MY CLEAR IDEA OF FORMER PRESIDENT GOODLUCK EBELE AZIKIWE JONATHAN. Written by KEMKA S. IBEJI

I can, very comfortably, tell you that Dr. Goodluck Jonathan lacks integrity and is not a man of honour. I have said this several times in the past 8 years and I repeated it many times in the 2023 election season. Most people were angry with me and some others felt insulted and abused. But one thing that makes a logician different from the rest of mankind is that they make assertions based on convictions and not sentiments. The convictions are usually adjudged reasonable and valid before they hold on to it and that makes them unrepentant on their opinions and views. 

GEJ made a declarative statement which bore the entirety of his substance and destiny as a human being and I took it up and analysed it. He said that all he had achieved in his life came to him effortlessly and he never gets whatever he struggled for. I saw him struggling for the 2015 Presidential Election and I told people around me that if what he said is true then he will fail in the election and he did. That logically proved him right in his declaration. Keep this aside. 

I began to measure Dr. Goodluck Jonathan lower when, prior to the 2015 Presidential Election, he openly referred to former President Olusegun Obasanjo as a motor park politician. I knew he lacked honour, integrity and respect. Obasanjo singlehandedly made him the Governor of Bayelsa State, the Vice President of Nigeria and the President of Nigeria. When it looked impossible for GEJ to succeed the late President Umar Musa Yar'adua, it was Obasanjo that stood up and ensured that the constitution held sway and the then "Doctrine of Necessity" was introduced in the political lexicon of Nigeria. 

In 2011 when the jellylike GEJ wanted to continue in power, it was still OBJ that stuck on the plough for GEJ and pushed back all the dreaded opponents. Even people like the fearsome General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida (IBB) were chased into retirement by Obasanjo just for Goodluck Jonathan. The peak of it was the PDP Presidential Primary Election where, Goodluck Jonathan, a sitting was jittery of the former Vice President Alhaji Atiku Abubakar's foray and political strength garnished with huge sums for the ambition. President Olusegun Obasanjo was seen carrying GEJ into the election by locking up all the party delegates in their hotel rooms and made futile the billions of Atiku Abubakar who roamed the brinks of Abuja without laying his dollared hands on any delegate. Dr. Goodluck Jonathan won the primary election and went ahead to give a resounding defeat to the late President Muhammadu Buhari. 

I don't like to deviate into the weaknesses of GEJ as a president who failed to fight corruption, who failed to ensure that his party primaries were free, fair and credible, who instead went into massive corruption to cart enough money for the next election. If only he was intelligent enough, courageous enough, had honour and integrity, he would have, at least, given Nigeria a worthy gift of party primaries holding without undue monetary influences on delegates and voters in our elections. This is granted because he was supported by everyone and was acceptable to the majority of Nigerians. He was so weak and very unintelligent, lacking in creativity and innovation. All he could do was to reproduce the spent forces used and already dumped or retrenched by Obasanjo. Let me not continue on this deviation please. 

On his lack of integrity and honour, GEJ was told to stop after completing late President Umar Musa Yar'adua's tenure and his own full tenure and he refused those wise counsels. He instead went berserk abusing and insulting whoever told him the truth. He became a tyrant shutting down the National Assembly and usurping their powers. It was in defiance of his maximum exercise of power that we saw, for the first time in the history of Nigeria, the lawmakers scaling the walls of the National Assembly to save our democracy. Goodluck Jonathan broke the gentleman armistice with the Nigerian people and especially the North in respect of the zoning. He went ahead and lost the election; he was roundly defeated and reduced to where he should be - a man of dishonour. 

Dr. Goodluck Jonathan is the most misunderstood politician in Nigeria and only a few of us with himself know this truth. He has no interest of Nigeria at heart, has no clear administrative roadmap in mind for Nigeria, is not smart enough to handle the intricacies required for Nigeria's governance and has been adjudged good and great when he is just so ordinary. He's lost most of the time and has nothing to offer and so remained silent. But that silence, which was a product of his lack, was misinterpreted by many Nigerians who filled the gaps for him; of course, nature abhors vacuum. 

Again, for a man who doesn't know what he wants and is tossed about by every simple wind, he wanted to come out again in 2023 for the turn of the South. This is a man who broke the zoning rule but was ignored by the North, maybe because he's not an Igbo man. He kept silence when Meyati Allah went to buy the APC Presidential Election Expression of Interest and Nomination Forms for him. He received and entertained some unwise and little minded groups who were hired to obfuscate the masses asking that he should run for the 2023 election. We knew that GEJ was behind all that but people didn't believe that. He quickly noticed that he had a bad card and ran back. He was allowed the alibi and he claimed it wasn't him like R. Kelly - "wasn't me". But some of us knew better; the man was testing the waters. 

Now again in 2027, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan has come with the same old method; he wants to vie for the 2027 Presidential Election but he still doesn't want to come clear till he's sure the coast is clear. He's a mischievous and treacherous man. He doesn't honour agreements, he's selfish, and he lacks integrity. He deceived the Igbos, the Hausas, the Fulanis, the Yorubas, and the entire Nigeria. He's slimy and unbelievably cunning. 

Do you know that till this moment people haven't believed that he's vying for the 2027 Presidential Election under the PDP? His level of mental weakness is so shocking that people hardly believe it's true because nobody will imagine that such an acclaimed educated man, an academic PhD holder can do the things he does so they accept his silence and help him out with thinking the right things and he relaxes. His good decisions are actually not his; he had gotten many of them from the gift of opinion from the masses during his silence. You might be tempted to call that wisdom but if you understand the nature of GEJ you will judge him right; he's not intelligent. 

Watch out, he will soon run back from the PDP drama and declare that he wasn't part of it. That's the man GEJ is. 

The Igbos believed him when he used pun and onomatopoeia to claim that his native name Ebele was an Igbo name - Ebere. They made it up for him that it was from any of the Igbo dialects. He went further to play on their intelligence by adopting the name of the renowned Azikiwe. These made the Igbo carry his matter on their heads like Galla. Just ask yourself, since after that embarrassing outing of 2015, has he ever answered Azikiwe again? Has he ever associated with Ndị Igbo in anything they have done? Has he even ever attended any Igbo event as a lover of the people? Has he not denied and demeaned the Igbos in several fora afterwards? But he has the craftiness to still deceive them again if he dares. His nature is such that will force you to miscalculate him for a smart man but he's not. 

We don't hate GEJ but we dislike dishonest people, bad opportunists, disrespectful people, people who lack integrity yet pose as direct opposites of their real personality. This is who former President Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan was, is and will continue to be. 

I am, 

KEMKA S. IBEJI

A Philosopher King