Dame Patience Jonathan, the President’s wife who spurns a return.
By Steve Ovirih.
For those who know Dame Jonathan closely, she doesn’t suffer fools gladly; she doesn’t hide her feelings and she is frank to a fault. She was the First Lady who bestrode Aso Rock like a colossus and her affection for peaceful conduct earned her the alias ‘Mama Peace.’ She is an affable personality and her sense of humour makes one feel very comfortable in her presence. That is quintessential Mama Peace, Dame Patience Jonathan, wife of the first President of Nigeria to have left office in peace having lost an election. His decision not to challenge the election that denied him continuity in office has made him a foremost idol of Democracy in Africa, nay the world.
You will be a personality in a permanent crisis loving mode if you don’t love Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, GCFR and his wife: long after their tour of duty in Aso Rock, they radiate calm and natural good looks and understandably, the former first couple are aging but with their age comes the freshness of wisdom that only experience can bring.
Since you can’t take anything past the political schemers in the polity, one will not be surprised if plans are afoot to draft President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan into the ring as a Presidential candidate ahead of the forthcoming Presidential election in 2027. For Nigerians, a whole year is a long time for them to change opinion. And when the schemers come for you and ‘ they meet your head at home’ ( pardon the Yoruba lingo), whatever is your resolve not to do a thing thaws off before your very eyes. But I digress, I have been privy to how a group of stakeholders in the body politic visited a calm and philanthropic business man in one of the commercial nerve centers of Nigeria and they smooth talked him into showing interest in an elective office that will make him become a Federal Lawmaker should he win; the easy going fellow with huge business concern in logistics , oil and gas , hospitality and insurance fell for the smooth talk and bankrolled a lot of party activities from his economic capital. He became the generous financier, the type the crowd will hail ‘baba oooo! Tua! Shua sir; nobody but you and no longer thuale but buathei!’ These praise chants will make you assume you are already there even when the election is far. Long story cut shut, they ran his corporate concerns aground of his own volition because it was his making to open his cash tap and rained money as fund flows to bankroll their excesses and political expenses and worse still he lost the all important election to a candidate who was a politician and not an extravagant financier.. He was left in the cold to pick up the pieces of his shattered once buoyant business while the political schemers left him to search for another prey whom they will praise to a dizzying and a lose guarding height tomorrow.
Dr. Goodluck Jonathan has been there. He knows how lofty the luxury of the Presidency is and he understands what it means to be baited with a return ticket chances. Aside the lopsidedness of the constitution which some people are throwing up as some timeline limits for the former President with a projection that some amendment bars the former President, the opposition party appears willing to draft Dr. Goodluck Azikiwe Ebele Jonathan into the 2027 Presidential race. Fair enough the party in its search for political relevance has ceded the 2027 race to the South without a specification on which South is South enough to contest the party’s primary.
And that takes me to where I am going. Mama Peace at a public forum lately made it clear that she has no plan of going back to The Rocks as a First Lady and her husband too doesn’t have such plan. She told her audience that she likes and wants her peace , stressing that there is nothing now in Aso Rock that she doesn’t have even in abundance. She said she has peace and a better one than what Asorock can give. And of a truth , fulfilments and self satisfaction easily reflect in her mien. She doesn’t appeared enamoured of a second missionary journey to Aso Rock, even while I caution that regardless of her resolve the schemers can still work on her ego and make her see reason why a second look at the Office of the First Lady should be desirable.
Until that happens , if it ever happens, I am comfortable with Mama Peace’ jive at the Aso Rock and its occupiers on how they cope with the 24 hours need to attend to a national concern that will jerk up the blood pressure of the most indifferent leader if such exists and in Nigeria , you can’t be an indifferent leader for a nano second .
For those working behind the scene to calibrate the amiable former first couple into the Presidential hustle , we dare say, ” there is God oooo and God is watching all the blood and energy they are putting together , not sharing, to make ‘ the Jonathan come back’ bid a reality.
