My Transition - Jonathan Ebele REMADE (B) Read online

  MY TRANSITION HOURS

  Copyright © 2015 by

  Dr Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan.

  ISBN: 978-978-50522-9-9

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be used without the written

  permission of the publisher, with the exception of brief

  excerpt in magazines, articles, reviews etc.

  For further information or permission, address:

  Printed By:

  LWCA Publishers

  0803 409 0384, 0805 998 7777

  [email protected]

  [email protected]

  ii

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledge

  vii

  Prologue

  viii

  Introduction

  xv

  Chapter One

  Looking Backwards

  3

  Chapter Two

  Political Stalemate

  29

  Chapter Three

  Decision Points

  41

  iii

  Chapter Four

  More Decisions Points

  61

  Chapter Five

  The World Responds - April 2015

  77

  Chapter Six

  My Last Weeks In Office

  99

  Chapter Seven

  The Fight Against Corruption: The Blame Game

  107

  Chapter Eight

  The Women Behind The President

  117

  Chapter Nine

  The Change Game Begins

  127

  Chapter Ten

  The Presidential Inauguration Dinner

  139

  Chapter Eleven

  The Youth Bulge

  157

  iv

  Chapter Twelve

  A Strong Democracy

  167

  The Goodluck Jonathan Foundation

  175

  Reforming Africa

  178

  Leadership – Life After Office

  181

  Private Sector Reform

  184

  The World Claim Still

  188

  Epilogue

  212

  v

  vi

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Many people have helped, supported, and encouraged me in ways both big and

  small to write this book. I am grateful to each and everyone. Unfortunately, I

  can't mention you all. Special love and thanks go out to my spouse, family,

  ministers, and aids and of course, the Nigerian people who gave me the

  opportunity to serve them.

  President's Signature here

  vii

  PROLOGUE

  “Power politics is the hangman of politicians"

  -Anonymous.

  It is power politics. Germans call it machtpolitik. It would appear a

  mismatch if applied to local political constructs rather than the

  international relations structure it was designed to treat.

  Machtpolitik or power politics emphasizes the vicious engagements

  of nations around the world. The selfish struggle to control the flow

  of resource and dominate apportionments to their own ultimate

  advantage. Such inhumanity had since been ratified perfectly human

  by an unspoken earthly consensus.

  It welcomes threats, as seen in the frenzied build up of nuclear

  viii

  M Y T R A N S I T I O N H O U R S

  armaments, pre emptive strikes, propaganda, and pack mentality and

  many other wet works otherwise known as espionage. They are all

  then encapsulated in a sophisticated international code of deeds. For

  instance, nations could listen in on other nations' private

  conversations. It is okay, so long as you were not caught. President

  Barack Obama would probably not consider eavesdropping in ten

  lifetimes, but what about that institutional order which transcends

  his personal preferences and principles?

  Despite this consciousness, time taught me that nothing was really

  ever international without it first being the native of some soil. Of

  course, globalization creates the zone of comfort for a global

  consciousness which makes an import seem like an export, since it is

  now all a single village in the super highway nuptial, without the

  essential sacrament of matrimony.

  Our hangman's noose or machtpolitik is intriguing in the Nigerian

  context in view of our multiple plurality. A nation owned by over

  four hundred distinct tongues is not a nation in the conventional

  sense. We could now add the two ultra nations inside Christianity

  and Islam. This in itself rivals the volume of world's trading tongues.

  As a Nigerian, the phrase, "comity of nations" is a source of

  amusement to me (without any disrespect intended) in its first

  evocation of our nation's natural fracture, ever before seeing the

  fragments converging in the global comity. When we step out each

  ix

  P R O L O G U E

  time to feature in the comity, it is a comity meeting another comity.

  Machtpolitik is an apt term in Nigeria's political setting. I know so

  for quite a few reasons, the most pointed of which must be the very

  conclusive and convicting evidences from the ultimate witness post -

  presidency. That loft which in actuality, is the very eye of the storm,

  at once the mystery calm at the epicenter of a rabid swirl and the

  static target of a million darts.

  It becomes compulsory for the politician to war for a ringside seat at

  the amphitheater, for differing incentives split under glory and

  greed. This does not detach glory from greed on very permanent

  basis, since humans could still be greedy, even about glory.

