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2015 Poll: How Patience Jonathan Aided Buhari’s Victory by omogumel(m): 11:20am On Apr 29, 2017 |
IF all the people who worked for President
Goodluck Jonathan were to be assessed for the
roles they played prior to and during the last
presidential election in 2015, his wife, Dame
Patience, would certainly get a top prize for
campaigning rigorously for her husband to
emerge victorious.
She did not only criss-cross the length and
breadth of Nigeria mobilising women and men to
vote for Jonathan, but also spoke aggressively to
win their hearts to do the needful.
However, a new book, “Against the Run of Play:
How an incumbent President was defeated in
Nigeria”, written by Segun Adeniyi, Editorial
Board Chairman of Thisday Newspaper, which
was unveiled in Lagos on Friday, faults the
strident and deft roles played by the former First
Lady, blaming her for unconsciously arming the
opposition to defeat her husband.
Dame Patience Jonathan and Gen. Muhammadu
Buhari
According to Adeniyi, the President was hardly
one year in office when the First Lady had an
explosive encounter with the Speaker at the
time, Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, and the then
Rivers State Governor, Rotimi Amaechi.
On a simmering note, Dame also had altercations
with the then Senate President, David Mark and
the Deputy Speaker of the House of
Representatives, Emeka Ihedioha among others,
over suspicion they were eyeing the Presidency.
Adeniyi quotes Dame Jonathan as telling
Tambuwal: “You this Hausa boy, you want to
bring down the government of my husband; you
want to disgrace him out of power? Una no fit!
God no go allow you.”
As confirmed by David Mark, “Tambuwal and
Ihedioha, who were actually working with him to
promote the Jonathan Presidency, were seen as
political enemies and in the war of attrition that
ensued, the presidency unwittingly sowed the
seeds of opposition in the National Assembly.
Since the PDP was pushing Tambuwal away, the
opposition began to embrace him”.
“The problem arose because the first lady kept
alleging that Tambuwal had presidential
ambitions and for that reason, could not be relied
upon to support her husband.
“I guess she had the same fear about me even
when she never said it to my face. She once
accosted Senator Joy Emordi to say, ‘Joy, I hear
you are the manager of David Mark Presidential
Campaign Organisation’, which was a baseless
accusation
“I had to meet the President to clarify issues
with him, So, I would say it was President
Jonathan and his wife, who radicalised
Tambuwal and turned him into a political foe,”
Mark pointed out in the book.
Recalling another potential political ally, which
Dame Jonathan drove into the hands of the
opposition and unconsciously helped to work
against Jonathan, Adeniyi captured how the
former first lady started attacking the then Rivers
State Governor, Rotimi Amaechi, over land
matters in Okrika, where she hails from,
embarrassing the governor before her natives.
This was barely six months in August 2010 after
Jonathan had been sworn in as President
following the death of YarÁdua in February of
that year.
The author says, “In the course of a two-day
visit to Rivers State, Dame Patience Jonathan
engaged then Governor Amaechi in an open
altercation in Okrika, her home town. The
governor was explaining why there would be
some demolitions in the town to make way for
new schools proposed by the state Government
when Dame snatched the microphone from him
and shouted, “Listen, you must listen to me!
“A clearly embarrassed Amaechi stood still while
Dame Patience Jonathan railed at him, “I want
you to get me clear. I am from Okrika, I know
the problems of my people. So, I know what I am
talking about. I do not want us to go into crisis.
We are preaching peace and we must maintain
peace at any time. But what I am telling you is
that you always say you must demolish. That
word ‘must’ you use is not good. It is by
pleading. You appeal to the owners of the
compound because they will not go into exile.
Land is a serious issue”.
By the time the first lady was done, she had
whipped up sentiments within the community
against Amaechi’s plan.
“From that day, the battle-line was drawn
between the two as Mrs. Jonathan made it clear
she would not tolerate a governor from her state
who would not bow to her. And it was not in
Amaechi’s nature to be easily muzzled.
But President Jonathan tried to downplay the rift
between him and Amaechi, contending that he
did not have any trouble with Amaechi and that
the disagreement was rather between his wife
and the former governor.
Jonathan declares, “Amaechi’s problem was not
with me but with my wife and at one point I tried
to reconcile them”.
Amaechi retorted, “I am happy that President
Jonathan told you about my problem with his
wife but he apparently did not tell you the whole
story. The question you should ask yourself is,
why should a governor have problem with the
wife of the president? The simple answer is that
I could not surrender my mandate to a woman in
Abuja, even if such a person was the wife of the
president. Also, I could not possibly grant
questionable demands that would make me
betray my oath of office. I won’t say more than
that for now since I am also writing my memoirs
but that was basically my sin with Dame
Patience Jonathan.
