While we dissect Mr Jonathans Campaign Message Take the kick-off of the Jonathan re-election campaign in Lagos for instance. It was symptomatic of the partisan malaise that has turned the PDP into a fearsome behemoth with no internal moral core and absolutely no regard for other political parties and democratic fundamentals. The kick-off also showed in disturbingly bold relief Mr Jonathan’s intellectual weakness, questionable historicism and perverse logic, limited worldview, malignant extemporaneousness, sweeping and unpardonable generalisations and conclusions. “Those of my age and above are finished; we are gone,” moaned the president puzzlingly. “That is why I am addressing those of you that are voting for the first time. We believe it is you that will take us to the moon. My generation has failed, we couldn’t take Nigeria to the moon.” The problem is not just that this questionable reading and understanding of history and contemporary events expose the president’s inadequacies, especially his lack of logical reasoning, but that they indicate a far more disturbing manifestation of the low quality of leadership in Nigeria, a lack of mastery of the existential and geopolitical threats facing the country, and an infatuation with boyish utopia. The highlights of the president’s Lagos campaign, especially his tendentious rationalisation of his failing counterinsurgency war, his justification of his slow anti-corruption campaign, his defence of inept arms procurement methods, and his shocking inurement to his self-incriminating statements over MEND’s 2010 Abuja bombing, shocked and perplexed the thinking members of his audience, some of whom exclaimed in gasps behind him on the dais. Nonetheless, some of the facts mentioned by the president were incontestable, such as the neglect suffered by the military over the decades. But his suppositions, his inferences, and his conclusions were astonishingly unpresidential, not to say inimical to the growth, stability and good fortunes of the country. There is nothing he said in his Lagos campaign that entitles him to victory, or gives indication he had the subtlety and philosophical depth needed to rule a complex country in the 21st century. When he was right, which was seldom, he did not cut the figure of a president, or present the facade of a noble or of a philosophical-king. And when he was wrong, which was often, such as when he guilefully and gleefully promoted sectarianism and ethnic divisions, he did not surprise. Mr Jonathan, alas, displayed none of the composure associated with the high office of the presidency. In the Lagos campaign, as he sadly did elsewhere in recent times, he quiveringly and emotionally fulminated against his opponents, endorsed the anti-democratic tendencies of state security agencies, preoccupied himself and his presidency with elemental things, and propounded none of the salient and uplifting ideas a complex society like Nigeria should embrace. None whatsoever. In the Lagos campaign, he tried to defend himself as much as possible, though he made a hash of it. And almost as an afterthought, he tried to sell a policy or two, but was unable to persuade either by logic or by force of his personality. The past few decades have been ideationally barren for Nigeria. Under Mr Jonathan, the sterility has grown incomparably. Inferentially, four more years of him would not regenerate the country, as his campaign futilely seeks to convince the electorate, or reposition it in line with the modernising ideas and infinitely changing complexities of the 21st century.
Posted on: Sun, 11 Jan 2015 20:44:24 +0000
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