Denouncing Dame Patience Jonathan’s Hate Campaign

Elsewhere in civilised societies, First Ladies are well respected personalities. They carry an aura that is positively infectious and help their husbands in power to succeed. Where their husbands makes mistakes, they make amends, where their husbands get to hard with policies and programmes , they use the bedroom tactics to withdraw obnoxious policies.
Nigeria has a rich history of First Ladies. From the days of Victoria Gowon to even Turai Yar’Adua, the nation’s First Ladies may not have  been the best in the World but have made frantic efforts by leaving indelible positive foot prints in the sands of time. They make genuine efforts to give fillip to their husbands. Most of them had pet projects with which they affected lives of vulnerable citizens and in most cases, transformed the poor by providing them with sustainable livelihoods. Hajia Maryam Babangida readily comes to mind. Maryam Babangida midwived “Better Life for Rural Women”, a Non-Governmental Organisation which she used to touch the lives of millions of rural women in Nigeria.
Hajia Maryam Abacha even in the dark days of the Abacha junta even made good efforts through her pet project to cushion the effects of her husband’s dictatorship on the poor. Turai  Yar’Adua within her short stay as First Lady made huge efforts to support her late husband by empowering women, widows and the physically challenged persons. Even though these former First Ladies were interested in politics, they were seen to support their husbands, not loudly heard as Dame Patience Jonathan.
But no one can say so today of the country’s current First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan. She remains the most uncultured woman today in this country that even the least rural woman in the remotest village commands more respect than our First Lady. Those who mill around her today are just mere sugar ants who are just around her to take their share of the spoils of the Presidency. Where is she getting the money she is spending on the campaigns she has been organising across the country? Nigerians must demand explanations from her and her  husband.
Dame Patience Jonathan has a very poor record of being very abusive and foul-mouthed. She is quite un-African as she  has no respect for elders and constituted authorities. In fact, she sees herself as the President, not First Lady. She is even rumoured to beat the husband up in Aso Rock over allegations of the hubby’s randy lifestyle. She is said to physically assault Mr. President when he refuses to toe her evil line of reasoning in many issues, particularly bordering on politics and money.
If President Goodluck Jonathan loses the March 28 Presidential election, a minimum of 50 per cent of the blame goes to Dame Patience. She is very often obsessed and intoxicated by her status. She is rude, uncouth in her choice of words, uncivilised, corky, proud,  crude, ill-mannered, and primitive. Even within their PDP, she humiliates key officials even in public.
It was Dame Patience Jonathan that caused the problem between her husband and Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State,  who as a sitting Governor and Chairman of the powerful Nigeria Governors Forum, Dame Patience Jonathan went angrily to the governor’s podium when he was making a speech on the Okrika shanties demolition and forcibly grabbed the microphone from him and started hauling abuses at him. Whether the governor was saying what she was averse to or not, one expects that she would have been decorous and later take whatever action she deems fit with her husband, but she went hay wire and openly snatched the microphone and started hauling abuses and threatening brimstone and fire at the governor instantly. One would have  expected the husband, Jonathan to have reprimanded the wife on hearing the misconduct, but he kept silent. Not long the, Governor  was accused of nursing a Presidential ambition, later changed to Vice-Presidential ambition. But Amaechi denied all the allegations till date and his stand vindicated as he did not contest any of the positions.
After that experience, Dame Jonathan took her dementia to Bayelsa State, the husband’s State of birth and has been making efforts to remove Governor Seriake Dickson. As a fact, Dame Patience Jonathan has prepared another Governorship candidate to take over from Dickson just as she has positioned  Nyesom Wike in Rivers. If not that Jonathan’s presidential boat was sinking, he would have caved in for Patience’s madness in Bayelsa. But Jonathan was smart enough this time around because his presidential chances are currently hanging in the balance. It is obvious  he needs any available straw to survive the APC machine that is bent on sweeping him back to Utuoke.
This same Dame Patience Jonathan had the temerity, in one of her money- wasting rallies of Women for Change described the President-to-be, come May 29 as “brain dead” when she herself is just a semi-illiterate buffoon whose Primary six school leaving certificate and whatever qualifications she is said to parade from the Rivers State University of Science and Technology (RUST) is seriously doubted. Poor as she is in spoken English Language, she very often, grabs the microphone and makes all sorts of blunders. She has brought so much shame, opprobrium, and odium to the  First family in particular and  the country in general. Clearly, with her conduct, Dame Patience Jonathan has taken something away from the exalted position of the First Lady of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Like all other First Ladies, she initiated the “Women for Change,” a platform she has been using to call for affirmative action that women should be given chance in  politics. They said they want to see a Woman President, Governor or Local Government Chairpersons. Interestingly, one of her converts, Mrs. Sarah Jubril picked the Presidential nomination form of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in 2011 and challenged her husband to a contest. One would have expected that the women for change initiator would have demonstrated her commitment to what she was preaching by voting for Sarah Jubril as she was a PDP delegate. Instead, she cast her vote for her husband. Sarah Jubril had only one vote, her personal vote , as all other women who were delegates and members of women for change voted for Jonathan ostensibly on the orders of Dame Patience. It shows Dame Patience as a hypocrite who goes about preaching one thing and doing another. It presents her as a very desperate woman who can do anything to cling on to power.
Since the commencement of the Presidential campaigns, Dame Patience Jonathan have led a campaign of hate against the Presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), General Muhammadu Buhari. She, alongside Governor Ayo-Fayose and Femi Fani-Kayode, (persons who the EFCC says they have cases of money laundering to answer)  use all sorts of gutter and profane  language against Buhari to the extent that they  wish  the APC candidate death. This campaign of hate is very sad for our polity. Never in the history of politics in Nigeria has a particular candidate be so insulted, derided and hated by a section of the political class led by no other than the so-called First Lady.
Nigerians believe that she is above her husband since the husband cannot even call her to order. So she has gone “Awo”. She has gone gaga talking rubbish everywhere, everyday without restraint.
But if she and her clueless husband feels that such is the strategy to win the March 28 polls, methinks they are dead wrong. They have only succeeded in making General Muhammadu Buhari more popular. Nigerians are very prepared to elect him so he can end a dark era in the country’s chequered political history and usher in positive change for the betterment of all  citizens.
It is important to emphasise that the PDP has failed Nigerians as its over 16 years hold unto  power in the country has spelt doom for the citizens with insecurity, poor infrastructure, high rate of unemployment, poor electricity and water supply as well as ailing health and educational system as the hall mark of the party’s administration. Nigerians are tired of the unending broken  promises from the PDP and the way forward at the moment is to put an alternative in place for  Nigerians.
Unless citizens want to continue lamenting post- 2015, Nigerians must rise up to challenge the rudderless PDP strong holds that have pauperized them over the years. Very often, the PDP failures are quick to compare our democracy  with that of  America that took hundreds of years to be where they are at the moment. While we do not want to travel as  far as to America and England to compare notes, we need to truly compare notes with Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan, Singapore, and even South Africa and Rwanda! Nigeria remains a shame among the comity of nations, yet the visionless and spineless  PDP is still aiming at continuing its grip on power. Dame Patience Jonathan and her husband must be shown the way out of Aso Rock Villa.