NO matter from which angle we look at Jonathan’s youngish presidential tenure, it is hard to clear him of compurgation. Even his ardent political defenders are more than embarrassed by the vice of violence which we all acknowledge to be a monster of so terrifying and frightful mien causing every Nigerian, including even himself and Dame Patience, migraine un-medically affecting all sides of the head. Something must be wrong with either the visage of our president’s temperament or with the mien of every thought of his since we made him president. If not, what is it, truly and self-searchingly speaking, that is weakening his resolve into resignation? Why is Lord Jonathan hesitating to beat into everlasting coma the political,  economic, religious, educational, power and social insecurity resident in the land in connection with the duty or work of perpetually cowing and maiming us all into pitiable submission?

Our president has given us a sermon and treatise that he intended to purge and wean us of our negative picture of him and his presidency. What a pity that no visual artist was in that pale place of pretentious piousness and sublimity where he delivered his sermon and narrated his tale! And thus what a fabulous opportunity we missed to see him everlastingly  in some natural painting or stone of a grand painter or sculptor! How the visage of our political zoologist who has since lost his erstwhile untainted morality and sensibility to the rape of his peculiarly presidential politics would have been brought to us in a manner that presidential photographers and camera people of digital training could not do! O how we missed the grand opportunity to have pure painting and sculpture of our magnificently changed president whose shoeless years matter no more to those who applaud him as a model of models!

Now, what is the grain of Lord Jonathan’s sermon? You know it already. But it needs a re-statement to lead us to the anchor-point and arena of presidential morality. Lord Jonathan means to do his presidential work, but not in the manner of a bully in the paraphernalia of a would-be Goliath like the Goliaths everywhere about him in his presidency. He means earnestly to perform the tasks of his presidency but not in the manner of rampaging elephants and lions on the prowl. After all, he is a highbrow zoologist even if  he is not a digital one any longer. In other words, he does not need to be a stern and effectual handler of both barbarian bombers called Boko Harams and would-be domestic rebels in diverse crannies and crevices of Nigeria to prove his presidential manhood and mettle. The pursuit of the truth of his peculiar style and brand of politics with the unmistakable zeal of his zoological training will not lead his presidency into effeminacy or decadency. But the truth is that the more Lord Jonathan pretends that the cesspit that is Nigeria can be drained or deodorized the way he is going about his presidency even as a forerunner, the more the late truth will dawn on him that his effeminacy will ineluctably lead him to an untoward precipice.

Lord Jonathan needs to be a lion of sorts, even a tamed one, as his zoological training will effectuate in order to tame our abominably beastly nature. Even if he doesn’t want to be his own (or Dame Patience’s) lion, he ought to, and , in fact, he should be our own lion whom we can call our jolly Jolion.  Jonathan, be a Jolion. And who will not do that which he or she must do before the owner of the Apata of Aso comes?

When Lord Jonathan was giving us his sermon, he couldn’t tell by the way the leaves of the trees in the political zoo of governance were blowing that there would be storms which even his own meteorologists would not see.  Even if they saw them, they would not be in the position to give their president an appropriate warning that would not expose further the effeminacy of his presidency. If the president doesn’t want to be a lion, what does he want to be? Does he possess the discipline, intellectual capability and indomitable pluck of the mighty Awo who Nigeria’s students and scholars of politics, governance and economics, for instance, from generation to generation will do homage without rancorous divide or classification even though he was never a Head of State or President of Nigeria? Of course, I am doing grave injustice to this immortal Nigerian of distinguished political ingenuity and sagacity by conjuring him here in my focus on Lord Jonathan. But the point is: If our president doesn’t want to be a lion to get us out of the jungle, what does he want to be to get us out of the woods? A tortoise? A fox? A spider? In our folklore, none of these specimens possesses the instructive correctness and goodness to give the type of moral obligation that our president needs to lead Nigeria a-right. Thus, how do we rate the president other than we have so far rated him? Or do we conjure a special deontology for him?

The rub is that the man himself has told us via his sermon that he will tag along and tumble to destination rickety luck, if not destination thundery luck, at the end of his political destiny. Of course, his distressing and pressing presidency cannot but dawdle and dwindle as seconds shrink into nothingness. And why must we not let him be as he wishes? Why must we not let  him go on dishing  his sermons of political zoology in gatherings usually populated by his famous prayer contractors and sundry leeches who are goading him on and sucking him as good luck combats bad luck for supremacy in Lord Jonathan’s political zoo of haphazard zoogeography?

Lord Jonathan’s political zoo has not grown dark yet. But before it does we seek his presidential permission to conjure for his supreme benefit these words of the  Swedish poet, Tomas Transtromer, this year’s Literature Nobel winner; “Truths approach each other. One comes from inside, the other from outside, and where they meet we have a chance to catch sight of ourselves.” As a scientist and zoologist, President Jonathan should take an analytical look at his inner and outer selves. He should then tell us truthfully, scientifically and zoologically, if his politics and style of governance are in line with what Nigerians expected of him when against all odds, ethically and unethically, they rallied and railed him to the presidency. He should, in his night vigils, let his inner self and the outer converse with themselves as honestly as possible and then urge them to reveal to him the looming menace. They will play to him the tape of the music of terror and confusion of change which  our zoologist president cannot tame. And he better believes it. Seriously. Silent silences can be revealing. He better believes it. Seriously.

We are not done yet. What is President Jonathan’s prime achievement since his occupation of the office of abundance? Answer: The establishment of six Federal Universities when the countless public ones and other institutions of value have since lost  their value and credibility. But the real achievement of distinction is the location of one of the six newly established universities in his village Otueke – or whatever the place is called. President Jonathan merely used the other five to give cover, overt and covert, to his presidential fallibility. It is certainty as certainty that the university in his place is the plum.

After all said and streamed here, there must be translucency in the claim that greed tops in the scale of preference in the office of abundance and privilege, and its occupier always is too much of a jungle specimen to guide and lead us a-right, be he whoever he is. This time we have a president whose political ideology and politics of zoology will continually sadden us, tragically, as we wait for the inevitable storms to usher in themselves to tame and cleanse us all. What a ritual of rain and storm and thunder it is going to be! Or will Jonathan become our Jolion after all? Our Jolion that will handle and guide us properly, and enable us to eat a-right even as a forerunner to the Redeemer? Sure, you know the answer. You know. You know already. Seriously.

Aye! What a simple lecture on the art and act of presidential morality and political zoology. Aye! If you disagree, say Nay! Ah! The Ayes! have it.

(Concluded).

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