It doesn’t matter if it was a jailbreak, an attack by Boko Haram or even an attempted coup, but one thing I have noticed is that whenever such news stories break, some people get excited.
I even saw some people who wished that the President had been killed in the process. I don’t know how we can make it clear to such people that the killing of Jonathan or his violent removal from office is not even in anybody’s interest. Such an action will cause mayhem in the land that nobody can predict how it will end.
Every time I think of Jonathan, I pray that he does not die by any means in office, not so much for his sake but for my sake. If he dies in office, nobody can predict what will happen in this country. The assassination of of Rwandan president in a plane in 1994 caused the type of genocide that shamed the world because of distrust between Hutus and Tutsis.
And let nobody deceive himself that if a crisis breaks out today, it will be like the 1966-70 crisis that was all Nigeria against Biafra. No. It will be every ethnic group on its own and maybe against some select ethnic groups.
The Niger Delta militants have shown Nigeria that a group can hold the nation to ransom and get begged to stop, with a promise of an amnesty. Today, Boko Haram has taken it a step forward.
If June 12 had happened today, IBB and Abacha would have faced a vicious armed struggle and sabotage that would have shocked them beyond their wits.
Nigerians are angry about the turn of events in the past 50 years. Nigeria is like a keg of gunpowder waiting for one action to ignite it.
This is 2014, not 1985. Any group that even executes a successful coup has no guarantee of having all parts of the nation behind it. You may be in charge of Abuja, but it is when you want the resources like oil from other parts, that you will be reminded to stay in Abuja and rule yourself.
And the sentiments of people show that even members of the military will not accept to be used to kill those who did not do anything to them as was the case during the Biafran war.
No matter how long Jonathan wants to rule, he cannot rule forever. If he is a failure, let those wishing him dead mobilize and vote him out of office, if he decides to contest in 2015. And if he wins, let him be allowed to rule till the end of his tenure in 2019.
The South-South believes that being the mainstay of the nation’s economy without producing the president before 2010, justice demands that it be allowed to complete this mandate that it got by luck. The North believes that it was denied its turn by fate and deserves to get it back in the spirit of rotational presidency.
APC believes that PDP has ruled for 15 years and has not performed well and therefore needs to give way. The South-East and the Middle-Belt believe they have been sidelined for long and deserve to also rule in the spirit of fairness. All these are genuine aspirations. Everyone is right. But only one president can be in Aso Rock at a time.
I see Jonathan today as a bull in a china shop. If you want to use force to get him out of the shop, you will end up having all your china ware broken. But a wise man would keep calm and wait for the bull to quietly go out the way it came in, or place something the bull likes to eat at the entrance of the shop, which will attract the bull and it will get busy feeding and gently walk out of the shop without breaking your ceramics.
One does not need to be a prophet to know what the consequences of some actions will be in the present Nigeria.
Written By Azuka Onwuka