'President Jonathan Should Concentrate On Packing' – By Emmanuel Ugwu

President Goodluck Jonathan appeared to have embraced his defeat until
Thursday 30, 2015. At the submission of the report of the PDP
Presidential Campaign Organization in the State House, he said, ‘’if you
look at the result, the difference is just over two million votes. And
if you look at the areas where it is perceived that PDP scored so low,
PDP couldn’t have gotten those kinds of scores but the elections are
over; we put the country first’’.

Paraphrase: My party remains
the darling of majority of the electorate. The margin of votes that put
my rival in the lead was unreal. I was cheated. The candidate of All
Progressives Congress, Muhammadu Buhari, did not swat me down by two
million votes. INEC contrived that outcome. Buhari won by favoritism and
I lost to partiality.

It sounds familiar. It is an Orubebe echo from another voice.

Peter
Godsday Orubebe, former Minister of Niger Delta Affairs and one of
Jonathan’s loyalists, sought to wreak havoc on the last lap of the
collation of results, when it was becoming increasingly clear that his
patron had lost.

Orubebe grabbed a microphone and began to hector
and heckle. He called INEC Chairman, Prof. Jega, ’’ biased’’, ’’
tribalisitic,’’ ‘’partial.’’ Orubebe demanded that ‘’if you want peace
in this country’’ the collation of results be suspended and his
complaint against the results from some Northern states accepted.

Jega’s
mouth and wisdom saved the day. He didn’t descend into the swamp to
wrestle with insanity. He gave Orubebe a didactic rebuke that seemed to
exorcise the legion of demons that had possessed the ‘’Elder’’. And the
collation continued.

Orubebe’s dare-devil stunt trended on
Twitter. He garnered generous views on Youtube. He provoked sympathy,
comedy and ridicule. He also stimulated questions.

People asked
what may have inspired him. Na only Orubebe waka come? Did he conceive
and execute the plot to incommode that very delicate moment alone? Did
the temerity that energized him to attempt to hijack the collation
originate from his own person? Or was he intoxicated by the insurance
granted him by the Sovereign on whose behalf he was venturing?

The
questions are now answered. They have been solved by President’s
Jonathan’s invocation of Orubebe’s outburst. There was a method to the
madness. Orubebe had taken the brief of his master. And that produced
the tragedy Jega helped to deflect.

This is a positive
revelation. It separates the mask from the man. It bares the true face
of the man who has managed to convince some Nigerians that he wears a
crown of halo.

President Goodluck Jonathan had played like he
took his defeat in its stride. He had affected good sportsmanship. He
called Buhari to congratulate him before the final vote tally was
concluded.

Jonathan made a pacifist telecast that brought a sense
of relief to many people who were worried over some bloodshed that had
been forecasted to lie on the other side of the announcement of the
election result. He consoled the Peoples Democratic Party, asking its
members not to assume his loss an occasion to mourn.

A lot of
Nigerians praised Jonathan for achieving the feat of acknowledging
defeat. They thanked him for rejecting the temptation to explore other
options that could have precipitated a national crisis.

World
leaders followed our lead and kissed Jonathan better. They sent him
tributes. And he liked the appreciation of his stock. His re-election
loss, rather than diminish him, burnished his profile. Who has ever had
good luck enough to earn global acclaim for declining to pretend that
they had lost an election?

To cement his status as a statesman,
Jonathan had his aides propagate a recording of his stilted one minute
telephone conversation with Buhari. Call it a breach of protocol, but it
further skyrocketed the loser’s rating. Some began to campaign that
Jonathan has paid the full price for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Jonathan
waived his right to challenge the election. He swore that he would not
question Buhari’s victory at the tribunal. He even prevailed on the
leadership of his party to drop its plan to file a petition.

President
Jonathan would later make a remark that seemed to represent gratitude
to his non-voters as well as his perspective of the upside of the
truncation of his political career. He said his defeat was a welcome
release. He has been in the cage of power since 1999, when he became
Deputy Governor of Bayelsa State.

