PeeCeeJay By Jideofor Adibe

The Re-Invention of Goodluck Jonathan (111)

pcjadibe@yahoo.com

The first instalment in these series was published on 1December 2011 while the second instalment was on 13 September 2011. In these series, which will not run consecutively, I will try to monitor the putative re-inventions of Goodluck Ebele Jonathan (GEJ) and the consequent transformations in his style and public persona.

In the first instalment I noted the effort to re-invent him as a man who could take tough decisions and stick to his guns. This was against his pre-April 2011 public persona, which was of a gentle, if diffident guy, who gives sympathetic ears to all arguments and does not mind changing his mind several times on an issue. This persona of the guy next door has been a great asset in GEJ’s meteoric political rise. I will call the effort to re-invent him as a man of conviction who can take tough decisions as the First Wave of his re-invention.

In the second instalment I observed that the re-invented GEJ seemed to be enjoying the new image of a ‘tough guy’ and with time appeared to revel in taking contrarian decisions when opinions seem to have coalesced in a different direction on a probable belief that such would enhance his new image.  I will call this the Second Wave of his re-invention. The persona in this Second Wave inevitably attracted an army of critics forcing the President to hyperbolically declare himself as the most criticised President in the world. With the House of Representatives dangling the impeachment axe and the Senate indicating it might concur with the Lower Chamber, the President knew something must give in. These seem to have spurred the Third Wave of his re-invention. I will explain.

In the Third Wave we see GEJ soft-pedalling on some ‘tough’ decisions – in a manner reminiscent of GEJ before the First Wave of re-invention. First, his tough stance on the single term tenure proposal, which he insisted there was no going back on, was surreptitiously leaked as having been shelved. Then came the backing down on the proposed N5, 000 bill apparently without first informing its author  Sanusi– after the Presidency had thrown its backing behind the proposal at the crest of popular opposition to it. Though I find most of the arguments against the N5000 bill unconvincing (I have never by the way been a supporter of Sanusi’s methods), the timing of the presidency’s support was symptomatic of GEJ’s way of doing things in the Second Wave of his re-invention. In what can be regarded as a reinforcement of this putative Third Wave of re-invention, the ThisDay of 24 September 2012 reported that President GEJ may give in to pressure from the National Assembly for the sack of the Director General, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Ms. Arunma Oteh, and the Chairman of the Pensions Task Team, Mr. Abdulrasheed Maina.

It will be recalled that the Presidency had recalled Arunmah Oteh as DG of SEC after being  suspended by its Board and had even unethically allowed her to attend meetings of the Economic Management Team while in suspension. She was also recalled despite a resolution by the House of Representatives on 19 July 2012 requesting Jonathan to remove her from office.   The point here is not whether the House was right in asking for her sack but the ‘I don’t give a damn’ manner in which the presidency handled the issue, which was reminiscent of GEJ in the Second Wave of his re-invention.

Several observations could be made about the various efforts to re-invent GEJ:

One, GEJ’s pre April 2011 persona of a humble, diffident and unassuming guy– which I suspect to be closer to the real GEJ – had been an asset in his political career only because he started with being the Deputy Governor of Bayelsa State and later Vice President of the country. It is the sort of a ‘weak’ persona politicians in frontline positions normally want as their deputies. However while such personas could be good in playing second fiddles, they cannot survive in political frontline positions where tough decisions necessarily have to be taken. In other words, a re-invention of GEJ was inevitable and would have been done anyway if he had stayed long enough as the Governor of Bayelsa State. My suspicion is that we will still see more efforts at re-inventing GEJ as he seeks to find a comfort zone between his pre-April 2011persona and the persona of a President who has to take tough decisions.

Two, when President GEJ declared that “I am not David….I am not a General….I am not a lion….” my reading of that statement was that he was indicating a resolve to succeed despite his simplicity and unassuming  persona.  GEJ had also promised to be a ‘breath of fresh air’. Essentially, my reading of a combination of both declarations was that like the musician Frank Sinatra, the President was declaring that he would do it his own way. However rather than  being loyal to these declarations, the impression one gets is that he has been doing it the way of others or has not really found a political persona that he is  truly comfortable with.

Take the proposal about the N5000 bill for example. The impression one gets is that President GEJ seems to have been carried away by the CBN Governor’s undoubted facility with English language. In both the fuel subsidy issue and the Arunma Oteh saga, one suspects the ‘stubborn’ persona of Dr Ngozi Iweala, the Co-ordinating Minister of the Economy, as the invisible hand of Esau.  A key challenge in the re-invention of GEJ therefore is how to ‘own’ certain tough decisions and ‘domesticate’ their marketing to fit into his own persona. ‘Owning’ policies means becoming truly convinced about such policies – and not to embrace them simply because they are propounded by Cabinet members who speak eloquent English language or have ‘intimidating’ résumés.   Because some policies that flow from the presidency do not seem to be sufficiently owned by GEJ, they are often marketed using the personas of their authors rather than that of the President who should give political covers to his Ministers and aides. Consequently when such policies are pilloried, they become vulnerable to reversals because the President simply does not strongly and passionately believe in them. Under Obasanjo for instance, no one is in doubt who is in charge  because the impression is that he ‘owns’ approved policies from his Ministers and aides and then uses his rambunctious persona to market them. Under GEJ, where a few in his Cabinet behave like philosopher kings, it is sometimes difficult to know who is in charge, making it difficult for GEJ to use his own persona to market his political options.

Three, it is possible for GEJ to put to good effect his declaration that “I am not David....I am not a general.....I am not a lion......I will defeat the Goliaths in our land” and succeed. He has already done so with INEC simply by being himself and by apparently not interfering. Much of the credit for the improvement in the conduct of our elections should actually go to GEJ because the body language of the President of the country will always determine how independent INEC or any other body in the country can be. Though GEJ is not sufficiently credited with the successes in this area, the fact is that the success came because he seems to believe in INEC’s neutrality and therefore does not need to prove any toughness. You do not need to beat the drumbeat of toughness to be seen as tough. It is tough to see your party routed in an election and still congratulate the person who mauled the candidate you openly supported. This is the sort of toughness that the handlers of GEJ may want to reflect on rather than the toughness exhibited in some decisions in the Second wave of his re-invention. It is also the sort of toughness that may seem to be more in tune with the pre-April 2011 persona of GEJ.

Four, as GEJ continues to evolve politically as President, one obvious urgent area is patching his soured relationship with the National Assembly. Owing to tendencies in the Second Wave of his re-invention, the House of Representatives has threatened him with impeachment and it is ominous that in the Senate it was Senator Uche Chukwumerije, from Aba, who volunteered to lead the impeachment move in the Upper Chamber – if need be - against him. Apart from the South-south, the South-east was GEJ’s strongest base of support in the last presidential elections.  

Five, a key question is the motive in the putative Third Wave re-invention of GEJ: Is it because of fear of impeachment or because GEJ has become truly worried about the avalanche of criticisms that now trail his political options in the Second Wave of his re-invention?  Could it be a desire to return to his pre-April 2011 persona, which had served him well in his political career - as 2015 approaches?