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A Feat of Patience
Between 2010 and 2015 when Ebele Goodluck Jonathan was president of Nigeria, his wife Patience Jonathan became somewhat of a public spectacle. Nigerians long fed up with public officers in the country seized on her grammatical gaffes, exaggerated same, and made it a point of duty to needle her endlessly. It did not help that her husband’s tenure coincided with a tumultuous period in Nigeria’s history.
As First lady, a position long loathed by Nigerians for the tendency of its occupants to be overbearing and high-handed, she also did not help the conversation around her with the way she put herself about. Many Nigerians came to perceive her as overbearing. Some of it was true, even though the propaganda machine of the then opposition All Progressives Congress was working overtime to discredit the administration.
A whirlwind defeat followed In the 2015 general election and despite being universally admired and acknowledged for quietly handing over power, it meant that Mrs. Jonathan followed her husband into premature political retirement. There were the suspiciously brief exertions of the EFCC to recover stolen property, but it has largely been quiet for the former first family.
The former first lady recently re-entered the public consciousness with a flourish. The occasion was a service at Streams of Joy International, a church run by the popular Pastor Jerry Eze. In her testimony, the first lady who recently obtained her PhD from the Ignatius Ajuru University of Education in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, took Nigerians through her academic journey to thunderous applause from the congregation. She concluded by encouraging Nigerians to pursue their dreams, especially their academic dreams.
To hear her speak in error-proof English was itself refreshing. For someone in whom Nigerians trusted for a free flow of errors to keep the barrel of laughs bustling, it was remarkable to witness how much self-development had refined and elevated her.
Her husband’s time in office saw a rise in insecurity and poverty in the country. But the fact that today, Nigerians look back at that period with something resembling nostalgia speaks volumes about how much the country has fallen in the past ten years under successive APC governments that have been catastrophic examples of how not to make a change.
In deed, since the change of guard in 2015, Nigerians who thought that it couldn’t get worse than the PDP’s rudderless and corrupt leadership of the country for 16 years have been fed new levels of low by an APC administration that combines mind-boggling inefficiency with bone-chilling hypocrisy.
In encouraging Nigerians to pursue their dreams of getting education, Mrs. Jonathan may not have averted her mind to the fact public primary school pupils within the Federal Capital Territory have been at home for more than three months now because their teachers are on strike or that the shambles her husband left in the education system has got worse since he left office in 2015.
Mrs. Jonathan also alluded to her acquisition of a doctorate degree being some kind of superfluity, given that she had finished her career and done time as Nigeria’s first Lady.
She remains an inspiration for hitting the height of academic qualifications, and she can use her wide influence to encourage and support the education of women and the girl-child in a country where they continue to face significant hurdles unjustifiably.
Ike Willie-Nwobu,