It’s the selfsame Jonathan who
is projecting himself as a casualty of electoral fraud. He is the one
calling a pity party. But Jonathan need not abandon himself to grief.

There
is a good chance that a mix of factors is exacting a heavy toll on
Jonathan’s psychology: The desertion of his regular hangers-on, the
escalation of the work of the FG and Buhari Transition Committees, and
the epiphany from the sight of his aides packing his personal effects in
preparation for existence outside the Presidency. But Jonathan has no
reason to badmouth a vote he has would rather not dispute.

There
is a prescribed way for interrogating the integrity of an election. If
Jonathan is wiser now than before his concession, he can seek redress.
If he just awoke to the fact that he was rigged out, it is still
morning. He should instruct his lawyers to use the window of opportunity
allowed by the Electoral Act and file a petition. Not complain as
though he was helpless and hopeless.

He cannot claim to ‘’put the
country first’’ when he is contesting the legitimacy of Buhari’s
mandate outside the bounds of the law. He cannot erect the credentials
of a peacemaker on mischief.

President Jonathan doesn’t
have to acquiesce to a perceived injustice for the sake of peace. Peace
is not superior to justice. He should approach the court, if he thinks
he has a valid case. His judicial challenge will profit the country more
than his bitter murmuring.

Nigeria is a democracy. The only
acceptable pathway to power is elections. If the process of an election
is compromised, the entire citizenry is shortchanged. And the injury is
not done to one contestant; it is done to all everyone whose quality of
life will be governed by the result of that declared vote.

To ‘’
put the country first’’ means to be a patriot. If President Jonathan
would let Nigeria to be ruled on an untenable premise in order to
procure for himself the reputation of a peacemaker, he has put self
ahead of country.

Jonathan’s presumed discovery of an anomaly of
that order imposes on him the obligation to help in the purifying the
Nigerian electoral system. He would be cooperating with the perpetrators
of the felony, if he allows the violation of the vote to go
unchallenged. He needs to let the country profit from his grievance.

The
very process of determining the merits of his case will illuminate that
election and properly characterize it as an incident of history. His
election petition will task the judiciary to examine whether INEC
demonstrated substantial compliance with extant provisions of the law.
The judges will examine on the basis of evidence whether some freebie
votes advantaged lost Jonathan victory.

When the truths of the
election are verified and validated, competing fictional narratives fall
by the wayside. As the fact is extricated from fiction, we gather what
to store and what to discard, we acknowledge any inherent shortcomings
and learn the lessons, and the country takes one more step towards
progressive growth and maturity.

President Jonathan knows that
making allegations of electoral fraud doesn’t achieve any good thing. It
doesn’t correct the supposed flaws. It doesn’t proof the electoral
system against future manipulation.

Insinuations of rigging can
only serve as fodder for gossip. Beyond words, it stokes ill will in
millions of voters who are still ruing Jonathan’s defeat and resentment
in millions of others who are still celebrating Buhari’s victory.

It’s
ironical that President Jonathan is promoting himself as a brand of
peacemaker who cannot hold his peace. That’s an illustration for
oxymoron. Peacemakers bear fruit worthy of the name.

A lover of
peace in Jonathan’s shoes (no pun intended) will not be working hard to
revise the context of his defeat. He would be focused on managing a
seamless transition. He would be busy clearing his desk. He won’t run
the risk of inciting his support base.

We know of a certain Dame,
who while actively instigating anarchy in her home state, settled for
an alias that was oddly antithetical to her exertions. She christened
herself Mama Peace and commanded to be so called!

It was Mama
Peace who mounted a campaign rostrum and authorized thousands of
attendees to stone their neighbors to death for the heinous crime of
chanting the other party’s slogan!

Nigeria needs a calm
atmosphere in the run up to the inauguration of President-elect
Muhammadu Buhari. Not some Papa Peace fanning public disaffection.