Opinion: Goodluck Jonathan and his dance of shame

Around this time last year, Nigeria was gearing up for what generally seen to be Nigeria’s most important elections ever.
After enjoying unanimous support in 2011 elections, the then incumbent, Goodluck Jonathan had frittered away most of his goodwill and had resorted to buying or bullying his way back to power as it was clear that large sections of the country had turned against him.
To be bought included traditional rulers, youth groups, other political parties, the media and pretty much everyone else. To be bullied were activists, associates and consultants for the opposition party and even the Chairman of INEC, Professor Attahiru Jega.
It is a measure of how unpopular he had become that despite deploying unprecedented resources to retain his seat, Jonathan became the first incumbent to lose presidential elections in Nigeria.
What followed was a commendable concession to the opposition candidate and now incumbent president Muhammadu Buhari.
Jonathan’s gesture received praise all over the world as it was seen as an act that eased tensions that had reached a boiling point when a former minister Godswill Orubebe had tried and failed to abort the vote counting process in the full glare of the world.
Several months on, the true extent of the irresponsible leadership Jonathan provided is now common knowledge.
While Nigerians suspected that Jonathan-as epitomised by his words and decisions- lacked the competence and character the office demanded, some of the details being revealed are mind boggling in their sheer recklessness and carelessness.
Not only was Mr Jonathan presiding over a mindlessly corrupt government of patronage and influence peddling, he took plundering of the commonwealth to such depraved levels previously unimaginable. No money was safe from plundering and sharing on the orders of Mr Jonathan.
From repatriated loot of previous presidents to monies meant for arms, Mr Jonathan shared it all for his friends and associates.
While war raged in the North East taking with it thousands of innocents and hundreds of badly equipped soldiers, Mr Jonathan was busy disbursing money that was earmarked for purchase of equipment for the military to fight that war to friends and political associates. For one so meek in speech and demeanour, Jonathan was sinister in his heart.
While his crudeness and lack of refinement was obvious from his speech and comportment, this way child’s play compared to the crudeness he exhibited in brazenly looting the treasury to make his rich friends richer at the expense of the poor, innocent and endangered people of the North East and the gallant soldiers who fought to defend them, sometimes with bare hands and no body armour.
Had it been that Mr Jonathan sought cover in the midst of these accusations, whatever shred of respect he deserved for behaving quite honourably in the immediate aftermath of the elections could have been preserved.
Quick to forget and forgive, Nigerians could have started the process of forgiving him and make the first steps to forgetting.
However, instead of slinking to Otuoke and spend his time reflecting on the vacuous leadership he provided, Mr Jonathan has sought to insult our collective intelligence and sense of right and wrong.
Having spent his whole political career benefitting from fortune in the misfortune of others, Mr Jonathan seems resolute in pushing his luck even further.
Not done with the heist of our collective patrimony, Mr Jonathan has embarked on a mission to steal a legacy and rewrite history. Fresh from desecrating his fatherland and reducing the country to rubbles, Mr Jonathan now seeks and even demands honour for the simple act of conceding an election he clearly lost.
Not slightly bothered by the very serious accusations of his culpability by former NSA Sambo Dasuki and PDP spokesman, Olisa Metuh, he continues to portray and parade himself as a man worthy of honour and respect.
Every other week, we are regaled with pictures of him receiving “awards” from nondescript and amorphous groups in America and Europe for leaving office honourably as has been done in the civilized world for centuries.
Small-minded as he is, he is actively and aggressively parleying this simple act into something worthy of being placed on a pedestal in Africa and even the whole world.
Perhaps deluded into believing that his concession was truly worthy of a Nobel Peace prize as suggested by one of his minions immediately after the elections, Jonathan seems to be on a mission to be rewarded for that act and rewrite history before our eyes by laying claim to greatness and even heroism.
In a letter sent to all African presidents and former head of states announcing his Foundation, Mr Jonathan said  “now well-rested, I am back to work to continue to serve and dedicate my life to promoting peace and prosperity for all
Furthermore, I will be devoting the rest of my life and energy to making the world a better place.” Noble a goal as this highfalutin and clearly utopian goal might appear, it leads us to very vital questions which exposes Mr Jonathan for exactly what he is; a manipulative, hypocritical, cunning man with no moral core and no sense of responsibility.
For a man who spent 5 years in office destroying every institution possible to advance his political goals, who encouraged and funded violence when it served his purpose.
