Option Goodluck Ebele Jonathan Best for Nigeria in 2027
In the words of Winston Churchill, the Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, “In every age, there comes a time when a leader must come forward to meet the need of the hour. Therefore, there is no potential leader who does not have an opportunity to make a positive difference in society. Tragically, there are times when a leader does not rise to the hour”. There are times and seasons for everything and matter under the sun. Our times are not in our hands but in the hands of God our Creator, who is the beginning and the end and who decrees the end from the beginning. History is the story of past events in relation to human activities and Nigeria not being an exception, cannot run away from history. Everything certainly dies but not history. The waves of change are blowing across the world and in a unique way that calls for attention, especially of those who are perceptive and who also have what it takes to manifest at the appointed times as the agent of change. It is instructive how the late 39th Former President of the United States, Jimmy Carter served only one term in office, between 1977 and 1981, continued to serve humanity using the vehicle riding on the vehicle of the Jimmy Carter Foundation to touch lives across the globe, having being able to define reality as a responsible leader and died in 2024, being the only USA President that lived up to one hundred years. Understanding purpose is critical and the responsibility of any leader first and foremost is to be able to define reality. The same was not the case with President Donald J. Trump who was the 45th President of the United States who served between 2016 and 2019 and was voted out of office, but had his come-back after the one-term tenure of President Joe Biden in 2024, making him the 45th and the 47th President of the United States.
‘’Every leader has a unique reality to define as well as a peculiar vision to run with, those who failed to define their realities ended up as unfulfilled, not being able to reach their full potential’’.
The same scenario played out in Ghana, which is a neighbouring West Africa country. The current President of Ghana, John Mahama, was the Former President of the country between 2013 and 2017 but had his come-back in 2024. Every leader has a unique reality to define as well as a peculiar vision to run with, those who failed to define their realities ended up as unfulfilled, not being able to reach their full potential. Nigeria is at a crossroads and in dire need of a saviour, and there is no magic or miracle that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu of Nigeria can perform between now and next year in 2026 when he would have spent three years in office and the governance abandoned for politicking towards 2027 to exonerate himself from being a failure, using the metrics of insecurity, bad economy, as well as heightened corruption to appraise the achievement of his administration. What we have today in Rivers State which epitomizes the highest level of illegality and criminality, where all democratic structures have been dismantled with impunity, the escalation of insurgency and banditry in both the North-East and North-West, with the report that one hundred soldiers have been killed by the Boko-Haram terrorists in a period of six months, the escalation of killings on the plateau allegedly by the Fulani herdsmen where about two hundred precious lives were lost within a period of two weeks as well as mis-prioritization of critical infrastructure, Nigerians do not need a seer or a soothsayer to tell them that the country is sitting on a keg of gun powder, and going down the drain. It would amount to the pursuit of a shadow and erroneous complacency to be admonished under the guise of a dead hope that is said to being renewed to wait any longer without nipping the problems that escalate with time in the bud.
‘’Nigerians do not need a seer or a soothsayer to tell them that the country is sitting on a keg of gun powder, and going down the drain. It would amount to the pursuit of a shadow and erroneous complacency to be admonished under the guise of a dead hope that is said to being renewed to wait any longer without nipping the problems that escalate with time in the bud’’.
In conclusion, the political alignments and realignments that are going on currently including attempts by the major political parties to form a coalition with the aim of taking over power from the All Progressive Congress Party (APC) which has President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in the saddle, may end up as mere academic exercise and in a fiasco, except a round peg is found and there is the readiness to make it go into the round hole, which impliedly is to coalesce around the Former President of Nigeria, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan GCFR. In addition, all progressive parties should consider it worthwhile to form an alliance with the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), which is the number one opposition party with the highest number of governors after APC. This is a clarion call on the Former President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan from Nigerians to rise up to the occasion, taking into cognizance that had King David of the bible decided to limit himself to being king over Judah in Hebron, where he reigned only for seven years, he would have missed destiny and the opportunity to reign over the whole of Israel for another thirty-three years in Jerusalem and that would have meant to him living a life of depravity due to fear and lack of clarity of vision.
‘’This is a clarion call on the Former President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan from Nigerians to rise up to the occasion, taking into cognizance that had King David of the bible decided to limit himself to being king over Judah in Hebron, where he reigned only for seven years, he would have missed destiny and the opportunity to reign over the whole of Israel for another thirty-three years in Jerusalem and that would have meant to him living a life of depravity due to fear and lack of clarity of vision’’.
This admonition is for the Former President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, a tested and God-fearing leader who is widely recognized across the globe as a worthy Statesman and as an Ambassador of the African continent; “so live as if you are leaving already for the second time, and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now. It seems to me that there is nothing that would stimulate a man’s sense of responsibleness more than this maxim which invites him to imagine first that a present is past and second, that the past may yet be changed and amended. Such a precept confronts him with life’s finesse as well as the finality of what he makes out of both his life and himself”- Victor E. Frankl. Because life is understood backwards and lived forward, therefore, the Former President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan fits in for description as persistence which has what it takes to grind an iron beam down into a needle. May we not miss our time of visitation as Nigerians. God bless Nigeria.
By Samuel Tunji Adeyanju
GMN Chief Executive Officer, USA
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