Is Goodluck suffering a run of bad luck?

Good luck for Goodluck

I once made a flippant comment regarding the Nigerian President-select Umaru Yar'Adua when a blog said his appearance at an interview had something of a rabbit mesmerised in the middle of the road by the lights of a fast approaching vehicle in the night.

Alluding to other aspects of concern, which includes the uncertainty of his rather buoyant health I said, "If he survives, he has good luck, if he doesn't we have Goodluck".

It would appear the President-select is a scarce commodity, the brigands that head his political vehicle of electoral mischief - sorry, I am getting ahead of myself here - political party, I meant - have been keeping him from the public view and creating an air of royal mystique about him.

In Purdah or a zombie

He does not seem to be able to appear for all sort of events marking his victory or seeking to having him talk to the people - as an out-going Sharia Law governor, methinks he is taking the laws too far and he is going into Purdah. This might usher a new regime of gender equality repolarisation, what a woman can do, a man can likewise do in Nigeria.

However, on the matter of good luck and health even the President of the United States undergoes a thorough health check with the basic details made public, what is to say we do not have a Presidential air ambulance in scrambled state ready to fly off to German the moment he blinks twice at the fast approaching lights?

To the good health of Mr. President

But seriously, I do wish the President-select well, the uncertainty of what we are getting does leave the whiff of a bygone Soviet communist secrecy age about if the leader can sniff or is a stiff.

The matter of good luck worries me more, because it can be argued that Yar'Adua did not choose his running mate, it was an arranged marriage instigated by the out-going President.

The Trojan President

Dr. Goodluck Jonathan of all better performing governors in the South was plucked from the obscurity of ability within the quagmire of terrorist acts in his state that he did little to manage or curtail and thrust on Nigerian as a cynical ploy to indirectly given the state influence and hopefully sap support from the machinations of the insurgents and militants that sabotage oil installations and kidnap foreign workers with relative ease, giving Nigeria unpalatable headlines.

Now, it would appear this ploy has not worked, Dr. Jonathan does not have a constituency in his state, he is no man of his people - twice already his property has been attacked and his relations have suffered great distress as a result. One might be tempted to say bad luck is jabbing at Goodluck.

Less sympathetic commentators might even hazard the thought that his luck as run out, the dangerous part of this is the possibility that Yar'Adua is a Trojan horse, whose incapacitation would pave the way for Dr. Goodluck Jonathan to assume the presidency temporarily or more.

That would be an unfortunate turn of circumstances for Nigeria, for if that man in a well resourced and financed oil-rich state could not find socio-economic solutions to placate the tensions in his state, the grand project of Nigeria cannot expect to see better - herein is the death of luck.

Allowing for some optimism, these people can somehow spring surprises, we'll see.