As if this was not enough, Mrs. Jonathan stoked
further fire of alienation against her husband in
the North shortly after the 279 Chibok girls were
seized by Boko Haram in April 2014. Contrary to
the sympathy expressed by the world towards
the kidnap of the school girls, Dame rather gave
the impression that the event was stage-
managed to embarrass Jonathan and his
administration.
“After the kidnap of Chibok girls, Dame Jonathan
also threw spanners into the works while the
military was battling to find the missing girls and
further drew opium for the Jonathan
administration rather than add electoral value to
him.
The book reports: “While the management of the
crisis by the military had begun to put credibility
in serious doubt, the bigger problem for Jonathan
came from the home front.
“In what she framed as a plot to discredit her
husband, Dame Patience Jonathan told a group
of visiting women led by the PDP National
Women Leader, Mrs. Kema Chikwe, “We the
Nigerian women are saying no child is missing in
Borno State. If any child is missing, let the
governor go and look for them. There is nothing
we can do again”.
“Holding court, the first lady denounced the wife
of the Borno State Governor and she said the
Borno authorities should be held accountable for
what happened. She then launched into a
monologue.
“I told the governor’s wife to call the parents of
the abducted children; she did not honour it till
today. The next thing I saw was women
demonstrating on the streets. Now again, before
Friday, my protocol officer called her and she
gave 100 percent assurance that she will be here
on Friday. Now again, she is not here. Because
she is the mother of Borno, she is the mother of
those children and I am the grandmother.
“She should feel more concerned. But she is not.
I and the Nigerian women are calling her but she
is not here. It is left for you. If you tell me you
are not pained, why should I cry more than the
bereaved? If I do so, the world will ask me
questions.
“You people are playing games. This thing will
not help us. After today, if these Borno people
say we should not help them, you Nigerian
women should not go out to demonstrate
because they are playing games. You can keep it
in Borno and let it end there. The police came
with their own people; the army came with their
own; WAEC came with their own people but the
Borno government came with a few. No parent is
here to tell us that a child is missing. They
cannot produce whose child is missing…”
The author goes further: “ The tirade climaxed in
a bizarre mix of self-pity and contrition that had
Mrs. Jonathan dabbing at her tears while
uttering the infamous refrain that immediately
went viral, “You want to kill my husband; you
want to make me a widow before you go and
rest. My God will never make me a widow. Diaris
God o! Diaris God o!”
“Apart from Dame’s mangled attestation to the
existence of God, she also widened the lexicon
with a phrase that became an instant sensation,
“Na only you wake come?
“Shortly after the tirade by Mrs. Jonathan, Boko
Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau, released a
video, admitting abducting the helpless girls.
“In this ‘stranger-than-fiction’ situation, the
opposition didn’t have to do much to shape the
narrative against the Jonathan administration.
Latching on the gaffes committed by the former
first lady, the opposition party spokesman, Lai
Mohammed and current Information Minister,
descended heavily on the first family apparently
to score some political points.
Mohammed said, “Apparently, the first lady
believed, as she revealed on public television and
as it has been insinuated in certain quarters, that
the girls’ abduction was a ruse aimed at
embarrassing her husband, hence neither she nor
her husband took the whole tragedy seriously.
That explained their delay in acting,” Lai
Mohammed, the APC spokesman at the time,
said.
“Now that the Boko Haram terrorists have
claimed responsibility for the abduction and even
threatened to sell the girls, the nation hopes that
the first lady and her husband now believe this is
no politics,” Mohammed added.
Warning that the melodrama highlighted by the
shedding of made-for-television tears would not
bring back the girls to their parents, Mohammed
cautioned that, by usurping the President’s
constitutional role, Dame Patience Jonathan was
making her husband look weak and ineffective in
conducting the affairs of state, and also making
Nigeria the butt of jokes in the international
community.
The book also alluded to the defeat of Jonathan
at the 2015 poll to the utterances to those close
to the former president, chief among them being
his wife, Patience.
It quotes the former Niger State Governor,
Babangida Aliyu, as accusing the former first
lady of insulting the North with incendiary
language, thereby alienating them from Jonathan
during the election.
According to the Chief Servant, Mrs. Jonathan
made sneering remarks against the north, by
saying “Our people no dey born children wey dem
no dey count. Our men no dey born throw way for
street; we no dey like people from the other
side”, an apparent reference to the concept of
Almajiri common in the region.
Beyond the negative things she reportedly said
about the North, Dame Jonathan is also quoted
by the book to have done little to help the
perception of her husband’s presidency through
her activities and utterances.
