SEARCH HOME > NEWS The Jonathan Candidature: Sentiment Versus Reality 20 Dec 2014 Font Size: a / A 2702F03.Goodluck-Jonathan-1.jpg - 2702F03.Goodluck-Jonathan-1.jpg President Goodluck Jonathan Before those who will be so peeved by the content of this article as to want to tear me apart, let me quickly remind them that it is my own considered opinion. Not theirs. They are at liberty to respond to it, via the often-allowed Right of Reply Penultimate Thursday, President Goodluck Jonathan, as had been known over a year ago, was ratified as the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Same day, his major contender, Maj Gen Muhammadu Buhari also emerged on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC). As it seems, the die is cast between the two political combatants who had met in 2011 on the same presidential contest. Between then and now, many variables have changed that are now giving bookmakers a task in predicting how the 2015 polls will go. Nothing seems cock sure. Let me begin by re-echoing the sentimental narratives in the polity. For the avid supporters of the Jonathan candidature, the argument is not quite steeped on the little or much that he had done in over five years in office. Rather, the argument is that he deserves a second term and so the PDP had to offer him the right of first refusal. Of course, he dashed at it. The other argument, related to the first, is that it will be unfair to deny a man from the Niger Delta region, more derisively described as the minority tribe, his constitutionally-guaranteed two terms of four years each. That if previous presidents had enjoyed it, why not President Jonathan? Good argument. Laced with this argument is that Nigeria belongs to all of us, and nobody can claim to be superior than the other. Therefore, the north cannot continually behave as if the political leadership of the country is their exclusive birthright. And so if any other Nigerian, other than a northerner happens to ascend the presidential seat, he/she must be allowed to run through the length of time provided for by the constitution, True! Therefore the unstated verbiage is, ‘he is our son, our bros, It is the first time someone from the region is tasting power at the centre, so let’s not be in a hurry to throw it off. Good or bad, it is our own’. Finally, there is the sentiment about religion. Whether we admit it or not, Nigeria seems torn down the line of religious prisms: Christianity and Islam, with little or no space for adherents of other faiths. The strong sentiment thus advanced is that President Jonathan is a Christian and that all those opposed to him are those who are Muslims or who want Islam to over run Nigeria. Therefore all Christians must rise up to defend one of their own against those who want to impose Islam on Nigeria. The claim is given verve by the activities of Boko Haram which is mainly in the northern part of the country, the zone mainly occupied by the Muslims of the country. So much for the sentiments on the streets. Now let us consider the realities of the issues at stake. Let me start from the last point: religion. Why should I care about the religion of the person in office so long as he is not only performing but also allowing me practise my own religion unhindered? What is the correlation between performance and religion? It is only those who have nothing to lay claim to that clutch on the straw called religion. Then Brigadier Buba Marwa (rtd) was Military Administrator of Lagos State. To a large extent, he was adjudged a good and great administrator. Nobody reckoned with his faith. What mattered was the evidence of his actions on the streets of Lagos. Governor Babatunde Fashola is now in office. The cheers and applause Fashola has received are certainly not on account of being a Muslim. I recall when late Pa Michael Otedola was serving as Lagos State governor, many saw him as slow and tepid. He was even nicknamed Baba Go-slow. He was a Christian. The jeers he got were not on account of his religion, but his performance record which everybody could relate with. Therefore, the talk about Jonathan being a Christian and so all Christians should support him is balderdash. If Jonathan has impressed Nigerians, the question of his faith will be a non-issue. Already, the choice of Yemi Osibajo, a senior pastor in Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) by the APC candidate would have diluted that argument and mindset. Ethnic Hook Related to the issue of religion is his geographical base: the Niger Delta. Some of his kinsmen—old and young, have threatened that unless Jonathan is re-elected, there will be no Nigeria to be governed by any other person. There is no substance to that threat other than the capacity to bear and launch arms. Now the question is: if a kinsman lacks capacity to perform, would you insist he keeps trying and failing when there are alternatives? Why should I care or mind where a performing president is from? All we need is a functioning Nigeria. And whoever is able to fix it is good enough. Of what benefit is having a next-door neighbour president who cannot guarantee stable electricity, smooth and safe highways, functioning healthcare system, employment opportunities for school graduates or even the security of lives and property? I have challenged those baying for the return