Jonathan in the Shrine of Power

The intrigues of power fascinate me but the
complex abstraction of power intrigues me
more; yet it is the relationship between man
and power which excites me the most. In most
cases, when man finds himself in position of
authority, he mistakes it for power, unknown
to him that authority is of the temporal while
power is ethereal. Power and authority are two
different things.
When GOD created the earth and other
creeping things, his instruction on authority
was so clear: “Let us make man in our image,
after our likeness: and let them have dominion
(authority) over........all the earth and over
every creeping thing that creepeth upon the
earth”.
GOD delegated authority, not power, to man.
Post-creation dramatics showed that man
wanted power, not ‘delegated authority’.
Exaggerating his status in the earth project and
exploiting GOD’s invisibility, man started
thinking of God as an absentee ruler whose
power can be usurped.
Man, who is only an indulgence of an awesome
God, began to think of himself as the alpha and
omega whose authority was absolute. On two
occasions, God had to show his power and
wrath for the rot of man. He destroyed Noah’s
world and only saved Noah and his family. He
destroyed Sodom. But when He saw the
contradiction of His actions, God mellowed.
Destroying the righteous with the wicked in
order to attain a perfect world was sliding into
tyranny. This is the contradiction: tyranny is
not a symbol of power but an emblem of
weakness and fear. On the strength of this, the
angry God became a humane God that dignified
His awesome power with incomparable
humility and tolerance of man’s excesses.
After revealing Himself as the only power, the
only absolute power that can create and
destroy, God withdrew again. Man took
advantage of this. In the hands of man power
became the weapon of misbehavior; the
blindness of man to the reality of who he
is.
When therefore President Goodluck Jonathan
suddenly found himself in the shrine of power
(Presidency /Aso Rock) he failed to draw
boundaries between the ephemera of his
present and the reality of his past; between
diffidence and vanity; between greed and
contentment. It is the greed of Goodluck for
power that is responsible for the gridlock in
our polity.
The present opposition to the President’s 2015
ambition is ominous, but he does not seem to
accept the fact that it is. When he was the
favorite of grace and luck, it was easy for him
to become Diepreye Alamieyeseigha’s deputy in
Bayelsa state. When again he was the anointed
of grace and luck, he succeeded his boss who
was the architect of his own fall as the
Governor of Bayelsa State. When luck was still
cuddling him, he was chosen as the nation’s
vice president out of many other intelligent
fellows in his Party.
When again luck overwhelmed him with its
generosity, he became the President of Nigeria
with national solidarity and even enjoyed the
support of his political opponents after the
sudden death of Umaru Yar Adua. Even in the
2011 elections he was so favored by the
heavenly hosts in such a miraculous way that
left the opposition camp in disarray with many
of them abandoning their candidates and
voting for Goodluck’s PDP. It was as if they
were acting under a spell.
All through these periods, he was the toast of
the divine realm. He himself has confessed on
many occasions that he is a man of luck.
However, luck, Jonathan’s vehicle to the shrine
of power, may have decided to terminate the
relationship between the two of them having
realized that its client no longer possesses the
spiritual maturity and wisdom to manage his
present challenges.
But this is the truth our President and his
‘priests of praise’ will not want to admit
because it is too bitter to swallow. The
President will not want to accept the fact that
his encounter with the luck that gave him the
power has reached a terminal end because of
abuse and misuse. Of what use is power,
thrust upon a man of remote identity by
providence, which is not used for the
development of the society? How can a man
who has been in the comfort zone of the
shrine of power both at the lowest and highest
levels for 14years gloss over the fact that his
ambition is tearing his Party apart and causing
serious disaffection within the political sphere?
As a journalist who has spent many years on
the political beat, I know that the name
Goodluck Jonathan was never among those who
formed the PDP in 1998.
But it is strange that today, most of the
founders had been frustrated out of the Party
while those who are still there are being
treated like strangers in a Party they sacrificed
their time and resources to build. All because
Mr. Goodluck is now the President.
Any further attempt for power by the President
after his term in 2015 is no longer within the
realm of luck but greed.
As much as one is not saying that president
Jonathan is not entitled to a second term, my
contention is that whether it was true or not
that he had an agreement with some group of
people not to go for second term or not, he
should do what is honorable in this circu