Patience Jonathan and the parable of the unforgiving servant

But for divine providence, former First Lady of Nigeria, Dame Patience Fakabelema Jonathan, may have been dead. She personally said so during a testimony she shared in 2015. According to her, during the period of her surgery abroad, many of her friends and associates even sold her property, thinking she wouldn’t make it alive.

As reported by TheCable, Nigeria’s leading digital platform in its May 17 2015 edition which I will quote verbatim: “Patience Jonathan, wife of the president, says she has undergone 13 surgeries as a result of “health challenges” and was once pronounced dead.

Speaking on Sunday at the farewell service organised by the Aso Rock Villa Chapel, she said she “disappeared” sometime in January during the presidential campaign in order to undergo yet another surgery. The first lady said she had a sharp pain on her side and upon examination by doctors, she was told she needed surgery. But it was kept from the public during the campaign as she underwent the “major” operation in Germany.

On her return to the country, she immediately joined her husband’s campaign, which ended in defeat on March 28.

Starting with the song, ‘I will give God my whole life’, she said: “‎I really thank God for keeping me alive. He is a miraculous God. God is so wonderful in my life because people professed that one of us will not go back. But God has made it possible: two of us are going healthy.”

This was an allusion to previous occurrences in which either the Nigerian president or his wife died in office. Sani Abacha, military head of state, died in 1998, while Stella, wife of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, died in 2005.

Former President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua died in 2010, and text messages were being circulated years ago suggesting that it was “logically” the turn of Jonathan’s wife to die.

She continued: “I thank God for keeping me alive today. God is so wonderful. Just two years ago, I went through operations upon operations. Within months, I passed through 12 operations. It is wonderful. To some people, they said she is dead but God resurrected me. God told me my daughter go back I will give you a second chance, go and finish your work. And today even if my husband lost this election I believe God has made me finish the work.

“At the same time this year, while my husband was campaigning, that period was a trying time for me. Satan came in again and those that know the former president and his wife, her corpse was carried out of this place. We thank God that I and my husband are going alive. Thank God today we are [departing the villa] with life and not with death. Our doors are open.

“This campaign period, the devil struck and came in again. In pains, I was rushed to the hospital in January and the doctors told me, Mama you have to go for major operation now now. What again? I asked. The campaign was still going on and I wondered how we were going to explain to Nigerians. You know even when you go for check-up, they will be writing in the papers saying all sorts of things.

“I said my husband will continue with his campaign until the last day. That was how I went in for the first major operation in January ending. And by God’s grace, I went for the operation and came out and it was from that operation that I went to the campaign ground. And they told me Mama, there is another bigger operation that you have to go in for. This one would not be in this hospital. It is too small for this type of operation. You have to go to a bigger hospital and I said, Haha. I will go, I have faith in God. And that my God will see me through. He has brought me out for a purpose. I called my pastor, my praying partner to continue praying for me. They want me to be a sacrifice, but I will never be.

“Then, do you know I went to the bigger hospital. I booked for the operation and I was asked to go for the campaign. They gave me a new date. I had paid for everything, remaining just to enter the theatre and the thing occurred to the hospital, Let’s check her again. By then, my husband had lost the election. I have packed out of Villa, we are about going. Behold! I went to four hospitals again in Germany and the thing vanished. My doctors were surprised they didn’t think that could happen.”

Today, it is so disheartening to read in the dailies that the same Patience Jonathan who publicly said she died but God gave her a second chance to live ordered the detention of 15 of her former domestic workers over alleged theft of jewellery and other valuables since 2019. These hapless workers have been in prison for six years and may still spend more years as they are yet to be tried. Chai! There is God ooo.

The affected staff who were detained at the Okaka Custodial Centre, Bayelsa State, include Williams Alami, Vincent Olabiyi, Ebuka Cosmos, John Dashe, Tamunokuro Abaku, Emmanuel Aginwa, Erema Deborah, Precious Kingsley, Tamunosiki Achese, Sunday Reginald, Vivian Golden, Emeka Benson, Boma Oba, Salomi Wareboka, and Sahabi Lima.

