What becomes of Jonathan’s women?

We moan about the lost pleasures and antics of Dame Patience. Yet, her husband, the avant-garde gaffe maker, President Jonathan, will also surely be missed. He achieved fame in one defining moment of nobleness when American-style, he placed a phone call to his challenger in the March 28 presidential race to congratulate him and to concede defeat. But years before, he had blundered from one gaffe to another, from one ethnic affront to another sectarian balderdash, and from one policy miscue to another. No president before him, nor any after, has done so much to undermine good governance and national amity as President Jonathan.

He was noted for saying one thing and meaning another. But trying to put the lie to our unfavourable impression of his hypocrisies, he gave one final testimony of himself, as he conceded defeat, that he promised us his ambition was not worth the life of any Nigerian, and that he also promised he would deliver a free and credible election. He did both, he swore last week. But not before he and his aides enacted the most convoluted attempt to undermine electoral fidelity by the most appalling electoral malfeasances in Rivers, Akwa Ibom and Delta States, malfeasances they nearly got away with.

But much more than anything, President Jonathan will be remembered for his lack of depth, his fiery umbrage, far-fetched comparisons (Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar) borrowed clumsily from the Scriptures, and his quaint philosophy that, somehow, buying loyalty and consciences with state money and contracts was not inimical to his Christian conscience and principles.

In many ways, it is hard not to conclude that God mercifully brought Dr Jonathan and Dame Patience together, thus sparing, in the profound putdown of the Carlyles by Samuel Butler, four people misery instead of two. Now that they are gone, let the heart not make the mistake of growing fonder.