People who say, “President Goodluck
Jonathan has done nothing!” are not being truthful, but those who take
it literally are even more guilty. Jonathan has done something.
In November 2013, I travelled into
Nigeria and wrote about the mess that was the Murtala Muhammed
International Airport on this column. Sixteen months later, that same
airport is very far from being world class but it is a long travel from
the seamy dump of shame it looked like that November. I also believe
that his administration has not done too badly with Information and
Communication Technology. There are people who believe the successes in
agriculture are more noise than substance but I am of the view that
agriculture, while still very far from where it ought to be, has seen
some improvements in terms of the process involved in helping farmers
access extension support. It may sound like a campaign catch but that we
didn’t have a famine after the 2012 flooding is credit to the work done
by that ministry. Sports haven’t been stellar but you can’t say,
“nothing has been done” here either. A former Minister of Sports, Mallam
Bolaji Abdullahi, achieved great things. So yes, Jonathan has done
something. If you make a six-year old-child president, s/he also would
get some things right in five years because someway, somehow, someone in
his government would just decide to leave her own legacy behind and not
mind the incompetence of the “baby president”.
However, President Jonathan’s failings
are not as much about what he has done as it is about what he has not
done. One believes the most important attribute of leadership is caring;
Goodluck Jonathan does not care about the people. He is a provincial,
insensitive, callous, selfish, clueless, top-of-the-range incompetent
President who woke up one day with power and has spent half a decade
still wondering what to do with it.
If you followed the Chibok girls’
abduction, you’d see the only reason Boko Haram successfully abducted
the girls and still has them is because President Jonathan and his crew
of “na our turn” handlers refused to believe the girls had been
abducted. It took over two weeks for the President to acknowledge this.
The cost of that delay is the reason almost a year after, the girls
remain in the custody of their abductors.
President Jonathan refused to visit
Nigerian soldiers in Borno State until he had to visit the state to
campaign. He then made one visit to the state just before his campaign
visit; to deflect the criticisms that’d come from being seen as visiting
Borno just for elections and not to meet with the citizens who had been
burdened by insurgency for years. It was a callous act on the side of
the President but it was consistent with his attitude.
When 59 boys were murdered by Boko Haram
at the Federal Government College, Buni Yadi, President Jonathan and
his handlers not only did nothing, they said nothing. The President only
sent the Minister of Science and Technology, Dr. Abdul Bulama, one
whole year after the tragic incident, to convey his “grief” with the
parents. One year after? That is diabolical! Note this is not yet about
the President failing in his sworn responsibility to protect the people
of Nigeria – he has so failed that Nigerians themselves no longer care
to expect him to be responsible on that front – this was the President
not caring to commiserate with the parents and relatives. This is not
only a failure of leadership; it is a failure of President Jonathan’s
humanity.
A day after a bomb blast that killed
over 200 people – government claimed 75 people but eyewitnesses
including an online news medium stated otherwise – in Nyanyan, on the
outskirts of Abuja, President Jonathan was pictured actually dancing
“Skelewu” alongside a renowned northern artist, Sani Danja, while
welcoming former Kano Governor Ibrahim Shekarau back to the fold of the
Peoples Democratic Party. This happened last April. People say Nigerians
suffer from collective amnesia but is it so chronic 11 months are so
far into the past we cannot remember what happened? The late human
rights activist, Bamidele Aturu, said at the time, “It is plain
insensitive, really. It is an evidence that the leadership of this
country does not take our lives seriously at all,” and few will argue
against that statement even today.
You would think the President has learnt
his lessons since all of the above and others too numerous to mention
happened, he has not. Last Sunday, 80 people were killed as the Fulani
and Agatu clashed. Instead of at least making a statement, the President
chose to spend the time wining and dining with celebrities in Lagos. No
word, no action. When 12 people got killed by terrorists at the Paris
office of the satirical newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, President Jonathan
commiserated with the people of France, while on this same day about
2,000 people were killed at Baga – government claims the numbers are far
less but no claim of it being less than 150 people – yet the government
offered no commiseration, condolence or the usually tepid “we will
bring the perpetrators to book” statements that both the spokesperson
and the person who was being spoken for have never believed would
happen.
This President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan,
does not care! There are many facts to back this statement up but if the
above tragedies are not enough to make the point, the point would never
be made with a countless other examples.
Remember that the fuel price increase of
January 1, 2012 could have been done any other day and month of that
New Year. What sort of a person looks at the first day of the year and
decides to take such a decision? Many still have sad stories about how
returning to their bases post-Yuletide season was tougher than
anticipated. The President – two weeks to the elections – is announcing a
joke 30 per cent reduction in certain salaries. This promise was made
three years ago when Nigerians marched against his government. Nothing
happened in three years. He also promised to cut on his and his aides
international travel expenses; check, the numbers have only increased
since then.
You would see the President has been
running around over the last four weeks – since the elections were
postponed – to see if he can turn the tide. He took all of us for
granted in the past because he never envisaged there would be an
alternative to the PDP. Until these elections, no political party stood a
chance of beating the PDP at the presidential poll. The All
Progressives Congress was expected to crumble latest by December of 2014
when it held its presidential primary. Miraculously and against the
usual order of opposition politics, the party came out of that even
stronger. It was then and only then that Jonathan began to see that he
stood a chance of losing the election. It was then and only then did he
remember he had a country to preside over.
As he meets with Yoruba Obas,
celebrities and those who claim to be youth leaders, amongst other
interests, let the ones brave enough ask him: in a sane world, would he
even be a candidate to run again after all his failures? This is
Goodluck Jonathan, and there is no rational argument available to vote
this man as President. He has done enough and not done enough to show
that he took Nigerians for granted. His cup is full; it is time to let
someone finally pay for this mess we have come to get used to. The power
is in your hands!
Views expressed are solely the author’s. This was first published in The PUNCH Newspapers under a different title.
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