What manner of man is GEJ ?

In our weekly editorial conferences, I find myself once in a while having to make very strong statements on the non-performance of President Goodluck Jonathan and with my CV on the desk some are puzzled as to why such critique should be coming from a fellow South southerner. Well, the fact of the matter is that yours truly is at heart one colour-blind Nigerian who wants the best for all of the citizens of the country no matter whose ox is gored and who, to paraphrase the world-famous Rivonia declaration, believes that Nigeria ‘belongs to and should serve the best interests of all of her peoples who dwell in it.’ For him therefore, the issues are quite clear. It is about whether the incumbent administration understands the meaning of Nigeria, the nation’s historical purpose and its consequential role in it. It is okay for a government to repair roads and pay salaries of its staffers. But in all honesty, every reasonable administration must do those. Dangote Cement does not claim to have grown because it sells a few bags of cement. The managers of Diamond bank do not claim success because they have paid their staff salaries. These are to be expected and there are no plaudits for the normal. What counts for success then would be whether the organisation has formulated and understood its vision and mission and established firm timelines for the achievement of identified and spelt out goals and objectives. And returning to Nigeria, the issue is critically about leadership understanding and actualizing the vision and mission of the nation. For the tribe of micro-politicians straddling our space today, Nigeria is largely a honeypot to be drooled over. That is tragic but it is the crux of the matter. This is because; this is a country that installed modern television before the Western European nations of Spain and Portugal. It is a country that Time magazine had - on account of the achievement of its ‘limited self-government indigenous leaders’ in the years immediately preceding independence in 1960 – confidently affirmed was going to be a world-beater. Alas. It is indeed very painful then that five clear decades after that forecast, we have missed it in every area where it matters even as liliputians today run our lives. Condolences, Okigbo would have written. For a country that called the bluff of the British, Americans, French, Portuguese and Spaniards when they were aiding and abetting the continuing perpetration of colonialism and racial discrimination in parts of Africa in the 1970s, nationalizing their assets and compelling them to draw up expedited timetables for the total decolonization of the continent, it is really very sad that we are today so blest (apologies to Ayi Kwei Armah). To be sure, our current state of visionary statis manifests in different forms. Over 200 Nigerian citizens are abducted and rather than promptly order their rescue, for weeks, taxpayer-funded state institutions and officials fall over themselves to hush up the evidence! Almost a half year after, the girls, parents, community, nation and world lament the saga of the #Chibok girls. The Chinese and Gabonese turn back our players from participating in competitions to which they had been duly invited on grounds of their having been contaminated by a ‘chicken virus’ that the likes of Professor Eni-Njoku of blessed memory would have quickly brought under wraps. To add insult to injury, there is indeed no evidence in the public domain that the ambassadors of the offending nations have been summoned to take protest letters to their home governments or that they have been surcharged for visible and invisible costs incurred in those unfortunate diplomatic spats. And we have leaders! In this season of untoward parodies, can someone please #BringBackMurtalaMuhammed of the ‘Africa has come of age’ fame? We must indeed be so sorely blessed in the leadership arena when high- risk alleged felons find themselves comfortably ensconced in bilateral delegations convened to discuss how to avert even more felonies in the land. It is indeed a sad day for Nigeria in the leadership circuit. Meanwhile there are critical issues begging to be addressed. In 21st century Nigeria, cattle herders and crop farmers clash by the week because no one has the good sense to inaugurate a regime of ranching. Tankers and trucks daily wear out what is left of our roads in addition to engendering more than their fair share of road accidents because the alternative – proper, high speed, standard gauge rail development - is only campaign rhetoric. Citizens without prepaid meters are whimsically and cavalierly (over-) invoiced even by the private buccaneers that have been handed over the power distribution infrastructure. For example, for his private residence (not factory) in rural and sub-urban Ogun State, yours truly got a bill of 16, 000.00 for May, 6, 335.70 for July and N30, 747. 