PRESIDENT JONATHAN: THE FIRM AND THE WEAK
The death of a single citizen which could have been avoided is a source of great worry for any responsible government. Thus governments strive daily rid their countries of death causing diseases preventable or curable and other avoidable causes of death. In Nigeria however, the case is not the same. Scores of Nigerians die everyday ranging from accidents due to poor driving and death-traps termed highways to murders by armed robbers and ritual killers, to ailments because of inadequate health etc. Most painful today is the loss of lives and properties of Nigerians resulting from politically motivated ethno-religious crisis and the dreaded insurgence claiming lives almost on a daily basis mostly in the Northern parts. And then again I remember that we have a government expected to protect the lives and properties of its citizenry.
Many Nigerians were shocked, insulted and utterly disappointed to hear the President say that the loss of lives and property resulting from bombings is a burden the country must bear till it fizzles out. First thought was, there goes the President and his unwitty utterances, displaying his weak will. However, somewhere beneath, something kept saying that that was exactly the mind of the government. Since that statement, several attacks and explosions have claimed lives and properties: several arrests have been made, some which ordinarilly would imply that some top members would be revealed: yet we hear nothing of such.
The expression visible on the number one citizen when this dastardly attacks occur reveal great worry but his speech and expression reveal an obvious helplessness towards combating this insurgence. I do not condem a man who is weak, I may only feel bad that he is in a position that weakness is not allowed. So if the President is a weak person and thus can't take issues headlong, I only hope for the end of his tenure since the legislature can not call him to other and Nigerians do not recall their erring legislators.
Toward the end of last year and first of January this year revealed another side of the man Jonathan. A leader who made a decision and despite calls from different quarters not to implement such went on to do just that. The consequence of that action is ever present in our minds. A weak Leader wouldn't have had the courage to do such, only a man of strength and strong will.
Again on the 29th of May the same President made declararation on a university which immediately caused a demonstration and consequently the closing of the school, the controversy it generated is still on, yet the government claims its not going back on the decision.
These and some other actions of the government reveal a government whose actions border on autocracy. Yet in bringing crime against the nation and against humanity it shows weakness.
Arrest of criminals only stems the tide, only arrest, prosecution and proper sentencing of sponsors of such crimes is meaningful.
In some quarters it is suspected that the issue is not that our security agencies are inefficient or that the insurgence is invincible but that the sponsors and their motives are known to the leadership, thus are highly placed individuals. Hence the reluctance or fear to apprehend them.
Some have gone on to accuse the government of being the insurgence. I do not fault any of these views, why should I or any reasonable person. It is the duty of the accused to prove otherwise.
What obviously is constantly forgotten in Nigeria is that power belongs to the people, not just electorally. The wave of revolution in parts of the middle-east and Arab world has shown this. A people driven to despair are a deadly force. I have seen in a state in this federation where people took the laws into their hands due to governments perpetual failure to bring sponsors of problems to book, and unpleasant is the outcome. This case of which I speak was still at the incubation stage before the FG intervened. Yet damage has being done in the minds of many of such an area. I fear for the day when the so-called ordinary masses will rise and take the laws into their hands to bring to book those who mete out such violence on them. May God forbid such, because it will mean a total disregard for existing structures. And do you think such a people on such a cause would sympathise with the government?
A government that seats still or fails to act swiftly while evil men wreck violence on its people is as culpable as the perpetrators or such acts. May God guide this nation.