I’m just as mad as the next man about the failings of the
Jonathan administration. Many a Nigerian has wondered how
he hired some of those people who work for him and why they
serve him so poorly and, worse, why no one does anything
about it when they fail him.
The job of the President carries strict liability. He must accept
responsibility for all happenings. When bad things happen, we
know it is because of the reign of a bad king, the President.
Rarely do good things occur, or they happen so grudgingly,
they are so few and far between.
In an era of ‘Ghana must go’ wallets, there is so much envy of
the rich. You can feel it. And the trouble with the Nigerian rich
is that they are mostly men and women who made hay while
the sun shone, which makes the envy worse. And all this envy
is taken out on the one man who is the symbol of everything,
good or bad, the President.
People sometimes look at me reproachfully when I publicly con
fess that I am a fan of Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the
Coordinating Minister for the Economy and Minister of Finance.
I quickly try to explain that she is one person among the high
and the mighty who speaks naturally and frequently about
income inequality in Nigeria, and the dangers of widening the
gap between the rich and the poor.
A fortnight ago she was speaking about how corruption
subsists and will fester because Nigeria does not yet have
adequate tools to fight it. H ow I wished t he A ll Progressive
Congress (APC) had drafted her or someone like her for
President. This campaign would have been a truly ‘change’ cam
paign, a “change you can believe in” as Mr. Barack Obama pro
claimed in 2008. But I digress.
The Jonathan administration can be infuriating sometimes. Its
first action which truly rattled me was the seizure of
newspapers and the prevention of the circulation of the papers
in several cities by military personnel. It went on for a few
days and, mercifully, stopped.
The military people said they were searching for terrorists’
bombs in the newspaper vans. The Presidency people said they
have nothing to say about it because it was a “security issue.”
For a newspaper man who experienced government
suppression of the Press first hand and in all its forms in the
triple tyrannies of Buhari, Babangida and Abacha I was about
to exclaim “there we go again.”
Now, an ‘O’ level student of Government doesn’t need to think
twice to know that what the military was doing was brazenly
unconstitutional. So, where was President Jonathan’s domestic
policy adviser, or his State House Counsel or, for that matter,
the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice to order the
soldiers to “cease and desist” on the very first day.
I had hoped the Newspaper Proprietors Association of Nigeria
NPAN) would send a hefty bill to the Aso Villa for those
violations with an ultimatum, hoping the government would
ignore it so the NPAN can go to court to ask for declarations
and punitive damages for violations of Press freedom. I imagine
it all ended in a friendly ‘ol boy’ phone call to forgive and
forget. This kind of violation would be inconceivable in the
United States where respect for the Constitution is the
beginning of governmental wisdom.
Then there was the $9.3 million cash in the suitcase in the
plane from Abuja seized in South Africa. Had the South African
Customs not found and seized the cash what evidence was
there that the money wouldn’t have disappeared? The Ministry
of Finance didn’t know about the money, neither did Defense,
nor Foreign Affairs nor Department of State Security. Using
the office of the National Security Adviser to buy arms is a
double edged sword.
Trundling cash around the continent is not just illegal but
smelly. Whoever was responsible for that transaction made the
Jonathan administration look queer, inept if not corrupt. The
Igbos have a saying that if you are not a thief, never step on
the footprints left by a thief.
The phantom ceasefire with Boko Haram was the saddest of all
Jonathan Administration’s bunglings.It made many Nigerians
miserable. It was inexcusable. It marked the lowest point. The
Federal Republic of Nigeria, a victim of 419? Tell it not in Jos.
Publish it not in the streets of Ado Ekiti.
The above are the few that stick out with me above others.
Each is scandalous. None can happen in the United State where
there are layers of checks and balances to preclude their
happening. But if any of that happened, there would be hell to
pay.
The virtue of Jonathan is not that he is perfect. It is that he
knows that he is imperfect. So, he is bound to work harder,
read more, study issues more and be better informed. Because
he got there by fortunate occurrences, he wouldn’t have ar
rived with a g rand vision. So, he would be open to whatever
works. Because he is an intellectual, he won’t be averse to
theories about anything. He wouldn’t have inferiority or Mr.
Know-All complex, or the Obasanjo complex also known as the
Messiah complex. He is not afraid of talented, accomplished
women as everyone can see.
He is a builder – 12 universities, 120 Al-Majiri schools. He plans
to build speed trains after reviving the snail trains and added
some standard gauge lines. How many power plants has he
built? Dozens. But certainly with the huge Gembu hydro under
construction, four coal plants being planned, and all the
integrated Independent Power Plants built and ready to go,
Goodluck Jonathan finally slew the power dragon, the
nightmare that had defied all administrations before his. Two
outstanding problems remain – gas and transmission. When
those are tied up Nigeria’s power problems would be history.
Jonathan’s body language is not that of a greedy, corrupt man.
Corruption in Nigeria is structural and, pessimists say,
Sisyphean. To make a dent on it, a sovereign national
conference needs to be convened. Nibbling at the edges is still
okay which is what the EFCC and ICPC do. The ICT tools like
IPPIS, electronic wallet to enable farmers access fertilizer
directly are all great. But as Chief Philip Asiodu, the ‘super
permanent secretary’ and statesman said a few weeks ago,
when a Nigerian senator earns four times the pay of an
American President, a clear case of unjust enrichment, how is a
president going to start a fight which would end with his
impeachment? Unjust enrichment is the beginning of all
corruption. Why has Gen. Buhari been quiet about the pay of
the National Assembly?
That Jonathan is a patient man is fairly obvious. He is
deliberative. He doesn’t rush to judgment. He doesn’t force the
process. He sometimes exhibits strength of character. He
defied the doubting Thomases and convened the National
Conference, one of the most momentous events of Nigerian his
tory, in which thorny national issues were discussed candidly
in an atmosphere of freedom.
But above all, Jonathan wins because he has a democratic
temperament, a genial, non-threatening personality and a
sportsman-like spirit which made APC possible and created an
atmosphere of freedom and liberty unprecedented in Nigerian
history. He could have destroyed APC and squashed the party
if he were a typical Nigerian politician. But he is of a different
make-up.
The Action Group in the 60’s and the Peoples Redemption
Party in the 80’s were victims of political malevolence and ill
will. The APC would not have survived an Obasanjo regime,
much less threaten it. Jonathan guarantees democracy, his
opponent imperils it.
By Lewis Obi
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