of President Jonathan to justify their arguments on the basis of the governance credentials of the president. But all they push are base shenanigans of primordial sentiments In all, there is so much attachment to region and religion. But they are not a sine qua non for performance and delivery of electoral promises. Over-Domineering First Lady Perhaps for the first time in recent times, have we seen a brusque and unabashed incursion into the epicentre of the nation’s polity by the First Lady of the nation. For such an unconstitutionally-supported office, we have seen a First lady whose hand is in almost every pie of the nation. She influences budget appropriation, she wants to dictate who governs states where she has substantial interest. And so, she wants to install the governors of Abia, Delta, Rivers, and Bayelsa States. Where the sitting governors do not agree with her plot, she generates and manages a crisis. Last February when the Anambra gubernatorial election was held, the First lady was verily involved in the support and push of Mr Ifeanyi Uba, who though lost, is now the driver of the President Jonathan campaign via the vehicle of Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria (TAN). She is interested even in core establishment strategic decisions as in determining who becomes Commissioner of Police in certain states. She carries on like an alternate president. And in all of these, the president either behaves as if he does not know the infractions of the wife or he is unable to tame her brazen incursions into the political space. A certain man called Tompolo: In the build up to the 2007 elections, the unrest in the Niger Delta creeks was getting very worrisome. With frequent cases of kidnap, shut down of oil platforms, disruption of oil mining activities and even killings, something creative had to be done to stem the tide of destructions and arising human and economic losses. At this time, a new mafia unit was emerging in the zone. It was no longer Tom Ateke or Mujaheed Asari Dokubo, even though the pseudonyms of an amorphous Cynthia White and Jomo Gbomo were still masquerading as the face of the militancy. Behind those faces was a lithe-framed fellow called Government Ekpemuopolo, popularly called Tompolo. He had a base in the creeks—somewhere between James island and Oporoza, in Warri south LGA of Delta State. He was considered fierce and even deadly. At a point his group—Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) was accused of killing some thirteen Nigerian soldiers who were on surveillance in the creeks. Vexed by it, late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua ordered the capture of Tompolo, dead or alive. The soldiers went to war in the creeks., levelling not only Okerenkoko, Camp Friday or James Island, but also brought down Oporoza, all within a binding circumference of Tompolo’s operational space. The man fled, but his hearth was brought down. That was how the amnesty idea came forth. It took the intervention of the likes of Tony Anenih, Timi Alaibe and Gen Godwin Abe to put together a peace deal. That was then. Today, the same Tompolo, whom the state so wanted to crash and crush is not only an ally of government, he has transmogrified to be a veritable stakeholder and a budding regional centrepoint. There is no greater proof of his curious importance than the fact that he is a major security contractor to government. He offers security services to NIMASA. He had once handled the security of the nation’s oil pipelines and that was when the degree of oil theft in the Niger Delta shut up. Since then, oil theft has continued to be on the rise so much that from 2.7 mbpd which was being exported some four years ago, it has dropped to less than 2.3 mbpd. Today, Tompolo is not only rich, but he is a mega bourgeois maintaining a couple of private jets. Last week, the news broke that he had purchased a warship from Norway. He has not denied it. With his huge war chest, comes political voice and relevance. Three weeks ago, he practically stopped Mr President from coming to Delta State to commission a new Port and and a gas company. While Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan assured the President of everything being ready for the commissioning ceremony, it took Tompolo’s phone call to the President, for the latter to cancel the commissioning ceremony. A governor asks the President to come. Tompolo instructs the president not to come. And the latter carried the day. What is more, the spin-off from that face off caused Uduaghan his senatorial ambition. The quartet of E.k. Clark, Tompolo, Senator James Manager and Mr President--- all Ijaws, conspired to harass Gov Uduaghan out of the senatorial race, so as to make room for James Manager—an Ijaw-- who had been in the upper chamber for eight years with less than effective legislative representation. Nothing expresses more the sudden prized importance of Tompolo than the news flash that he has been allotted the slot of nominating the Deputy Governorship candidate for the PDP in Delta State. How things change! In all of these, President Jonathan does not see anything wrong in the clannishness of shooting down everyone else so the Ijaws and Ijaws alone will arise. Perhaps, it bears re-iteration that the Niger Delta is not made up of only Ijaws. There are many