It seems safe to subscribe to the view that former president, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan’s share of good luck is inexhaustible. Or that his name is endlessly performative of what it invokes. In Nigeria, it is, indeed, good luck to still attract scholarly attention after over a decade of being out of office. Other than General Gowon who has been subjected to the political science scalpel of Prof Jonah Elaigwu, producing the book Gowon and a pamphlet on the interview component (the content of which makes it appropriate for Ali Mazrui to call Gowon the Lincoln of Nigeria, given how analytically sophisticated Gowon came across there) Intervention cannot easily recall scholarly works on former leaders beyond their own account of their years in power. Or some sponsored, hagiographical investment by some smart Aleks.
This time, it is none of the above but a journal article which has already gotten a star mention by the journal which published (African Identities, Volume 23, Issue 3), it and is bound to make its own waves sooner than later. Not the type of work which most politicians would categorise as positive publicity but as most communication scholars would argue, no publicity is bad at the end of the day as it is better to get even the negative publicity than no publicity at all.
A journal article as that which forms the subject of this report does not render itself easily classifiable into positive or negative stuff because it has conditions of adequacy to meet beyond what the politician or average reader may want. So, the argument that scholarly attention on this former president instantiates his inexhaustible share of good luck holds.
Creatively titled “No Patience, No Goodluck: Powerful First Ladies and Regime Change in Emerging African Democracies”, it is a 2024 article by two Nigerian sociologists – Dr. Ifeanyi Onwuzuruigbo of the University of Ibadan and Christopher Isike of the University of Pretoria. The puzzle they put on their fingers on is how did Dr Mrs Patience Jonathan help or hinder her husband’s struggle for power as a First Lady. Patience Jonathan is isolated as an entry point into an Africa wide phenomenon involving powerful influence from behind by the wife or wives of presidents.
So, a huge section of the article provides a checklist of the sort of pronouncements, actions and conduct of business by Patience Jonathan and the troubles it created for the government, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and leading figures. It is a whole huge section which recontextualises events and scenes from secondary sources into sometimes hauntological spectacles of Mrs Jonathan unfolding in the domain of power. That section gives credence to the key inference of the two researchers in relation to the magnitude of Mrs Jonathan contribution to the downfall of Dr Jonathan.
Whether taken on relevance, timeliness, the empirical and the analytical depth, this article is easily the type of work that will get the ranking it has attracted. For one, it is a good example of scholarly ears to the ground and skillful problematisation of what may appear mundane to the next person.
Intervention’s second point is the inviting nature of the theoretical matrix fashioned from divergent currents in continental philosophy, African insights and radical feminism in dissecting patriarchy, power and the women factor in the African and contemporary contexts. The engagement with Chinweizu’s once sensational book – Anatomy of Female Power: A Masculinist Dissection of Matriarchy is not only critical, it also achieves transcending its limitations as brought out particularly by Amina Mama’s sharp framing game of ‘femocracy’. In ‘femocracy’, we see both critical endorsement of Chinweizu as well as critical rejection of the limits of his powerful conceptual empiricism (if there is anything like that): motherpower, bridepower and wifepower and so on.
A 2013 picture of Dame (Dr) Patience Goodluck Jonathan as First Lady of Nigeria and President of the African First Ladies Peace Mission
Third and most importantly, this is not some visiting journalist fleshing out a quick stuff after a week or so around Nigeria but a culturally nuanced intervention by some two indigenous sociologists, with the corresponding author being the home based scholar – Dr Onwuzuruigbo. The specificity of meaning makes the indigenous root of the scholarship a crucial factor without suggesting any animus against cosmopolitanism in the domain.
These three grounds are, individually and collectively, what Intervention thinks makes this article compelling, with particular reference to the scholarly flavour that can gain the citations capable of taking an African university to a higher ranking order. It is a specimen of relevant, timely and. The delivery in seductive sociological analysis enhances the readability. It is one thing to have a problem to unpack but another to unpack it in a language with the capacity to convey the argument most impactfully.
There is no knowing if Dr Goodluck Jonathan has read this work. It may not have been written with him in mind but the requirement of articulation as far as meaning is concerned makes it important that this sort of work is read by the individual who constitute the subject matter along with their followers, party headquarters, leading members of the elite and the civil society. That is how the resulting rhetorical tussle around it can produce a hegemonic renarrativisation of the work vis-a-vis meaning and action.
In other words, the work that academics do cannot produce impact without articulatory practices around such works. This is the case because the abundance of meanings in the society implies that only one out of the competing meanings can prevail and dominate the field of meaning at any particular point in time. And the meaning which prevails is that which has been canvassed into consensus as such and which has not been challenged by any other contending meaning yet. In this case, the question of how Mrs Patience Jonathan helped or hindered her husband’s struggle for power as a First Lady.
Articulation or rhetoric as used in this piece do not refer to persuasive use of language but to the pragmatic use of language and the constitutive implications of same for the social. That is why it is not possible to have a social order without articulatory practice. All our everyday social practices are articulatory in nature because they are about one purpose or the other. That makes dissemination of scholarly works an additional burden. And it might be that scholars now need more avenues than the established channels by which such works used to be disseminated.