But for media outcry, these former domestic aides would have just languished endlessly in prison. It was reported that one of the detainees even had a baby while in detention. In one of the videos, a frail 90-year-old woman was seen crying and begging Patience Jonathan to release her daughter, Deborah Erema, the elderly woman, whose health is visibly failing, broke down in tears as she lamented her current state of hunger, neglect, and isolation.

“Nobody go give me food, nah only her dey give me. I don’t have anybody. I just go beg beg. I am now a beggar. See me as I dey now. Please release my daughter, make she go find food for me. Nah she dey give me food. I don beg tire. I don tire. Make una leave my pikin for me. If I die now, who go bury me. Nah only her I get “ she said.

The unjust detention, it was learnt, has already cost Deborah dearly. Her daughter, who had been single-handedly caring for her aged grandmother died recently after a prolonged illness.

While this article does not condone theft or any criminal behaviour, the unjust incarceration of these domestic workers for five years without trial beggars belief. Even if they are culpable or were the ones who sold the former First Lady’s property while she was sick, she can temper justice with mercy and remember that as a sinner, God has also shown her mercy. At least, let them be tried and let the court determine their fate. Keeping them perpetually in prison without trial is unfair.

While God has shown Mrs Jonathan mercy by giving her a second chance to live, the Nigerian state has also shown her mercy by not pursuing her alleged financial enrichment and abuse of office case with the necessary vigour. When the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) charged her to court for allegedly stealing the sum of $15m, Mama Peace as Patience is generally known said the money was a gift she received over the last 15 years from friends and well-wishers.

Also in September 2016, when Damola Bolodeoku, a former Skye bank official; Amajuoyi Azubike Briggs, a former presidential aide; Trans Ocean Property and Investment Company Limited, Seagate Property Development and Investment Company Limited and Globus Integrated Services Limited were taken to court by EFCC for alleged $31.4 million fraud involving the companies without addresses, Patience, in an application filed at the Lagos federal high court on September 6, with FHC/L/C5/1233/16, claimed ownership of the money.

Mrs Jonathan’s case reminds one of the parable of the wicked servant as told by the Lord, Jesus Christ in Matthew 18: 21-35. A servant owes a king an enormous sum of money (ten thousand talents). He begs for mercy and the king, in a generous act of forgiveness, cancels the debt. Later, the same servant encounters another servant who owes him a much smaller debt (a hundred denarii, a day’s wage). Instead of showing mercy as he had been shown, he demands a smaller debt and has the other servant imprisoned. The king, hearing of this unforgiving act, is enraged. He recalls the servant and scolds him for his lack of compassion, stating, “shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?”.The king delivers the unforgiving servant to the jailers to be tortured until he pays the entire amount he owed, highlighting the consequences of a heart hardened against forgiveness.

Former President Goodluck Jonathan is a complete gentleman who abhors any form of controversy or scandal. I was present at the Freedom Park in 2013 when Prof. Wole Soyinka granted a press conference on the then crisis in Rivers state in which Patience, an indigene of the state, played a prominent role. Soyinka said as president, Jonathan bears ‘vicarious responsibility’ for the actions of his wife and will be held liable if anything untoward happened to the then governor, Rotimi Amaechi.

In the book ‘Against the Run of Play,’ written by the chairman, editorial board of ThisDay, Olusegun Adeniyi, Jonathan also disclosed that it was his wife and not him who had a problem with Amaechi in Rivers.

“Jonathan told me that Amaechi’s problem was not with him but rather with his wife and that, at a point, he tried to reconcile them,” Adeniyi stated in the book.

Since the unjust incarceration of the domestic servants was brought to public knowledge, the former First Lady has not uttered any statement and there is no report she has started moves to secure the freedom of her ex-workers. While the ultimate decision is hers, she should remember the second chance given to her by God who did not count her iniquities and also remember that we came into the world with nothing, and we will also depart with nothing. Someday, both she and the domestic workers will exit this planet and transcend to a place where jewellery and all the mundane things of this world are nothing but immaterial.

Akinsuyi, former group politics editor of Daily Independent, currently studies sustainability communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science.