What is This Incessant Talk about Resignation? Is One around The Corner?

Tunde Bakare,

In the last one or two weeks or so, the polity has been inundated with talks about resignation or no resignation. Fiery Lagos pastor, Tunde Bakare, started it all, I think. While giving a sermon in his church, Latter Rain Assembly, he predicted that President Jonathan might not last up till 2015; that the President would either resign or be forced out before then. Many see the prophecy as political harakiri. They ask: If Pastor Bakare wants to play politics given that he is also a politician, why would he not step down from the pulpit and embrace politics with all his might and oratory? Then the Boko Haram Islamic sect that has been tormenting the nation, killing and maiming innocent Nigerians in the North, joined in the resignation buzz. The sect asked President Jonathan to step down or become a Moslem as a condition to ceasefire.

As if that invidious demand did not rankle enough, rather than ignore Boko Haram and not dignify it with a response, the president went on to say he won’t resign. Speaking through his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Dr. Reuben Abati, President Jonathan said he would neither resign nor convert to Islam. He described the Boko Haram call as rude and a mere blackmail. “The President cannot be intimidated by any group or individual. The President will never resign. He has the mandate of Nigerians to serve his fatherland and nobody should imagine that he would succumb to blackmail,” Abati had told journalists. Then, when we thought that had perhaps rested the matter, former Federal Caiptal Territory (FCT) minister, Nasir el-Rufai, picked it up again, as if taking the gauntlet on behalf of Boko Haram.

El-Rufai was actually taking issues with Ijaw leader Chief Edwin Clark who castigated some Northern leaders over the activities of Boko Haram. El-Rufai asked Clark to desist from insulting Northern leaders. He said Jonathan has already made it clear to Nigerians and the international community that the gale of bombings in the land was beyond the capability of his administration to handle. Then the clincher: “If he (Jonathan) cannot do the job for which he was elected to do, he should consider going home…” Meanwhile, Dr. Doyin Okupe, the President’s Senior Special Assistant on Public Affairs, has also blasted Bakare and el-Rufai for calling on Jonathan to resign.

My sense in all this, and forgive me as this is what my Yoruba instinct tells me,  is that if something is becoming recurrent like this, like this call for resignation, it just might be in the offing. Is resignation around the corner?