Well, more fuel to the fire.
By moving immediately direct the investigation of the Independence Day bomb blasts away from MEND before the investigation started, even though MEND issued a warning and took responsibility for the action, President Jonathan opened himself up to suspicion and guaranteed that any non-MEND outcome to the investigation would prompt rational doubts as to the veracity and credibility of the outcome. This is Nigeria; we the people don't trust the police and other security agencies to begin with. Heck, if Jonathan had never opened his mouth, and the investigation did in the end point to MEND, there would still be ample Nigerians willing to believe all manner of conspiracy theories about what really happened.
By saying what he said and doing what he did, Jonathan gave the conspiracy theorists a firmer basis for their suspicions than otherwise. Add to this the fact that every faction of the so-called Niger-Delta "militants" is aligned to a faction of the local and national PDP (helping their respective PDP factions "win" elections, and receiving political protection for their oil bunkering in return).
I don't understand why he said what he said.
Well, President Jonathan is already tasting the fruits of his words.
Henry Okah, leaders of one of the larger factions of MEND, was arrested in South Africa after the Independence Day blasts. It is uncertain at this time whether he was arrested on the initiative of the South Africans, or if his arrest was prompted by word to South Africa the Nigerian federal government. Presumably, Okah was living comfortably in South Africa courtesy of the (late) Yar'Adua regime amnesty.
Now comes this report from Al Jazeera which quotes Henry Okah claiming the Jonathan administration is punishing him because he refused to play along with a cover-up:
"On Saturday morning, just a day after the attack, a very close associate of President Jonathan called me and explained to me that there had been a bombing in Nigeria and that President Jonathan wanted me to reach out to the group, Mend, and get them to retract the earlier statement they had issued claiming the attacks," Okah said.
"They wanted to blame the attacks on northerners who are trying to fight against him [Jonathan] to come back as president and if this was done, I was not going to have any problems with the South African government.
"I declined to do this and a few hours later I was arrested. It was based on their belief that I was going to do that that Jonathan issued a statement saying that Mend did not carry out the attack."
Henry Okah is a criminal, a violent criminal at that.
It is abundantly possible he is lying.
It is just as possible he is not.
Unfortunately no agency exists with the credibility and the capacity to investigate his claims and make a determination that we the people can trust.
Ironically, though, that is not the point of this post.
President Goodluck Jonathan has opened himself up to exactly these kind of accusations even if the allegations are not true. If Henry Okah is lying, it is because he knows that this lie, expressed in exactly the way he expressed it, will resonate with sections of the public because of what Jonathan said, and how quickly Jonathan said it. There is no logical way the president could have known for a fact who was or was not involved in the blasts, not then, not with our negligent intelligence-gathering and unimpressive investigative capacity. Even if Okah is lying, the president's actions were certainly in line with what Okah said, which the lie more effective than it would otherwise be (if it is a lie).
I don't know who advises President Jonathan. He, she or they probably got the job because of their skills at sycophancy and not out of any expertize in the art of governance or public relations.
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