No matter how
philosophers and ancient thinkers would want us to belittle the terms “luck”, “fate”,
“fortune” or “providence” in human existence, what remains as a fact is that
this terms, have huge influence in who gets what, when and how, and to a great extent dictate the general
course of a man’s life.
In his best-selling book,
The
Mafia Manager, "V" said, a truckload of fortune is better than hard work.
You cannot underestimate the power of good fortune. Possess it, and you have
almost all you need. Most people who become winners of lottery and realty
events, apart from being god at what they do, have at one time or the other
confessed to being lucky. In Igbo tradition, anybody who is not so lucky was
said to have a white foot. Funny as the scenario may look, one would be
disregarding it at their own peril.
In politics, luck or
providence is a major factor. In a CNN interview during his visit to China two
years ago, President Goodluck Jonathan accepted this. He acknowledged that it
is his good luck that has guided his political career in Nigeria, including his
meteoric rise from obscurity to the presidency of Africa’s most populated
Nation. You cannot blame him. For a former
university lecturer in Zoology at the University of Port Harcourt, who dipped
his hand into the political fray in 1999 and in just over ten years, rose to
the pinnacle of political power in Nigeria, it couldn’t have all been due to
his exceptional qualities. There was something more.
Starting his political pilgrimage
as the deputy governor of Bayelsa in 1999. When the governor, Alamasiegha was
impeached for fraud and money laundering, Jonathan took over from him as
governor of the state. Barely two years later, he was handpicked by Olusegun
Obasanjo and made the vice presidential candidate in Yar’Adua’s government. No sooner
had that administration started, than
Yar’Adua died and he was made the substantive president this was in spite of
the strong opposition from the Northern establishment and his little experience
in Nigeria’s murky politics. A position which in his wildest dream, no matter
the number of bottles of orijin he takes, he and the entire Ijaw nation couldn’t have believed was possible given the
strong hold the North has had on power at the centre. In otherwords, he defied
the logic that politics is the art of the possible. He hardly lifted a finger
before becoming president. He served out the rest of Yar’Adua’s term in office.
He is at the twilight of his own first term, and now constitutionally wants a
second term as president to consolidate on the undisputable gains of his
Transformation Agenda as would any right thinking person. He may yet get it. But
it remains to be seen.
Let us quickly add that
Jonathan is not the only Nigerian leader who got into high office by sheer
luck. Our first prime minister, Tafawa Balewa history books tell us got into
that office simply because his party leader, the Sardauna of Sokoto declined
the invitation to go to Lagos. He was very disdainful of southern politicians
and did not want to be contaminated by southern ‘infidels’. Instead, he sent
Tafawa Balewa, a former school teacher and he was appointed the Federal prime
minister, a position he retained for nearly 12 years, until his assassination in
the bloody 1966 Military coup, but which we continue to argue was a
revolution but became a coup as a result
of the ethnic connotations read into it.
His successor, General
Aguiyi Ironsi, the GOC of the Nigerian Army, was a hard drinking and blundering
military officer without the slightest ambition of being Nigeria’s head of
state. He had previously served as the head of the Nigerian military contingent
in the Congo in 1960, and later as the military attaché in the Nigerian High
Commission in London. He was just happy to be the GOC of the Nigerian Army, a
post given him as a compromise by the NPC/NNPC federal coalition government. He
had not even been recommended for that position by the departing British head
of the Nigrian Army, Major general Welby Everard, who for professional reasons
preferred either Brigaider Maimalari, or Brigadier Ademulegun as history books
has it. After the 1966 coup/revolution, power was handed over to him by the
rump of the federal parliament. Within six months, he fell from power and was assassinated
in a counter-coup by Northern military officers, who were fiercely opposed to
his plan to introduce a unitary system of government in the country.
There are also
incidences of luck in the circumstances leading to the emergence to power in characters
like Col. Yakubu Gowon, Brigaider
Murtala Mohammed, General Olusegun
Obasanjo etc. but Obasanjo’s case stands
out. He succeeded Murtala Mohammed as military head of state. Obasanjo had
played no part in the coup that bought in Murtala Mohammed and was reported to
have gone into hiding at the Victoria Island residence of Late Chief S.B
Bakare, his old friend, from where Gen. Akinrinade fectched him. As a
compromise between Gen. Danjuma and Gen. Yar’Adua, the ranking Northern military
chiefs, Obasanjo was made the new head of state, a job that he did not want at
the time. But through providence and sheer luck, Obasanjo has been twice
Nigerian head of state. In 1999, he fulfilled the biblical prophecy in the book
of Ecclesiastes, that a person can move from prison to become the king. This is
a position that Chief Obafemi Awolowo struggled for during his long political
voyage but which he did not achieve though he was eminently qualified for it. On
several occasions, Gen. Obasanjo has publicly admitted that providence played a
large role in his professional career, both as military man and as a
politician.
