The Weight Of Political Jobbers On President Jonathan’s 2nd Term Election Ambition In 2015
Unknown and unproven heroic myths now hangs on the slim, Boko Haram bent shoulders of a weary President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, GCFR. A monkish chronicler now lies nightly on network television about the president's great tapestry in governance. A mindless president whose record in public office remains pedestrian is suddenly projected as a visionary icon in the class of the immortal Martin Luther King Jr, the indomitable Nelson Mandela and the unassailable Lee Kwan Hew.
This unwholesome identity theft is an unmitigated tragedy, an idiocy of brainless, unlearned idlers. A faceless, clandestine club of political jobbers tagged Protectors of Nigerian Posterity and another offshoot are selfishly responsible for burdening our imitative president with this lying robe. Unfortunately, his Ijaw traditional dress cannot comfortably hide the president's gross inadequacy.
Idolizing the president is allowed provided it's done with some semblance of truth. But essentially, the life of President Goodluck Jonathan is not intended to produce surprising results. His luck is managed and caged by circumstances. Putting him on the same pedestal with King, Mandela and Lee is political disequilibrium. An American clergyman, orator and humanist, King challenged with strength, vision, love and the Holy Scriptures racist America. Though he died in the battle, he won the war and is celebrated on this side of eternity for his oratory and determination.
Comparing a desultory Jonathan to this icon is original sin that prayers cannot wipe away! Assigning Nelson Mandela, a selfless nationalist and brilliant lawyer who gave 27 years of his life to set South Africans free from the clutches of apartheid with an ignoble Jonathan whose immediate entourage reeks with everlasting, industrial corruption is a sin that sacrifices cannot wipe away! While Mandela is far removed from kleptocracy and cronyism, the material from which Jonathan's flowing robes are woven. Linking President Lee who graduated first class in a top UK university and became a by-word for planning, best practices, efficiency, honesty and development for turning Third World Singapore into a First World nation in a lifetime with President Jonathan, a politician with severe developmental learning difficulties and speech problems is a sin that even the devil will not forgive!
Through first class education, personal integrity, rule of law and up-to-date infrastructure which attracted capital, talents and investments, Lee's reformative, honest administration transformed a backwater city state into an envious place. President Jonathan is far removed such DNA in governance! Those laundering his image forgot that Nigerian history is fully contemporary. Portraying Jonathan as an achiever par excellence on the same governance train with King, Mandela and Lee is bizarre, laughable, despicable and satanic.
King, Mandela and Lee are the antithesis of Jonathan and no available anti-oxidant will quench the odour of his non-performance so far, the efforts of political shenanigans notwithstanding. Unknowingly, listing Jonathan with global achievers throws his incompetence and incoherence into sharper focus. The president's record in governance as deputy governor and governor of Bayelsa State respectively between 1999 and 2007, as vice president to President Umaru Yar Adua, as acting president after the death of his principal between 2007 and 2010 and as substantive president thereafter are in public discourse. They are contemporary history that can be deciphered by the average Nigerian.
The heroic magnificence that emerges of his service record is at best, an incoherent, incompetent, ill educated, ill equipped politician. A perpetual haemorrhage of activism, vision and farsightedness has been the hallmark of President Jonathan's outing in public service. Despite his first name, the president's political performance seems ill-fated. Those who manage to watch President Jonathan rummage in press conferences and other public spheres deserve national awards! Comparing him with focused, learned discussants like Governors Raji Babatunde Fashola of Lagos, Willy Obiano of Anambra and Adams Oshiomole of Edo is a failed venture, ab initio. This correspondent is still mystified how our president earned a Ph.d!
Overpowered by the firepower of Boko Haram, President Jonathan is now forced to come to terms with his inadequacy arising from the abduction of over 200 final year school girls at Government Girl's Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State. Accepting trainers, intelligence and equipment from the United States, United Kingdom, China, France and Israel has humbled a government that unfairly blamed the opposition for the Islamist killers.
Hopefully when the Boko Haram insurgency is overturned by foreign military and intelligence knowhow and equipment, Jonathan who famously confessed that 'I am not Pharaoh, or a general,' will be compared by protectors of his posterity to great captains like Ghengiz Khan, Charlemagne, Cromwell, Napoleon Bonaparte, Montgomery, Marlborough, Lee, Washington, Allenby, Moltke, Eisenhower, Zhukov, Erwin Rommel, MacArthur, Mohammed Shua, Benjamin Adekunle, Alani Akinrinade and 'Air Raid' Achuzia. Like Boko Haram terrorists, the faceless protectors of President Jonathan's posterity are shredded co-travelers of Neighbour-to-Neighbour,the contraption on which Princess Stella Oduah rode to the aviation ministry, dubious fame, great fortune and celebrated fraud. The protectors of Jonathan's posterity are also eyeing lucrative ministries after the 2015 elections.
Faced with the anguish of the nation: Massive unemployment, wholesale oil theft, loss of the North East to Boko Haram insurgents, patronage system of Jonathan's government, abysmal education attainments, kidnappings, ritual killings, horrendous infant and maternal mortality rates, how narrow is the pitiful focus of the Jonathan posterity job seekers! There are only fourteen years between the coming to federal governance by the PDP and the destruction of our moral dignity by well placed looters. While Neighbour-To-Neighbourand Protectors of Nigerian Posterity{Jonathan's posterity} extol in propaganda, their principal does not excel in integrity, good example, eloquence, conviction and right standing. Surrounded by intolerant obscurantist's like Dr Doyin Okupe, Chief Olisa Metuh and Dr Reuben Abati, the doctrine of governance has been reduced to rhythmical slogans, promises and condolences, a narcotic formulary solely designed to fend off the opposition.
Unfortunately, these men of learning are now profane defenders of illegality, corruption, embezzlement, gross deception and bad governance. They indulge in rotten luxury, court opulence, flattery and immoral defence of presidential errors. The Boko Haram challenge is exposing incompetence in our military and security forces, and may yet deepen democracy, give us a freer press and inject life into a moribund government that lacks proactive ability in governance. It could reduce the conqueror's mentality of the PDP.
Unrepentant barbarians, the PDP is a colossal octopus of cynical greed that will task even the skill of the most gifted historian to chronicle. The dignity of 170 million Nigerians matters not to them. For the PDP, the stages of its national decline are predictable, unstoppable, invariable and infallible. Their limitations are legion. But the Nigerian presidency as an institution must be saved from the PDP. The words of an 18th century Whip bishop in Great Britain mirrors the place of Aso Rock in our national life. 'The church,' remarked the bishop, 'like the Ark of Noah is worth saving: not for the sake of the unclean beasts that almost filled it, and probably made most noise and clamour in it, but for the little corner of rationality that was as much distressed by the stink within as by the tempest without.'
Nigeria's 'little corner of rationality' is occupied by thousands of innocent souls from Lagos to Nguru, from Port Harcourt to Kaura Namoda that died in Boko Haram attacks, young graduates who perished at Nigeria Immigration Service employment ovens, maternal and infant mortality victims at our hospitals that serve as 'mere consulting clinics,' hundreds who met untimely death on land and in the air, military and security forces incinerated by Boko Haram and those who simply gave up after losing the battle of life.
Historian, freelance journalist and writer, Pastor Joseph Emeka Anumbor is the author ofThe Intercourse of Troubled Thoughts, a critically acclaimed discourse on homosexuality published by Author House Inc, Indiana, USA.