  Ambition, Shakespeare says is the soldier's virtue. It scales up from

  the individual to clans, tribes, ethnic, corporate packs and curious

  religious projections. Indeed, it becomes a very fluid flux as they

  tightly mesh into each other under deft programmers such that the

  lines become so blurred between individual goals and ethnic

  aspirations.

  This is what I think lurks beneath the irresistible, powerful lure of

  power. The sheer grandeur of office sells an unstable soul away, to

  say little of the legitimate perks and yes, illegitimate but perfectly

  legal attachments in certain less-than-edifying paraphernalia. I have

  x

  M Y T R A N S I T I O N H O U R S

  happened on the joy of election winners on such ephemeral and

  temporal ownerships of items as the siren!

  Now shift the mind to the powers of life and death which a simple

  announcement as winner of an election probably rigged, bestows on

  the "winner". A politician with a raging ambition which makes

  everything positive and negative highly inclusive. No questions on

  morality.

  Every waking moment at the pinnacle saw me singing a mental song

  about absolute power corrupting absolutely. A strong probability of

  opening a dangerous door loosely closed by soldiers in all those

  military years, housing a huge pile of non-democratic powers,

/>   thumping with life. It was the easiest goad towards absolutism or a

  few steps shy of it.

  Such powers which nudge "independent" agencies like the judiciary,

  police, and army etc. to act in tandem with a president's body

  language. Presidential gestures which numbs ordinances and

  assumes for a presidency the status of the more supreme court. The

  final election umpire. The swift jailor and the ultimate carrot and

  stick bearer. Looking back, it is gratifying that the door remained

  closed.

  However, leaving the door closed comes with consequences. It

  xi

  P R O L O G U E

  could depict a president as inactive, clueless or not presidential, even

  if the conditions of democracy are as met as possible under dire

  straits. So, if a president deliberates with himself to shell a thousand

  souls in a troubled space without legislative consent, it would be

  called "action". Democracy then gets a lesser seat than "action?"

  As nations team up against each other on global battlefields, so it is in

  the Nigerian polity, with political champions completely swept away

  from sincere representation in most cases.

  Is it not the lust for this power which corrupts absolutely? A

  corruption strain which midwives and nurses other lesser forms of

  the same strain. For a while we indexed this aged ailment, but it was

  wasted by an orchestrated din constructed to brazenly reduce sense

  to nonsense.

  Financial corruption should be Nigeria's least and lowest on a list of

  worries. The systemic corruption which enables financial

  corruption in perpetuity should be the largest single corruption.

  Should it then not be logical, easily, that ex-operators of political

  offices would then have to be hunted on real and imagined

  allegations so long as the system remained designed to aid financial

  corruption, only to begin the chasing of its consequences.

  The lure of power brings out the beast in us. The realization of this

  xii

  M Y T R A N S I T I O N H O U R S

  bestiality makes it incumbent on politically desperate moments to

  craft a massive makeover which seeks to pacify the jaggedness of an

  actually gory visage. The need to pretend then becomes so intense

  and compulsive That it now becomes statesmanship! At that stage

  of progressive degeneration, election to power must be the first

  casualty. The legitimate propeller to power must then become the

  shortcut.

  Since the putsch to which we were so familiar had left the vogue,

  being out of sync with democracy, even democratic pretences, then

  the coup's cousin - violent rigging, becomes the alternative. Violent

  rigging in itself must be an absurd phrase since rigging on its own,

  even without bloodshed, hardly adds anything to the measure of

  devilry which ab initio exists in rigging.

  On account of a national modus already rigged in favour of power

  (again, the parent of other riggings) it is with stupefying ease which

  all other forms of rigging come into their own.

  This must be the habitat of the media with a head totally buried in

  the sand, while its body remained an elephant in the room. The

  media is also the home of mercantile academics holding pre

  eminence in the trade of politics, albeit at the fringe, mostly.

  In the final analysis, no one is left out of the grand orgy dedicated to

  xiii

  P R O L O G U E

  foisting two over three. An effective recipe for chaos, strife and

  disaster.

  The power-island promises great allure, serenity and beauty, but it is

  still an island. It is cold and lonely in the holder's mind. It is dizzying

  with that circling run of famished sharks. The place where the buck

  stops. The place where four hundred cardinal interests must be

  balanced. Where the placation of one interest means natural offence

  to the other three hundred and ninety nine. When right and wrong

  are not determined by universal scales.

  Where success is defined by a few who could outshout all else by the

  same means - corruption.