There are also cases of
the power of providence in the rise to political power in some foreign
countries. A factor of luck in shaping the career of famous politicians. Here we
go: Had president John Kennedy not been assassinated in 1963, Lyndon Johnson
would not have gone to become the president of the United states. And had his
brother not been assassinated in 1968, Richard Nixon would not have been
elected the U.S President.
In the British establishment, had King Edward
VIII not abdicated the throne in 1936, to marry a twice divorced American, Mrs.
Simpson and been replaced by his younger brother, King George VI, Queen
Elizabeth II would not now be the British Monarch a position she has now held
for over sixty years. It was sheer luck
that brought former labour Prime minister, Harold Wilson to power in 1963 when
the tottering Harold Macmillian’s conservative government was narrowly defeated
by Labour in the elections. Harold Wilson was once quoted as saying that a day
in politics is a long time, and that as long as there is death, there is hope
for every aspiring politician. He was right. We can go on and on, but suffice
it to keep it at that lest we deviate from our immediate concern today.
We have embarked on
this abridged history lesson to educate those of us who may want to charge us
for being inductive in our logic and thereby desecrating the rules of inducting and Deductive Logic.
It appears the
machineries of good fortune are already a foot in the re-election bid of President
Goodluck Ebele Jonathan. A political friend of mine told me sometime that GEJ’s
goodluck was already on course the moment the All Progressives Congress (APC)
chose the obviously tired general Muhammadu Buhari as its presidential flag
bearer. The reason, he hinged on the fact that the general is a poster card of
political misfortune. That is to say, he
has not the blessing of providence to be a leader at the centre the mammoth
crown he pulls notwithstanding. My friend was not done. In him, he saw a man
whose personal god said No, But who goes obstinate and says yes and by so
doing, challenging his personal god in a fight by not being loyal to the
submissions of his ‘Chi’, as Chinua Achebe tells us in most of his stories on
the Igbo Folklore. We are told that in such situations, the gods have a way of
stamping their authority. It is either, they embarrass the headstrong
individual out of power, or confer more advantage to their opponents in a duel
of political battle. In the classic, Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe told s of
how Okonkwo a very successful man, revered across the entire village of Umuofia
was embarrassed by the gods leading to his shameful death.
Gen. Ibrahim Babangida,
embarrassing Muhammadu Buhari out of power in 1985 with the latter haven spent
a paltry 20 months in charge, could be said to be the gods way of punishing those
who usurpate their divine authority in order to assert their superiority over
them. The advantage that has been conferred on Buhari’s Opponents since 2003
when he started going against the wishes of his personal god to rule this
country, has consistently led to his losing out at the polls in 2003, 2007 and
2011. It remains to be seen whether history will repeat itself come March 28th.
It does not matter what
followership such individual may have for it is not just popularity alone that
confers power. There are hands unseen that dictate on whose head the crown is
worn. Basking in the euphoria of a mob
like following is to get it right. It is to say, that humans are their own gods
and no longer subject to supernatural powers that subsists in the metaphysical
realm. So whatever cult like following the general may be having, it should not
be lost on us, that numbers is secondary in the road to power. Some people have
said that politics is a game of numbers, but for us here as far as this column
goes, it is a game of luck. It deals
more with whether the individual who wants power is in the good books of the
gods and not of the people.
GEJ on the other hands is a child of providence. We cannot
take it away from him. It does not matter
whether he has constructed over 50,000 Kilometres of roads, it does not matter
whether Boko Haram now wants to carve out a caliphate off our soil nor does it
matter whether he has been branded CLUELESS from head to toe in some quarters. All those are secondary for those whom the
gods have ordained. It is not his doing. Metaphysics is at play, and like all
things that lies within the realm of metaphysics, it cannot be torpedoed by
lame and ordinary mortals. That is the greatest advantage the Otuoke man has
over his Daura counterpart. Little wonder why he has carried on his political
career in humility knowing fully well that he is only but a child of providence
who did not win his way to the throne, through oratory, blackmail and other
sort obnoxious political gimmicks.
While the Mach 28th date rescheduled for
the presidential election draws nigh, it remains to be seen whether providence will
run its course again or whether there shall be a paradigm shift in the orbit of
history. For Buhari, we shall be seeing whether for the fourth time, he will
come under the punishment of his personal god for having not been able to
connect the dots in his political misfortune. And for the President Goodluck
Jonathan, we shall be sited on the stands to see whether providence is done
with him or whether history in its signature
manner will be repeating itself.
Whichever way the pendulum swings, it promises to be
an engaging encounter but which we insist have already taken place in some
other realm but only the televised version awaited here.
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