BY MAHMUD BELLO
“Do your worst and we will do our best echoed,” Sir Winston Churchill; “once achievements are written on brass, they try tooth and nail to discredit them,” Oscar Wilde, one of the greatest thinkers of our time, described cynics as those “who know the price of everything but the value of nothing.”
Rather than celebrate genuine achievements, these agent provocateurs, armchair critics, the opposition blackmailers, rabble-rousers, fifth columnists deluge our newspapers, magazines pages with opinions virulently infected with prejudice and their ultimate goal: Bring the First Lady down at all cost!
What a shame and a failed attempt by a group of perverts masquerading themselves as so called leaders who have failed in the delivery of democracy dividends to their state and are now drowning into political oblivion.
A drowning man will do anything and everything possible to hold on to somebody and anything. The disguised objective of these discredited critics is to mislead gullible readers that can easily fall prey to their evil machinations and manipulations.
This write-up is a succinct rejoinder to the false alarms raised by orchestrated self seeking political jobbers in two magazines with a loud front page story without substance, “The President without a mandate,” in Tell magazine and “Her Imperial Majesty – The excesses of Patience Jonathan,” in The News magazine published within the same week of their July 2013 editions, heralding a new entry of junk journalism, mudslinging, mischief making, propaganda, and a fall-out of the shadow of a drowning self styled Nigerian Governor’s Forum, NGF, governor.
May I state emphatically and clearly without any equivocation that the entire pieces smack of outright mischief, full of lies, innuendos, fallacies and campaigns of calumny which sole and only purpose did not only mislead the innocent people of Nigeria who will be hoodwinked by every lie, hook and sinker. The deceptive pieces also shied away from the main issue at stake, ‘the governor’s unbecoming attitude and overbearing misconduct.’
It does not matter to him as much as his personal ego comes first, even when the collective peace and unity of our great country, Nigeria, are undermined. He will go to any length to fan the embers of war in order to achieve his inordinate self-serving ambition. May I remind him that the unity of this country is very precious and cannot be sacrificed on the altar of personal aggrandizement and egocentricity.
In the said magazines, I am quite sure majority of the people of Nigeria are as piqued as I am on this issue and indeed, on other self serving matters raised, no doubt, aimed at casting aspersion on a woman who is now a rallying point for not only women in Nigeria, but Africa at large.
But as a citizen, I find this loser brand of politics distasteful, deceitful and demeaning to the integrity of this illustrious and patriotic First Lady who refuses to be a demagogue. I want to appeal to the First Lady not to be a distracted by these campaigns of calumny.
The said front page headlines are really mischievous and spurious. Why is it that a non-existent story was manufactured overnight because the First Lady travelled for a private visit to her home state or is it a crime for anyone in position of authority to travel to his or her state.
It is the First Lady who should be complaining because she traveled to a state that she was neither welcomed or received by the state governor nor his wife, and without the protection of the state apparatchik, but at the mercy of national security and the good people of Rivers State who rallied behind her to show her love, support and affection as their daughter, who has represented them well.
All the issues raised by the rabble-rousers are nothing to write home about. What on earth links the First Lady to the crisis in PDP, the NGF, the imbroglio between the Presidency and the governor, the changing of the police commissioner, closing of major roads for six hours, political campaign for the President, Sylva’s saga, among others? This is clearly the hand nothing of the drowning governor who will do anything to drag the First Lady’s name into the mud.
This is more disturbing since the First Lady is not an executive of the PDP though a great supporter of the party. She does not have the power to effect changes within the party, not to talk of authorizing the suspension of a governor, but can only advice as a mother of the nation.
As for the governor’s political misfortunes, she has no hand whatsoever and will not want to be dragged into a matter that does not concern her.
She is too busy facing national and international issues that have to do with women empowerment and caring for children and the less privileged in the society.
The face-off with the Presidency is primarily caused by the governor himself who does not know how to comport himself and does not have the leadership etiquette on how to play politics without bitterness. Whenever he is faced by the press/media he opens his mouth so wide that he says anything that comes out without weighing the options of statesmanship and that is why his shadows are chasing him.
There was no time, the First Lady asked for the Rivers State commissioner to be changed or transferred. She understands the peculiar security situations and will not want to interfere in the state affairs, knowing full well the implications. The situation in the state was purely on security ground for the protection of the First Lady, but it was not for six hours, just few hours as there was serious down-pour when she landed without the state government’s presence to receive her at the airport.
However, the good people of the state and Bayelsa, including other Niger Delta states, defied the heavy rain to receive and welcome their own daughter right from the first day till the last day she left Port Harcourt for Abuja.
