell out of loyalty and affection with Jonathan, forgetting the immeasurable means by which they profited from him when the going was good. They simply abandoned him. They could no longer bear to stay loyal to a man who couldn’t hold his forte against opposition aggression.
Now, for the second time, he is experiencing the maleficence of stratagems in political hatred. In the wake of widespread calls to him, urging him to vie for the nation’s presidential seat, Jonathan has suffered, yet again, scathing scorn and betrayal by the men and women who were supposed to be his friends.
The latter comprising Nigeria’s most influential business class, in particular, are wary of him becoming the president, ultimately to avoid comeuppance for their treacherous desertion of Jonathan in his time of need.
Immediately after he lost his bid to retain his seat, at the close of his tenure as late President Musa Yar’ Adua’s successor, many of the technocrats and billionaire magnates who profited immensely from his presidency deserted him.
Many couldn’t even wait for the results of the 2015 elections to be announced before they changed loyalties, pitching their tent with the new President-elect at the period, Muhammadu Buhari.
Many who loitered about his office and Aso Villa’s presidential corridors, hustling to make money in fulfillment of their lust for primitive accumulation, abandoned him.
Previously, his phone lines and those of his closest aides were always buzzing with the demands and pleas of personages and groups calling to solicit one financial or political help or the other.
Some called – billionaire magnates in particular – urging him to bend the rules for them and help them evade the strictures of crucial policies and regulations guiding business practice in their industries.
Everybody wanted a part of the national cake and they profited from the largesse furnished to them by Jonathan’s presidency.
Sadly, the businessmen who swarmed Aso Villa corridors and besieged Nigeria’s power circuit, hovering around the system like bees around nectar, during Jonathan’s presidency, are currently up in arms against him in a frantic bid to thwart his presidential ambition for a second term in office.
And the reason is not far-fetched: they are scared that Jonathan would gun for their jugular and exact retribution from them, for the savage way they treated him immediately after he was defeated at the 2015 polls by Buhari.
Everything changed after his defeat. Days after, the State House became Ghost House. The presidential corridors of power, which used to receive visitors as early as 6 am, became eerily quiet. Aside from the sudden halt in the throng of visitors, Jonathan’s phone stopped ringing.
By May 29, all the eminent businessmen, lobbyists, and political associates had deserted him like a dusty relic in a disused museum. Ultimately they dumped him in the political dustbin and moved on to their next victim.
Opportunism is the driver of the public’s relationship with public officials, no doubt. Ask Goodluck Jonathan. As a former president, he has had a good experience in the political wilderness; he knows what it is to be a subject and what it is to be a sovereign. He has made good friends, and he had met with bad: and in trust, he had found treason.
