IT is preposterous to argue that President Goodluck Jonathan has shown the world that performance is the focal point, the pivot, the driving force of politics. Performance is the strength of Jonathan’s transformation magic.

IN a feat of acerbic verbal tantrums, Nobel Laureate Professor Wole Soyinka Tuesday December 2, attacked President Goodluck Jonathan and likened the Nigerian leader to Nebuchadnezzar the biblical autocrat and king of Babylon who initially denounced the Living Supreme God. Soyinka who addressed a press conference on the state of the nation at the popular Freedom Garden in Lagos, said that Jonathan is tyrannical because the Inspector General of Police Suleiman Abba stopped the attempt by the defected speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal to enter the Green Chamber of the National Assembly with thugs.

The main political issue today is the national convention of the All Progressives Congress (APC) taking place at the Teslim Balogun Stadium in Lagos, where the Presidential candidate of the main opposition party for the 2015 elections will emerge — Muhammed Buhari, Abubakar Atiku and Sam Nda Isaiah are in the race even as an unconfirmed report claimed Rabiu Kwankwaso and Rochas Okorocha would step down.

The history of the end of militancy in the Niger Delta cannot be completely written without acknowledging the role played by the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, who at great cost to his presidency, and with the assistance of his then Vice President, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, traversed the delta region, bringing militancy to its knees on the negotiation table.

STORY-telling is an age-long tradition in Africa that has refused to died even in the face of invasive Western culture. Didacticism is the surviving strength of this age-long tradition. However, African politicians are good story-tellers:they always tell good stories to convince the electorate during the fevered electioneering campaign period.