By Ademola Adegbamigbe

President Goodluck Jonathan spoke at the thanksgiving service organised for him and his family at the Cathedral Church of the Advent, Life Camp, Gwarimpa, Abuja on 10 May. It was one of the events outlined for him as he counts down to his 29 May 2015 exit date. That day, he complained about some friends leaving him in the lurch even as he still had over two weeks to say bye to Aso Rock Villa where the grass is green, the trees and shrubs are lush and the birds sing better.

What he revealed that day reminds one of those tales by the moon light when we were young. Like David, the son of Jesse, a goat herder and Jonathan, son of King Saul, the two friends were, despite their different backgrounds, close. One is Gbadeyanka, (Gbade, for style) son of the king and the other Deinde, scion of an anus-scratching farmer.

Gbade who did not allow his royal background to affect his relationship with others took his poor friend to the palace to dine, wine and play with the maids and palace guards. The poor man could enter the sprawling premises without any formality; he was welcome any time any day. In fact, the two guys wore same clothes and exchanged different strategies to persuade many damsels to do their bidding.

That love was so strong that Gbade, one day, asked the king that by the time he was ready to join his ancestors; he should allow his poor friend to succeed him. What a wish! The prince did not only love his poor friend as himself, he loved him more than himself. The request of the prince hit the Kabiyesi with the force of a mallet. It rendered his jaw hanging slack for minutes. By the time he regained his composure, the king hatched a plan in his head. The Kabiyesi, with the cooperation of the kingmakers, feigned death. The wish of the prince was therefore carried out. They installed the pauper their new king.

However, his first target after ascending the throne of another’s father was Gbade who relinquished his own inheritance for the sake of love. The new king came up with a phantom coup charge against Gbade the prince, an allegation that made him to end up in prison, awaiting execution. On the day he was to be killed, the king came out to pay his old friend the last disrespect.

“Gbade, you wanted to dethrone me!” The new king, hands at an akimbo, barked at the accused person.

“Oh king,” the Prince moaned, “why are you doing this to me? Are we not friends?”

The king answered: “You were the one who always said we are friends. I never told you that.”

At this point, the real king languidly “resurrected” from where the king makers had kept him. It was as if the earth should open up and swallow the upstart as the real ruler regained his throne. He did not need to preach to his son again never to trust any friend absolutely!

Exactly like that usurper of a king, President Jonathan’s friends never told him they were his friends. He was the one calling them so and he loved them more than himself, rather than like himself.

On the Thanksgiving Day, Jonathan told the congregation, that he made a “costly decision” by conceding victory to General Muhammadu Buhari, the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate who defeated him in the 28 March election.

In Jonathan’s words: “some hard decisions have their own costs, no doubt about that. That I have run the government this way stabilised certain things including the electoral system of this country. They were very costly decisions which I myself must be ready to pay for.” He added that apart from such costly decisions affecting his relationship with people, even those who worked with him would be, as he put it, subjected to rough times ahead.

“Some people come to and say: ‘Is this person not your friend? Was it not through your government he benefited? But [hear] what he is saying.’ Then, I know that worse treatment will come, if you take certain decisions and that even people who are very close to you will abandon you at some point. I know that more of my friends will disappear.” This implies that as at the time he addressed the congregation, some had already vamoosed, expecting to cultivate the new helmsman who, in their expectation, will spread butter or cheese or moinmoin on their bread.

Our outgoing President even extended his Jeremiad to whether or not his wife, Patience, would divorce him the way Marike, the wife of Frederick de Klerk, one time South African President, divorced him, after taking a hard decision to end apartheid in that country. However, that divorce had nothing to do with apartheid. Marike dumped her husband after she discovered his peccadilloes with Elita Georgiades, wife of Tory Georgiades, a Greek shipping magnate. But that is by the way.

What President Jonathan seems to be learning is not new to individuals holding positions of authority, either in the public or private sector. I remember that after leaving office, the late governor of Ondo State, Dr. Olusegun Agagu, granted a national daily an interview. He revealed that when he marked his birthday as governor the previous year, the newspapers were full of congratulatory adverts in his honour. What happened the following year after leaving office? The adverts almost dried up!

The truth, therefore, is that those who were close to Jonathan did so because of what they would benefit. Was he not the one who said, after his defeat that those who jumped ship and rowed over to the APC ocean liner would return with empty stomachs? It was like when the late Chief Sunday Afolabi, a former minister, tried to mock the late Chief Bola Ige that they invited him to PDP to “come and chop”! Since chopping is going to end soon, the parasites have just decided to stick to and suck another host.

And did Asari Dokubo, the Niger Delta militant, not tell anyone who cared to listen that before Jonathan, he had been and after him, he would still dey kampe?

I advise President Jonathan not to get himself weighed down by his fair weather friends because that is the reality of life. Neither should he allow himself to become a victim of fallen star syndrome. Rather, he should forget the past and face the future. The past is gone forever with the antics of the PDP troubadours who decided to sing about personalities and not facts. The party’s mistake of fielding the bantamweights within its fold against the heavyweights in APC has also become history.

What Jonathan needs to do now is to take a rest and reflect.

He should then assemble a team of his aides who have not scampered off to work on his memoirs. And as an elder statesman now, he will be very busy as a member of the Council of State. Then he should expect a crowded itinerary as he will be called upon from different corners of the globe to deliver lectures and mediate in conflict spots.

What Jonathan’s Jeremiad teaches us is that when a ruler is in power, the true friends who will really appreciate him are the masses who must have benefitted from his programmes. It is worse when friends who are of the elite class reject one and when the masses do so too.