It remains historic that a governor refused to welcome the First Lady, but she was welcomed by the people overwhelmingly. The governor for his disrespect to constituted authority and protocol threw the protection of the first lady to the wind and is now crying wolf where there is none.
It beats my imagination; what kind of a governor will do that even to any enemy, First Lady! In Africa, we do not wish the deaths of our enemy, but on those days, the First Lady was at the mercy of the people who came in en masse to receive and protect her from the onslaught of the governor.
We have repeated it for the umpteenth time, there was no way the First Lady will campaign openly for the President, knowing full well the implications of the INEC 90 day’s stipulations before elections. What happened was that she thanked the elders at Okrika for coming out to show support in 2011, and said whatever their plans may be again can only start when the President will have given the nod for his re-election, “but for now the President has not said anything yet.” The first lady is a political juggernaut as is specially mentioned in the provocative headlines and knows her onions as regards what should and should not be said at whatever occasion.
Consequently, the question that immediately comes to mind is who is afraid of Dame Jonathan? Why these calculated and orchestrated mischief by a drowning man who has no respect for constituted authority? One can then, understand that they do not and will never operate on the same political level and if his intention is to drag the First Lady into the mud, odium and ridicule, so as to elevate his political profile. Then his paymasters and cantankerous co-travelers should think again, because the same stone used against the first Lady will also be used against them. With regards to politics in Nigeria, his co-travelers should have known by now that they cannot manipulate the people’s will against a woman the people have tested, and have come to trust for her dogged fight for the downtrodden.
Mind you, it is God that gives position and if it is the will of God and the wish of the people, it will come to pass and his paymasters can do nothing about it.
For the records, the first lady’s integrity, loyalty and integrity are not in doubt, it is not in my interest to defend an honest person like the First Lady but to provide insight information to these peddlers of falsehood, who are obviously politicians licking their wounds and lacking the spirit of sportsmanship. Let me sound a note of caution, the First Lady’s amiable nature should not be taken for granted. Despite all these affronts, she has remained focused and steadfast towards the realization of the common good for the betterment of Nigeria.
Dame Patience Jonathan is a woman of substance, a mother of the nation, a woman driven by passion to empower the women-folks, not just only in Nigeria but across Africa. She is a dynamic leader who has remained a mentor to other Africa’s first ladies. She was recently honoured with “ITU global child on-line protection champion, Nigeria tourism ambassador and inducted into the Nigeria Women Hall of Fame and will continue to remain a stabilizing factor for Nigeria and Africa. To her credit today, she has formed a solid base for the socio-political empowerment of women and for the active participation and constructive engagement of Nigeria women in the national sphere and peace building. She loves the unity and peace of Nigeria with a passion and acts and speaks peace at every given function she attends. She is too busy to be dragged into mudslinging and the governor’s political brouhaha.
The First Lady used the home-coming visit to Port Harcourt to bury her father, be at the wedding ceremony of Hon. Evans Bipi and receive an award, the ‘Yitzak Rabin Centre for African Development,’ from Yitzak Rabin International School, Port Harcourt. Also, a reception was organized for her by the Okrika Council of Chiefs. She also paid visits to few projects by the MDG’s office and NDDC at Okrikaland including the commissioning of the South-South office of Women for Change and Development Initiative (W4CDI).
The African First Ladies Peace Mission, to which she is the President, having taken over from the previous first lady as an international organization, has agreed that Nigeria should be where their office should be situated and with such agencies, the Federal Capital Territory Ministry is to provide the location including the building of the office for the organization just like every other international organization. The said fund was at the instruction of the Federal Capital Territory administration and not by her Excellency and it is not the first lady’s private NGO and should not be misconstrued as such. It is still being discussed by the National Assembly and the Federal Capital Territory Administration.
All the allegations in both Tell and The News magazines are false, spurious and malicious as measured by the governor’s myopic, misguided claims and adumbration. Well meaning Nigerians should call him to order to behave in a civilized manner becoming of a governor in the country. While I urge and call on the Fourth Estate of the Realm to effectively play its role professionally by standing firm for high ethical and moral standards including balance, objectivity and fairness in discharging its obligations to the citizenry, it should not allow itself to be coerced and used by politicians for their inordinate selfish ambitions.
Dame Patience Jonathan is an acceptable brand – a peace ambassador – and will remain so because she has always been there for the people, women, children and the less privileged, who will continue to support her, her husband, the Nigerian people for the overall national development of the country.
When the history of Jonathan’s presidency is written Patience Jonathan will be seen as a woman who stood for Nigeria in spite of the bashing of the opposition after failing in their several attempts to cow her by all means possible.
Mahmud Bello is of Mungani A Kasa Initiative.