Right now, the thoughts of End-Bad-Governance-In-Nigeria protest is no doubt heavy for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to bear. And he has been more or less on bended knees, urging Nigerians to refrain from protesting against his federal-led government; promising enduring respite, even as most Nigerians claim the current regime is dealing the most unbearable pains with its audacious policies and actions.
For a president, another critical but generally not fully understood moment that is similar to what President Tinubu is currently going through can be likened to when former President Goodluck Jonathan, seated in his parlour, surrounded by some top players in his kitchen cabinet, were urging him not to relinquish or concede defeat to former President Muhammadu Buhari as the progressively reported presidential election results were revealing an apparent lost game for him and his appointed officials.
For so many people, the thought of not plunging the country into an unwanted crisis of bloodletting, was a pungent reason to concede defeat, encouraging him to make the now famous congratulatory call to Buhari. After all, Jonathan has repeatedly stated that his political ambition is not worth the blood of any Nigerian.
Notwithstanding, such statesmanship attribute of conceding electoral defeat and sustaining our democratic journey, free from bloodletting sacrifices is just about the strongest reason known to many, which influenced Jonathan to make the critical decision of allowing the electoral conduct of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to prevail on his political fate and eventual ouster from being Nigeria’s president.
However, what are often not credited to former President Jonathan at that critical moment are the issues of firstly, contentment and, secondly the understanding that actions of those doing any disservice to governance, will always reflect in public perception of Jonathan or the federal scorecard, and therefore Jonathan wisely sacrificed his political ambition in order to terminate the progressive disservice of those striving to hang on to political privileges.
More on the issue of contentment; Jonathan made information of his background a public knowledge. Given birth to by parents, who could not afford him shoes while trekking to school in a squalid unambitious community; eventually finding himself as the president of Africa’s most populous and aspiring nation…constantly kept him reminded about the depth of his limitations and the kindness of God upon his life. In other words, Jonathan was a man, who has been groomed into believing and depending on the act of God. To such end, if it was the will and act of God to also kiss the presidency goodbye without a fight.
Secondly was his understanding that the people urging him to ignore the declarations of INEC or make them null and void, and to take the fight to the streets, as experienced in the past, allowing who had the strongest means of commiting the greatest bloodletting to eventually decide who should govern Nigeria, are the true enemies of the Nigerian State. They are actually the ones, whose actions in their various MDAs have led to the pitiable scorecard, leading to Jonathan’s loss of the Presidential election.
Therefore for Tinubu, he must do a retrospection, and understand that even those, currently asking Nigerians not to protest from felt pains are by and large contributors to the poor scorecard for which he is standing alone to receive the backlash.
Whether the protest eventually holds or not, this moments would be registered as a time Nigerians made a bold statement about not only being fed up with a lot of things, but that they know where and those withholding their common preferred destiny from prospering.
For me, the current agitation should encourage President Tinubu to distill the fact that some players in the Nigeria government system should be ask to vacate for the simple fact that their outcomes are not adding positively to the federal scorecard, which is commonly tendered as Tinubu’s scorecard.
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