Goodluck Jonathan is certainly a niche-carver. He will always be known as the one who rewrote Nigeria’s history, the “softly-spoken Goodluck Jonathan”, claims Abdulqadir Abba Adamu, Naij.com guest contributor. What is so special about Jonathan’s achievements?
What I love about history is its unpredictably repetitive nature. No wonder the phrase “history repeats itself” comes to mind whenever déjà vu is felt. However, history only makes sense when one is looking back in time, to where all lines come together and the real significance of events finally becomes clear.
Goodluck Ebele Jonathan and General Muhammadu Buhari (rtd.) are the men whose historical narratives started intertwining only in 2011, when Buhari and Jonathan first met in a race for Nigeria’s presidency. It was Buhari’s third attempt to take over the presidential post, but only the fourth one turned out to be successful.
READ ALSO: GEJ Is A Great Nigerian, I Extend A Hand Of Friendship To Him – GMB
Many associate Buhari’s resilience to that of the great American president, Abraham Lincoln.
Lincoln faced defeat throughout his life. He lost eight elections, failed twice in business and suffered a nervous breakdown. He could have quit many times, but he didn’t, and that’s why he became one of the greatest leaders in American history.
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Another one whom the “people’s general” is often compared to is Nelson Mandela. I won’t go through his lengthy history worthy of being eternalized in a book, but in general, he, too, showed resilience through difficulty, or as it can be put better: “came out of prison and went straight to become the president”.
READ ALSO: Our Expectations: Can Buhari Become Nelson Mandela Of Nigeria?
Jonathan, on the other hand, carved his own niche in Nigerian history. His meteoric rise from being a shoeless son of a canoe-maker residing in the creeks of Niger Delta region to becoming a president through struggle and hard work is yet to be rivaled, at least in my short-term, non-history-inclined memory.
This is not to mention Jonathan’s incredible luck associated with his first name, which has grown into an “urban legend” kind of joke in every household. A joke of a boy so lucky that he went up from being a constant deputy to succeeding his usually incapacitated or impeached bosses. The punchline is how “everything came crashing after his assumption of the highest office in Nigeria”. Perhaps, even the extremely lucky people suffer from the law of diminishing returns.
READ ALSO: 5 Factors That Robbed Jonathan Of His Goodluck
Nigeria’s world-renowned Nobel laureate, Prof Wole Soyinka has compared Goodluck Jonathan to Nebuchadnezzar, the cruel biblical character. In general, Jonathan has been called all sorts of names ranging from “messiah” (by those who are paid to whitewash his image) to “Pharaoh during Moses’ times”.
Drawing parallels between GEJ and the Pharaoh seems unreasonable… until Pharaoh’s nemesis Moses, whose role fits GMB almost perfectly, comes into the picture.
Moses rose among the poor, suffering and slaving masses of children of Israel under Egyptian king, the fearsome Pharaoh. So did GMB, as his marketers make us believe. He arose with his broom, akin to Moses’ staff, and strove for the emancipation of the Nigerian poor masses.
Buhari started his pompous life having risen up to the highest office after a military coup in 1983. It is very similar to Moses’ growing up in Pharaoh’s household, when Moses came back from the Egyptian exile after striking an opponent. The same can be said about Buhari who was exiled from Nigeria’s politics after the counter coup in 1984 and his alleged participation in 2011 post-election violence.
GMB’s 1983 coup, his misinterpreted call to “violence” and his “crimes” became a “propaganda slingshot” his rivals used against him. Moses’ crime also became a propaganda piece Pharaoh used against him.
It all is getting even more interesting if you begin drawing miraculous parallels in terms of Moses’ parting of the sea to allow the children of Israel to escape the painful grasp of Pharaoh.
General Buhari has done almost the same by letting Nigerians escape the unrepentant ‘mafia’ which pillaged Nigeria for 16 years – the PDP. It’s a miracle nobody could foresee ten years ago, but it makes sense only when looking back from today.
Moses’ story is incomplete without mentioning of the plagues and God’s hardening of Pharaoh’s heart.
Muhammadu Buhari first sought to emancipate Nigerians from the clenches of the PDP in 2003, akin to Moses’ first cry of “Let my people go!” followed by the first of the notorious plagues. In Buhari’s case, the plague was Obasanjo’s presidency characterized by stealing, witch-hunting, violence and looting.
Undoubtedly, Obasanjo’s heart got hardened, as he had a hand in rigging 2003 and 2007 elections and refused to hear GMB’s “Let my people go!” pleas.
Buhari’s plea against Jonathan in 2011 resulted in the worst of all plagues: Boko Haram menace, which has brought death and destruction upon so many innocents, just like Moses’ final plea led to the deadliest of all plagues. Moses got blamed for the plagues by Pharaoh; so did GMB, who was smeared so badly with accusations of the “Boko Haram menace” and extremism that he had to require a priestly presence behind him to dispel all the claims.
Just like Moses had his brother Aaron, a well-spoken priest respected by all the children of Israel. Two priestly figures GMB got in his party were Pastor Tunde Bakare and Prof Rev Yemi Osinbajo, a well-articulate senior advocate of Nigeria, so similar to Moses’ brother Aaron.
GMB even seems very reserved due to the impediment in his speech, like Moses, whom people referred to as a stammerer.
While witnessing the final showdown between Buhari and Jonathan a few days ago, we saw something done by GEJ which made him so unlike “Pharaoh in his final showdown and utter demise against Moses” – Jonathan let Nigerian Israelites go!
Even after God had hardened his heart to break the promise of not running in the just-concluded election, he conceded, letting Nigerians choose themselves. At the same time, God also directed GMB’s heart by making him contest one more time despite his earlier promise of not running again after 2011, his burning bush, in reference to Moses’ burning bush encounter with God just outside Midian.
This series of events in Nigerian history perfectly reaffirms the saying “for every pharaoh, God raises a Moses”.
It raises a question in my inquisitive but limited mind: “What if the real Pharaoh conceded and let the children of Israel go?”
History would have been rewritten, placing Pharaoh right next to Moses in sacrificing for his people. Pharaoh would have been a rightly-guided ruler of Egypt, excluding the Israelites.
GEJ undoubtedly rewrote the history choosing not to be “Gbagbo”, “Obasanjo” and “A Pharaoh of his time”. Jonathan did not try to subdue “Moses and Aaron” (GMB and Osinbajo). He let the people choose, and they chose not him.
The real Pharaoh could have learnt a lot from Goodluck Jonathan.
Goodluck Jonathan is certainly a niche-carver. You can’t really liken his story to that of someone else. He started shoeless, became a deputy in various ramifications, miraculously became a head and gloriously vacated with his head held high.
History would never remember him as the messianic-Nebuchadnezzar-come-Pharaoh; rather, he will be known as the one who rewrote Nigeria’s history, the “softly-spoken Goodluck Jonathan”.
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