Who initially suggested that the sad episode of the Chibok girls was fabricated politically to damage him when acting to rescue the girls immediately was a more natural reaction, who defended and rewarded corruption.
Who openly bribed traditional rulers and ethnic militia to win elections, who only decided to fight Boko Haram seriously when defeat in elections was imminent.
Mr Jonathan’s stated objective for his foundations shows him up to be an irresponsible impostor who conveniently refused to be responsible for a country when he had to and chooses take on the responsibility for the world when he cannot.
How exactly does one make the world a better place when you couldn’t secure your country as a president? How can one make the world a better place when all human development indices did not improve under your administration despite unprecedented wealth flowing into the country at that time?
How can you honestly suggest you want to work for peace when you were hobnobbing  with ethnic militia in the run up to elections and looked the other way when untold violence and savagery was visited on Okirikia, your wife’s village because the opposition party dared to campaign there?
How can you claim to work for prosperity when you squandered the country’s wealth at a time of oil boom and left it perilously close to collapse now that crude oil sells at an all-time low?
If Mr Jonathan took his time to think his Foundations’ objectives through, he would have seen the contradictions therein and probably limited his scope to Otuoke or maybe Bayelsa, his state where he famously approved for money meant for poverty alleviation to be diverted to pay for an appearance by the American rapper Lil Wayne when he was governor.
For someone so intent on having a lasting legacy, why didn’t Mr Jonathan actively spend his time to build one while in office?
For one so desirous and thirsty of honour and adulation, why didn’t he do honourable things while in office? For someone who now wants to be seen as peace loving, why didn’t he do all he could to restore peace to the North East when he was in office?
That Mr Jonathan has resorted to this shameless dance of shame while the country is in recovery from the negligent and abhorrent leadership he provided shows the measure of the man as trivial, incapable of critical thinking, shameless and frivolous.
Rather than show his remorse in subtle ways, he has chosen to live in denial and continue to pretend he was a great leader with a real legacy.
The truth is that Jonathan has no legacy and he knows it. Conceding elections he lost does not immediately confer greatness on him neither does it make him a hero as he and his minders are desperate canonize him.
In fact, conceding elections doesn’t even make him a democrat. Till this day, a tape exists where his former minister stated clearly that Jonathan had mandated him to rig elections in Ekiti State.
The same Minister said on that tape that he was also mandated to do the same in Osun State. The army Captain who leaked the tape had to escape the country and his 15 year old brother tortured by authorities under Jonathan.
After dismissing the tape as fabricated with no investigation, the minister’s reward for the rape on democracy was a shameless nomination for another ministerial position by Jonathan. That is not what a true democrat would have done.
We also remember how Jonathan decided Governor Jang was the chairman of the governor’s forum when he actually lost as shown in the election results. That was another test of democracy flunked woefully by Mr Jonathan. In fact, that single action tore his party apart and positioned it for inevitable failure at the polls.
To now claim to be a democrat in his latter day is an insult on the concept of democracy itself and all those who are true democrats.
After all the “awards” that can be bought have been bought and presented in dingy hallways of  America and Europe, Mr Jonathan’s self-apportioned legacy will remain exactly what it is; contrived and existent only in the deluded recesses of himself, his minions and those paid to honour him and award him.

When he is alone at night and not inebriated, he will know that truly, far from being a great leader or a hero, he is not even a patriot. He will know that rather than build a legacy, he has been reduced to stealing one.
He will know that concession of a loss is not as big a deal as his minders have deluded him into believing. He will know that he blew the goodwill of the vast majority of Nigerians on issues, people and causes that had no real value or importance.
He will know that true heroes like Mandela, Martin Lurther King or even M.K.O Abiola did not become heroes by conceding an election through an incoherent phone call. He will know that he couldn’t even manage to honour M.K.O Abiola -a true hero- successfully while in office.
He will know that really and truly, those who call him a hero are those who deluded him into a false sense of immortality and made him forget about the transient nature of power and the resilience of history.
As the country continues to recover from the blatant rape on its treasury and collective psyche supervised by Jonathan, his true legacy continues to unfold.
It is a legacy of destruction, incompetence, gratification, patronage, corruption, desecration of sacred values, wickedness and sheer devilishness.
The least he can do now is to spare us the shameless dance of shame and allow us rebuild the country he destroyed in record time. If he has no shame, we are ashamed on his behalf.