other ethnic groups within the region and it is only fair that the President looks beyond his Ijaw homestead. Amnesty Programme---- Largely an Ijaw affair, they are not the only ones suffering institutional neglect and environmental degradation in the Niger Delta. Today, the prime beneficiaries are the so-called general this, general that, a platoon of crude militants (from the creeks) whose only claim to fame and fortune is being violence merchants. Not more. What it inadvertently all suggests is that violence against state pays. It is a wrong message. Oil theft: The Federal Government, went beyond the navy and awarded the contract of securing our oil pipelines to Tompolo. I hear the contract has expired and now in the hands of “some consortium” to whom huge sums are paid, yet we have suffered the worst cases of oil theft, with Bayelsa State having the worst record. It has become an organized and well-routined scheme that goes on unchallenged. What has Mr President done to arrest this economic hemorrhage? Are we still wondering why there is a steady dwindling oil revenue? East-West Road This road actually started under Shehu Shagari. Till today, it remains an ongoing project. Never ending. Even as the budget to complete it is always being reviewed upward. If previous presidents from other parts of the federation chose to neglect the road, will the son of the soil also follow suit and neglect the road? Yet this is a road that connects 22 states of the country. Put succinctly, beside the unholy empowerment of a handful of erstwhile Ijaw militants, what is on ground in the region to represent the fact that it is the region that produced a sitting president? The entire Urhobo nation, for instance, only got remembered few months ago with the appointment of their son as a minister of Niger Delta ministry, Chief Steve Oru. Anti-Corruption Agencies in RIP mode --- Corruption did not begin under the Jonathan administration. And it will not end with it. But every dutiful government must be seen as doing something to confront and combat the dragon called corruption. The anti-corruption agencies inherited by the Jonathan administration have long gone into inertia. Every crook in Nigeria seems to have understood how to circumvent the ways of the agencies. It is understandable that given the body language readable from all over the presidency, the anti-corruption agencies seem to be in a long commercial interlude. Were it not so, from the exit gates of the EFCC, ICPC, Code of Conduct Bureau, the Police, we should be seeing the crooks of the nation going into jails, and not those who merely stole loaves of bread or some village hens. Governance Health---Our people are yet streaming to India, Cuba, South Africa, United Kingdom, Germany etc., for all kinds of treatments—major or minor. There is little faith in the nation’s health system. As Simon Kolawole, former boss and brother, had once asked: “what is in that German hospital that Nigeria cannot afford?” We are certainly not lacking in experienced personnel, so why can’t we devote attention to fully equip even if it is just one medical facility and save Nigerians the huge capital flight expended on medical tourism every year? Electricity—Even after the privatization of the energy sector such that we now have GENCOs and DISCOs, we have not stopped being regaled with excuses on why we still don’t have stable electricity. Is power supply better now? Generator market is yet booming and we burn our resources everyday buying diesel and petrol to power them. How do we explain the near free fall of the Naira—now exchanging for N191 per one US dollars in the parallel market. Little wonder there are now strong and repeated warnings of coming austerity, an economic euphemism for hardship. It had been tough for the ordinary Nigerian over the years, and to drive us into harsher hardship now will be pretty choking. One cannot but be weary in a lengthy tale of national lamentation. Stretching from education through economy to national security, we cannot declare that we are proud of where the Jonathan administration has taken us as a nation. All said, it must be stated that even if President Jonathan cannot take all the blames for the many deficits noted above, the PDP cannot escape the blame, having been in power in the last 16 years. So the point is, if after 16 years, we appear not to have made any significant progress on any front, it is only wise that Nigeria and Nigerians should seek a change outside the courtyard of sentiments and base instincts. The Pains of A Country The above is the title of my coming book. The work, which is a collection of some of my articles in my weekly column over the years, mirrors the follies and foibles of those who preside over us as leaders. The book, which will be presented to the general public in no distant time promises to be an exciting work for all students of contemporary governance as well as those seeking or already holding political offices. With a Foreward by the former Ekiti State governor, Dr Kayode Fayemi, the work accommodates both the prose narratives of the column and also a broad section on Canticles, an imaginary dialogue session. Tags: Politics, Nigeria, Featured, Jonathan, Sentiment, Reality
Posted on: Sat, 20 Dec 2014 10:20:25 +0000
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