  This island hosted us by destiny, way beyond the confines of

  ambition. We did not strive or struggle. It is from there we return,

  not unscathed, but still standing here by His grace. In this heavy haze

  of vicissitude, foundational and constantly upgraded national

  errors, name-calling and tabloid trials, I present my Transition Hours

  ahead of my memoirs .Just in case, someone somewhere awaits the

  endangered truth in a sea of lies.

  xvi

  INTRODUCTION

  I was born on the 20th of November, 1957, some moments away

  from Nigeria's independence in 1960. This was the twilight of the

  British colonial overlords. The circumstances of my birth,

  childhood and family are a long shot from my assumption of office

  as Nigerian president. My very humble beginning is already a known

  story, at least in parts, but I must state the "canoe building" part of

  my family's mainstay as a clear statement on how downtrodden

  those circumstances were.

  My current destiny would appear unlikely in the deluge of prime

  contesting candidates. Looking back, it is an enduring cause of

  constant and enduring stream of gratitude to God and the tools it

  pleased him to use in the course of bringing that unlikely destiny to

  xv

  M Y T R A N S I T I O N H O U R S

  manifestation.

  The Nigeria of my birth has an uncanny bearing on my presidency

  which spanned 2010 - 2015. The season of my birth were,

  unfortunately, the foundational years of a nation structured by the

  British colonial powers for very deliberate and highly strategic post-

  colonial conflict. The late Dr. Kwame Nkrumah would have

  preferred neo-colonial... Such grand futuristic schemes have since

  been settled into the realm of conspiracy theories in utter spite of

  clearly obvious credibility.

  Although, Adaka Jasper Boro died in the late sixties (1968), his story

  was probably a gauge of sorts as well as a window into the oily

  machinations of forces interested in Nigeria's promising economic

  future as a major oil producing "country" and the natural inheritors

  of the oil. The natives on whose land God chose to locate the

  resource.

  I had an overwhelming, humbling support of Nigerians into the run

  for the presidency in 2011. The election was all but won even before

  the whistle went off because of a few strong factors. To mention a

  few, the pressure to stop me from contesting met with bloc

  indignation from too many Nigerians. It was seen as a continuation

  of the spirited attempt to rig the vice president off the victorious

  ticket and humiliate the Constitution after the sad and untimely

  xvi

  I N T R O D U C T I O N

  death of the late President Umoru Musa Yar' Adua.

  The PDP still presented a united front, but only a front, as the party

  was already imploding along ethnic/religion and ambition lines. This

  muffled implosion would fully manifest in the build up to 2015.

  Each ship-jumper calculating
how much he/she would take from

  the PDP or the most opportune moment to cause maximum

  damage and promptly exit.

  The curious point being that only very scanty few of this lot, if any,

  bothered about what we did or did not do in terms of delivery in

  office. It was eminently more in favor of where i came from -

  Otuoke - Ijaw country and the direction I bended my knees in

  worship - Jesus Christ. This means you passed or failed political tests

  in fated terms. Your performance then mattered quite little, if it

  mattered at all.

  Our message during the campaigns resonated with especially the

  youths and millions of ordinary Nigerians who saw themselves in

  our mirror. We were not in the power-heritage chain of Nigeria, but

  here we are inside the throne room despite human preferences. I

  thought they somehow saw the higher forces on their side - our side.

  Against the run of our popular emergence, it was an irony that a

  thick wave of arranged criticism targeted our administration even

  xvii

  M Y T R A N S I T I O N H O U R S

  before we took off. My leadership was also pointedly attacked in

  personal terms as never before experienced. The seed of an

  ostensibly nationwide disdain was being sewn laboriously. I knew a

  campaign run had started as soon as one finished! There was nothing

  yet on ground to go by but the opposition was quite adept at

  manufacturing.

  If the constant scrutiny of the void was acceptable as a

  phenomenon of democracy, many reasons make the onslaught in

  this context very suspect, as I will explain later.

  Throughout my tenure in office as president, there was a constant

  barrage of reservations mostly through a well conducted media

  orchestra, but a significant portion of that had turned to applause in

  a brief moment of private citizenship in the calm of Otuoke. All in a

  twinkle! This must pop the question: could the establishment ever

  win? Not likely under certain structural defects.

  Yet, we are not oblivious of the fact that those reservations came

  quite far from any position identifiable with altruism. While altruism