Jonathan: Uncommon journey to greatness

President Goodluck Jonathan 

President Goodluck Jonathan comes across as one of the favourites in tomorrow’s election. Having learnt the ropes as a deputy governor, Vice-President, acting-President and President, he appears well groomed for the position he is seeking.

The fact that he is the incumbent President, creates an aura of edge around him, but that is limited by arguments that incumbency does not seem to be an asset in this race.

His journey from the creeks of the Niger-Delta region to the highest office in Nigeria, was obviously very unlikely.

Such journeys are only possible in a few places and hardly possible in this part of the globe.

Jonathan’s rise from a shoeless son of a local ship builder to the highest office in the land is a remarkable reflection of the Shakespearean quote that ‘’Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them,’’ Jonathan had greatness thrust upon him.

That does not imply that the President did not arm himself with the prerequisites required for greatness to be thrust upon him.

Just as his name ‘’Goodluck’’ suggests, Jonathan, who was born in 1957, has been extremely lucky in his public career, leading to the belief that he is being favoured by unseen hands.

Jonathan, who has a doctorate degree in Zoology had often been at the right place at the right time, thereby becoming a beneficiary of various top leadership vacuums that had existed in Nigeria’s political trajectory.

Until mid 1998, he was a deputy director in the Oil Minerals Producing Areas Development Commission, OMPADEC, residing in the OMPADEC quarters, Port-Harcourt, Rivers State. Sometime late that year, he played host to a former military man who incidentally, he was meeting for the first time.

For that visit by the then Bayelsa State gubernatorial aspirant, Chief Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, Jonathan would have by now been approaching his retirement from the civil service.

Alamieyeseigha, who was accompanied on that trip by one Gordon Bozimo, went there with the simple request of telling Jonathan, who he had never met to resign from the services of OMPADEC to become his running mate.

Though Jonathan accepted after some time, Alamieyeseigha was to change his mind upon some intrigues that arose and had proposed to drop Jonathan from the ticket but one incident or another delayed the process of substituting him putting him in good luck to become the deputy governor of Bayelsa State at the advent of the Fourth Republic.

In the second term of that administration, luck again fell on Jonathan in December, 2005 when Alamieyeseigha was removed from office. Jonathan was not directly involved and he according to sources took safety in Bauchi under the protective comfort of the then governor of the state, Adamu Mu‘azu while the political intrigues played out in his native Bayelsa State.

After becoming governor, all he wanted was to win the 2007 election and was on his way in that regard after riding the tide of incumbency to edge out the more rooted Timi Alaibe. But his course and the nation’s course was changed when luck again smiled on him to pick up the vice-presidential ticket of the party.

Not long after the luck of Jonathan came calling again when he was elevated to the presidency in 2010 after the death of President Umaru Yar‘Adua. Before then he had become he had by the Doctrine of Necessity, projected by the National Assembly been declared as acting president.

In the election that followed in 2011, Jonathan triumphed over two of his main challengers to become the first person in the history of Nigeria to have served as deputy governor, governor, vice president, acting president and president.

It is a record that has put him as the most experienced executive office holder in the history of Nigeria.

His record, however, is a matter of divided opinions between his passionate supporters and his critics.