Goodluck Jonathan, Chude Jideonwo and this generation -By Stanley Azuakola

One Saturday afternoon, a few years ago, I was asked to write about Chude Jideonwo as part of my recruitment interview into Red Nigeria/YNaija. I had not personally met him before then, but I knew enough about him to write that: “Jideonwo, the man, is an opinion warehouse, a quality which has made him the subject of some considerable backlash in the past (his CNN op-ed on the Senate gay bill comes to mind.) But fearlessness is a trait that comes naturally to him and which he embraces confidently. Jideonwo would speak his mind, no matter whose ox is gored.”

After reading Jideonwo’s new book – Are we the turning point generation (AWTTPG)? – and referring back to what I wrote about him that Saturday, I realize how true my words were at the time, and how true they have remained.

AWTTPG is a collection of essays written by the author between 2010 and 2013. The book centres on three main characters. The first is the author himself – Jideonwo – who lives, feels and grows through the pages; urgent, engaging and demanding in his tone as he is in real life. The second main character is ‘this generation’, the one Jideonwo says has “done a lot with so little; has blossomed like roses amongst thorns” and “not asked for much in return.” The final character is Goodluck Jonathan, Nigeria’s president, on whom the author expends a range of emotions.

Through the 187 pages of the book, the reader is taken through an engaging journey as the three main characters and a host of other supporting acts engage each other and some of the biggest themes and questions we face as Nigeria.

Growing with Chude

We grow with Jideonwo in the book. Although the essays are not arranged chronologically, a reader who checks the dates each of the pieces was originally published will be amazed at Jideonwo’s evolution. While the earlier pieces were packed with the fervor and uncompromising flair of youth; the recent ones showed a man more willing to compromise as some views were modified or discarded outright. He puts it best in one chapter, when he said, “These days, as we get older and responsibilities pile up, and we all face the ‘real’ world, much of our idealism drops.”

And there were several instances of that.

His September 2010 piece, Why we are Nigeria, was a tribute to his generation. Writing as the apostle of the new and almost dismissive of the ‘old guard’, Jideonwo declares exultantly: “We are Nigeria, not them.” In We were on to something, written in April 2011, Jideonwo speaks glowingly of his generation; “This is the generation that eats and drinks change; the generation that has found a way to combine earning a living with bringing about change. We understand that working for change is not a series of activities but a lifestyle and a culture. We will party, we will pray and we will push for change… this is the Turning Point Generation.”

However, fast forward to a year later and it was a more subdued Jideonwo who began to ask questions of his beloved generation in the title essay, Are we the turning point generation? Almost gone was the man who had screamed that, “We will push for change… this is the turning point generation.” Here, he was saying, “We are supposed to be the Turning Point Generation; we are supposed to be the generation where everything changes.” Notice the difference? Sureness had given way to caution; the ‘real world’ had happened to idealism.

“The truth,” he said, “is that we are not intrinsically better than those that came before us… I suspect it’s high time we cured ourselves of a certain blind optimism in the power of ‘youth.’ The young have it in them to be as clueless and as corrupt and as close-minded as the old. Our social media savvy and general openness to technology will not save us.” Driving more home truths to his generation, Jideonwo lamented with literary flourish: “And here is the real tragedy: that you can look at the young people around you – those in government, those in the opposition, those who are critics – and sadly not see much difference from the past. We see our friends who get into government become just like the rest of them, members of the opposition whose principled disagreements cease as soon as they are given a seat at the table; we see critics who choose sensation over sense, bombast over engagement, and insults over nation-building. Essentially, by observation and interaction, we have become like those fathers.”

That chapter alone was worth the price of the book.

Jideonwo’s views on the nature of change Nigeria needs also goes through some evolution in the book. In the February 2011 piece, Are we ready for change?, the author argued that “no matter how much we intellectualise it, no real change ever happens incrementally… The Jerry Rawlings example is a worn cliché, but it is exactly the kind of change we need – maybe not bloodshed, but something so radical, so fundamentally disruptive, that it irrevocably changes the balance of power in favour of the people.” However by the time he wrote his piece on Occupy Nigeria in 2013, he too had come to the point of acceptance that “those who seek to drive change need to fall back on incremental change… [which] is in fact the hardest thing to bring about.” He went on, a few months later, to give 52 steps for incremental change – and by this time, the radical had mellowed.

Sometimes however, Jideonwo’s transformed opinions are too contradictory to stomach.

“There is nothing wrong with ambition,” Jideonwo declares in What if people have an agenda, “Societies are transformed by people who have ambition: ambition for fame, fortune, glory, legacy… What we now appear to have in Nigeria is an unending search for the perfect. Where we don’t find that, we have unfortunately begun to cannibalise our own; we have begun to attack those we should support, malign those we should encourage and second-guess those we should line up behind… So, news flash: we should have no use for people who have no agenda or who claim to have no agenda.”

If the quote above was really Jideonwo’s opinion then one would have no qualms with it. However, in February 2013, just a month before writing that, Jideonwo had written what I considered to be the worst piece in the collection, Lessons from Obiageli Ezekwesili and Dora Akunyili.