It says, “Yet, the failure to control his household
was not only a big negative for Jonathan, it was
lending credence to the 2012 WikiLeads report
that his wife has a more forceful personality than
him and that he “ has little or no control over
her.
It also pointed out that Jonathan did not rein in
her wife despite knowing the limit of her
educational and social standing.
“Despite being conscious of the educational and
social deficits of his wife, Jonathan failed to
insulate her from making a mockery of his
position. For instance, in the course of a PDP
rally in Calabar, Cross River State, on 2nd March
2015, Dame Patience Jonathan urged PDP
members to stone anyone that promised change,
which was the APC slogan.
“Anyone that come and tell you change, stone
that person, “the First Lady could be heard
telling the crowd in a video clip that immediately
went viral. “Anybody that tells you change, tell
that person, carry your change and get away,”
she added.
To worsen matters politically for Jonathan, most
of the provocative speeches by her wife were
made a few weeks and months to the general
election, which really offended voters, particularly
in the North, where her husband needed support
most to coast home with victory.
One of such provocative speeches, which did
little or nothing to Jonathan’s support base, was
delivered by Dame Jonathan at the PDP Women
Presidential Campaign Rally in Kogi State, a
northern town, a few days to the presidential
election, when she described the then APC
Presidential candidate, Muhammadu Buhari, as
being brain dead.
She said poignantly in Pidgin at the rally
attended by thousands of people in Lokoja, the
state capital, “Wetin him (Buhari) dey find again?
Him dey drag with pikin mate. Old man wey no
get brain, him brain don die pata pata” (What
does Buhari want again? He is jostling for power
with someone young enough to be his son. Old
man whose brain is completely dead!).
Apart from that speech, which left some of the
attendees at the rally confused, others felt bad
and confused.
The author compares the provocative speech by
Dame Jonathan to that given by Aisha Buhari,
who, according to him, was persuaded to enter
the political field to campaign for her husband
and how her message resonated with everyone
because of calmness, beauty and poise.
“While Dame Jonathan was provocative, Mrs.
Aisha Buhari’s emergence on the campaign trail
had won huge support for her husband. In a
riposte to Dame Jonathan, she said, “The wife of
the President is supposed to be a mother to all
Nigerians, regardless of political affiliation. So,
for her to say northerners are almajiris who beg
for alms is sad. What is disturbing Patience is
the large size of the north and we thank God for
our population,” Aisha Buhari replied Dame
Jonathan.
Summing up the feeling within Jonathan’s camp
and the PDP just before they went into the
crucial election in 2015, Adeniyi submits: “ In
hindsight, many PDP leaders believe Jonathan’s
wife did incalculable damage to the aspiration of
Jonathan through her utterances in the course of
the campaigns. As the former Niger State
Governor, Babangida Aliyu points out, “the way
Dame Patience Jonathan kept insulting the North
made it difficult for people to openly identify with
the PDP for fear of being attacked. For instance,
three weeks to the election, Dame Jonathan said
people from the region usually dump children on
the streets,” the former governor fumed.
In summing up, the author concluded that a
combination of factors unconsciously
orchestrated by both Jonathan and his wife,
Dame, cost him the presidency.
Adeniyi says: “From the manner in which he
handled his failed bid to install a Speaker of the
House of Representatives in June 2011, to his
inability to discern how much Nigerians detest
leaders tainted with the brush of corruption, to
futile attempt to dabble into the Nigerian
Governors Forum Chairmanship election and how
that eventually led to ill-will and a split within the
ruling party, to the unfortunate Chibok ‘Waka-
Come’ theatrics and several other gaffes by his
wife, Jonathan gave ample ammunition to the
opposition to define him in a manner that left
many to conclude that he was ill-suited for the
job of President and Commander-in-Chief of the
Nigerian Armed Forces.
Azubuike Ishekwene, outstanding Nigerian
journalist and one-time Editor of The Punch, who
reviewed the book, had this to say about the
defeat of Jonathan: “To make matters worse for
Jonathan, his wife, Dame Patience, seemed to
have a talent for courting controversies and
behaved, almost from the beginning, as if she
and her husband were on a joint ticket.
Would it have been possible for those close to
the first family to avoid or better manage the
actions and inactions of Dame Patience
Jonathan to give the Jonathan government a
better image and solid footing to complete its
terms? Perhaps, history and time, the ultimate
judge, will provide the answer in the near future. |
Re: 2015 Poll: How Patience Jonathan Aided Buhari’s Victory by TheLastIdiot: 11:23am On Apr 29, 2017 |
This is a long epistle full of trash! BUHARI, YOU WILL NOT HAVE REST! YOU WILL NEVER GO UNPUNISHED!!! ![]() |
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