So much have been said by so many people in and outside Nigeria, on the surprised and “unAfrican” attitude displayed by President Goodluck Jonathan, by conceding electoral victory to opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential candidate, General Muhammadu Buhari in the last Saturday’s election.
The common thread that ran around all such comments is the fact that President Jonathan was able to participate in the shearing of the glory attached to the March 28 Presidential election by such concession, even before the electoral umpire concluded the collation and eventual announcement of the winner of the election.
As a matter of fact, every other person, representing every other institution, either as an individual or in group, would now not congratulate the President-elect, General Buhari for the electoral victory without commending President Jonathan for such act of indefatigable courage and uncommon selflessness. Others that have been appearing on the platform of commendation for the peace, tranquillity and maturity that stands tall in Nigeria after the election are the INEC, the security agencies and Nigerians, especially the voters, in that order of significance.
The magnitude of the positivism that trailed the phone-call by the President at exactly 5.15pm on Monday to the President-elect, in the context of “a stitch in time” prism can never be comprehensively understood in its proper context in many years to come.
As a matter of fact, a proper analysis of the situation can be done looking at the whole scenario from the point when election period was knocking on the door. The storm that gathered a few months to the election which shook the nation so much that it was possible for the people with less faith to predict an Armageddon, was real: it was so thick that one could cut it with a sharp knife.
Some ethnic militias, political hangers-on, political jobbers and other crumble-picking economic and financial parasites, and even the big-time Nigeria money-guzzlers were threatening fire and brimstone. Nigeria was virtually at the precipice.
With the garrulous Femi Fani-Kayode issuing a veiled threat that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which Presidential Campaign Organisation he is spokesman of, would reject and go on rampage if INEC announced the winner of the election other than President Jonathan; with Dr. Doyin Okupe twitting that General Buhari was gone forever and with Elder Godsday Orubebe causing commotion at the INEC collation centre and openly insulting Professor Attahiru Jega as well as other acts of brigandage from various quarters, the stage was being set for the worse to befall the nation.
And like a thief in the dark night, as the saying goes, President Jonathan emerged from nowhere to throw all such trouble makers and war-mongers off his back. His phone-call to General Buhari to congratulate him even when the result from one or two states had not yet been collated and announced, saved Nigeria from clearly unimaginable crisis: the crisis that would have signalled the disintegration of this house; Nigeria.
Of course, it is on record that President Jonathan had missed the first opportunity that made itself available for him to write his name in gold as hero of this democracy. That was at the time he would have told the nation that he would not go for second-term, in honour of what became a controversial agreement. The people around and about him succeeded in rail-loading him onto the campaign trane, for the second-term, just for their selfish end.
And when the second opportunity came for him to still write his name in gold as hero of this democracy, by damning the voices of people around and about him; by not even waiting for such voices to gain ground, he, President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan grabbed it with two hands.
And come what may, nobody, not even those who would not want to hear anything good about him would deny the fact that he has earned a beautiful place in the history and historical development of not just the political and democratic evolution of this country, but also of that within the context of Nigeria as an entity.
We in Greenbarge Reporters envy him no end! [myad]
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