Here’s what he had to say about former NAFDAC DG and information minister: “These days when we think about Dora Akunyili, the images that go through our heads are not altogether pleasant. We remember the woman who left public office looking like a power monger, who ran in an election that took away the last shred of her public dignity when she refused to lose gracefully. We remember the loquaciousness of her task as the government’s information minister…” And on and on he wrote in one of the most unfair portrayals of Akunyili I have read. To use his words, Jideonwo chose “sensation over sense” in that piece.

What was so wrong about the way Akunyili left public office that made her look like a power monger? Is it the fact that she was the first minister to take the side of Jideonwo and other Nigerians who were asking for Pres. Jonathan to be sworn in as acting president? And what if she desired power anyway? Wasn’t it the author who said societies are transformed by people who have ambition? What was so undignifying about Akunyili’s election contest against Sen. Chris Ngige for the Anambra Central senatorial seat? Is it because she chose to challenge the result of the election in which she lost by less than a thousand votes? I mean, Gov. Kayode Fayemi lost by a landslide last month and yet his party is contesting the result!

The author also delivered an unfair judgement on former EFCC boss and APC presidential candidate in 2011, Nuhu Ribadu, whose candidacy, Jideonwo described as “depressing and like watching a train wreck.” A month after writing the Ribadu-bashing piece, Jideonwo wrote another piece, A roadmap to incremental change, in which he said, “We should encourage the good guys to get into politics as candidates. Everyone says politics is a dirty game, but someone has to do it and it better be our best hands.” Yet, when Ribadu tried, Jideonwo called it a mistake. “He should not have contested for the presidency. He should have said no. He should not have ventured into politics… Politicians need a certain capacity or skill-set (and where they do not have this, they have a system that ensures it); but Mr. Ribadu suffered a scarcity…” Jideonwo’s harsh take on Ribadu is even harder to stomach when one considers that Ribadu, through a senator, reached out to Jideonwo even before the former EFCC boss declared, and asked him to work for his campaign, probably to help him acquire that “skill-set” which he lacked. Jideonwo said NO.

On Goodluck Jonathan

One message which the author repeated at least half a dozen times in the book was this: “Government is the single most important force for change in any society – print that and paste it on your door if you really want to do something to change your country… We cannot, cannot change Nigeria without its government.”

For someone with such a view, it made sense that Pres. Goodluck Jonathan – the head of Nigeria’s government – featured prominently in AWTTPG. To understand the central place of Pres. Jonathan in the book, consider that the oldest piece (Hitting ‘Send’), written in April 2010 and the most recent piece (We are the generation that deserves more) can both be easily linked to the president. ‘Hitting Send’ is a narrative on the chain of events which led to the 2010 Enough is Enough protest rally that called for the instatement of the then vice president Goodluck Jonathan as acting president among other things, at a time when Pres. Umaru Yaradua was sick and a cabal was hell-bent on resisting any attempt to do the right thing. ‘We are the generation that deserves more’, which is the most recent essay in the book, was the speech delivered by Jideonwo on December 15, 2013 in Aso Rock where Pres. Jonathan now presides as Oga Patapata in his own right.

Here’s what one of the government’s most important ministers, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala wrote in the blurb for the book: “This book, provocative and tough, is worth the read whether you share his views or not.” Jideonwo had a lot to say about the Goodluck Jonathan administration, and – Okonjo-Iweala is right – the government won’t share several of his views. A wonderful trait of the author however is his open-mindedness; with him, everyone gets a chance.

Just like a majority of Nigerians in 2011, he too seemed taken by the Jonathan charm. Writing on the eve of the election, the author said Pres. Jonathan “has brought governance closer to the people without a fear of demystification. I find that thoroughly exciting. I am also privileged to have interviewed him recently, and I came off thoroughly impressed with him as a person. He revealed, in our off-record conversation, a man many would be comfortable with as a leader.” He also raised a few reservations about the president. At a pre-inauguration youth lunch which held just one week to the president’s swearing-in, Jideonwo who was one of the speakers told Pres. Jonathan that, “Good intentions are great, a positive disposition is desirable, and your personal credibility is not in doubt, but those cannot dislodge such a flawed system.”

Just a month later, following the kidnap of corps members with no news of their whereabouts 10 days after the incident, Jideonwo wrote that “it’s time for the president to sit up.” A year later, in a tribute to Malam Bolaji Abdullahi, who was moved from the ministry of youth to that of sports, Jideonwo wrote that “if this were a serious-minded government, it would have left Abdullahi [in the ministry of youth], with his vision and commitment.” In The courage to be reasonable, he opined that even though the anger of Nigerians did not begin with Pres. Jonathan, his administration’s “lack of direction” was worsening things.

Still Jideonwo did not fail to give credit, support and the benefit of the doubt to the president when he needed to, like in Why we are angry and Unity at any cost?

My takeaways from AWTTPG can go on for another five pages but the surest of them is this: Jideonwo’s book is worth every penny – easy to read, great prose, original thinking and very relevant. We see the author in his mould as a non-conformist in pieces like On N1.2million Facebook accounts and other non-scandals and The courage to be reasonable. As a self-described “born again Christian. A tongue-speaking, Christianese-loving, church-working Christian”, Jideonwo walked the fine line between religiosity and commonsense in We must kill ‘God’ and An open letter to my pastor. And in Nigeria is a sinking ship but we must not desert it, we had a piece so gripping and befitting as the last essay in the book that you leave it sad and inspired, determined and vulnerable, with tears and hope.