Babies, in their innocence, could, at times, be selfish and inconsiderate. They often display such laughable traits each time they receive surprise gifts from benevolent spirit. Try and give a baby above the age of a toddler a piece of candy and then watch his or her reaction. He or she will quickly hide the candy the moment you initiate a desire to have a bite. He or  she may even yell in anger and protest.

Many adults are like that too. When they reap a propitious opportunity suddenly from unexpected quarters, they instantly begin to act as if the opportunity came about by their sheer wisdom.

In 2007, shortly after the incubus of third term was buried, former President Olusegun Obasanjo invented an idea of planting his own protégée in government. He settled for the most reticent, supposedly peaceful, less corrupt, academically minded and most faithful among his disciples as his successor, former President Umaru Yar'Adua. But when Yar'Adua won the presidential election, he immediately redefined his attitude and persona.

Analysts blamed the changed attitude of Yar'Adua to a cabal which emerged to take control on the crest of his recluse nature. The cabal made Yar'Adua to inflict pains on OBJ so much that the old soldier retreated to Ota to get busier by tending chicken and devoting attention to fish farming, rather than politics.

That was not all. Yar'Adua allowed the cabal to turn against Nigerians; the custodians of his mandate. The cabal promoted ethnicism, tribalism, nepotism, statism and clanism. Katsina suddenly became a recurring decimal in government matters. The indigenes also developed blue blood and became rare species imbued with bounteous opportunity to control national resources.

The former president's wife, Turai, took the advantage of Yar’Adua's reticence to emerge as Nigeria's only Empress ever. She called the shots to determine the fate of Nigeria. Nobody else mattered in the government agenda other than the people who constituted the privileged cabal. Nigerians groaned and wailed and sulked endlessly too. The situation remained riotous and hopeless until the hand of fate intervened. The grandstanding by the cabal was short-lived. The rest is history.

Then entered President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, the man who has the secret of fortune by sheer mother luck. Jonathan never lifted a finger in all the struggles to become president. He enjoyed unsolicited support from Nigerians with whom he never sat to strategise on how to do the struggles. Here, the Tunde Bakare-led Save Nigerian Group, which enjoyed massive support from Professor Wole Soyinka and other Nigerians, came handy. The National Assembly then put the lid.

Pronto, Jonathan became President and Commander-In-Chief of the Nigerian Army by mere pronouncement of the National Assembly whose members confronted the cabal frontally to end the drama on power. Or did you not hear of funny names, including Turai's, being touted as possible replacement for Yar'Adua, a means of blocking Jonathan from becoming president?

Now, this is the point. The presidency of Jonathan has started dousing general expectations by his supporters. In the House of Representatives came the Nigerian First Forum (NFF) to fight his cause. The group died as rapidly as it sprang up because of lack of patronage from Jonathan and his think tank. A similar group in the Senate is also on low level of activity owing to confusion that has been trailing the trust they had earlier invested in Jonathan.

Essentially, members of the House of Representatives and senators alike who fought on behalf of Jonathan to become president are grumbling and complaining that they have been left in the lurch, afterall. No one understands what is going on again. In Nigeria, a year preceding any general election usually gets boisterous, lively and fun-filled. The story is different now, because nothing seems to be in place.

For instance, less than five months to January 2011, the supposed month for general elections, no political party had drawn campaign plans. The story is same with all presidential aspirants including Jonathan, who has only been responding by body language. The general complain is that Jonathan is locating his hope of being president only in the south-south circles, anchored by Pa Edwin Clark and few of his ministers from the zone who cared to show enthusiasm.

The truth now is that if anybody is protesting against Jonathan, those, to put in mind, are members of the House of Representatives who are now scampering into different political formations to level up with the challenges of returning to their seats in 2011. No one wants to chase the shadow, when the issue of political ambition is involved.

This is to say that there is no more free gift for Jonathan again in the National Assembly, the House of Representatives in particular. There is always a limit to anything in life, including luck.  However, it remains to be seen how mother luck could come again to rescue a president not known to be firm in dispensing authorities, consistent with budget matters, prompt in erecting political structures while always expecting forces to fight on his cause, each time. Politics in Nigeria is ever dynamic, unpredictable and unassuming. 2011 is not likely to produce an exception.