38 for August! With dwindling electricity supply, no prepaid meter supplied - even after he had paid for one four years ago - and no meter reading carried out, the superintending Ikeja DISCO simply assigned him any figures that caught their fancy! Condolences. Leaving aside even issues of grand vision, national purpose and all that, if the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is right in its claim that the security and well-being of the citizenry is the first business of governance then the question has to be asked if the current administration has succeeded in its set goal? That, and not geographical locus, for this writer, is the first basis for scoring a government as having succeeded or not. ii Before the ink dried on the first part of this piece, the big-wigs of the ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party, almost to a man, took our discourse a little further. As widely expected, they endorsed President Goodluck Jonathan as their preferred choice to fly the party’s flag in the 2015 polls. Now he has accepted. In the process also, they made this columnist’s task easier. As it is now apparent to all, the current leadership crisis in the land is in a sense therefore bigger than Jonathan. It is the point we tried to make a few weeks ago that it is indeed a bigger PDP crisis. That in the midst of such prevailing social statis and system-wide dislocation, the ruling party is rubberstamping its incumbent points to the fact that 16 years into its holding the baton, the party does not have the answers that, we the people, demand of our leaders at this time in our national life. But does this exculpate the President from personal responsibility in this disappointing saga? Should we just say it is system failure and let him be? Where is the place for individual action, initiative, vision and leadership? Was it not the same Nigerian system that Murtala Muhammed turned around to score very profound goals in the course of his short-lived administration? Was it not the same system that the Buhari-Idiagbon team worked to get some of the results that they secured? Was it also not a system that Gorbachev worked to reform the decadent Soviet system? No sirs, there is a role for President Jonathan to go beyond the ‘chop-make-i-chop’ construct that at the foundation is the soul of the PDP. That he has failed to do so this far makes it even tougher for him even as his party is presently setting him up, as others before him, for the verdict of history. Again, it is fully within the President’s remit to run for a second term as he wishes. But it is also fits within his present job description to patriotically confront the Boko Haram threat without providing any soft landing for some alleged backers of the sect that are his friends. It is equally his brief to run an administration that would not ‘wobble and fumble’ over a simple issue as schools’ resumption dates! It is his remit to not tie the hands of investigators by going to publicly identify with alleged violators of building codes that have resulted in the deaths of scores of innocent people. It is his task to fight corruption, cronyism, and several other challenges in the land that are simply begging for a touch of leadership, real leadership. I take the position I take because the President’s performance on the job has very direct implications on my person and my generations going forward. I am worried for my living, my children and my country. Yes, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan has the presidential seat, but to paraphrase the accomplished African American poet-raconteur, Langston Hughes, ‘I too am Nigerian!’ And so, his carrying on with the job and his aspiration for a second term has to take into consideration my own security and right to aspire for a decent living in the land of my birth. This is in addition to the well-being of my children and fellow countrymen. And if we are to take a lesson in politics 101, this precisely is why the Office of President exists! Sadly, the current holder of the office signposted from the beginning that he really did not have a handle on things. But we hoped he would learn and grow up. Properly speaking, he has not. His immediate post-election cabinet composition was not only most awful, but even when vacancies periodically showed up, there was so much dithering over finding and naming replacements and even when they were finally named, it was largely to use a Nigerianspeak,‘the same of the same!’ Requested to publicly declare his assets as a symbolic move that would help ginger the anti-corruption war and stave the very high rate of anticipatory assets declaration by political players who file reports of assets that they intend to acquire while in office as assets they already have at the time of entering office, he dismissed it with a wave of the hand, mumbling obtuse excuses like ‘personal privacy’ and ‘our culture.’ Your Excellency sir, goldfish have no hiding place! And there is more. At the peak of a ravaging Ebola crisis, Mr President approves the summary dismissal of 16, 000 resident doctors! And their crime? They had dared to take part in a strike calling attention to the poor state of the medical system; a system that days ago could not provide succour for my egbon, Dimgba Igwe as good Samaritans battled for four hours to find an ambulance, oxygen mask, a surgeon and a hospital to attend to him. The man died and of course the Presidency has dutifully commiserated with his family! In the midst of a national search for the sponsors of the rampaging Boko Haram sect, former Governor Modu Sherriff Ali, an alleged patron, and one whom the Department of State Security recently affirmed was being investigated, is ensconced cosily in a ‘chance’ diplomatic soiree with the Commander-in-Chief! And more specifically for those of us who hail from the Niger Delta, we have remained baffled by, what the Ijaw Youth Council spokesman, Eric Omare, a few days described as the stark reality that ‘the government and security agencies have not been able to summon the courage and political will to bring oil theft to a stop…The resultant effect of this government’s dereliction of duty and security agencies complicity in oil theft is massive despoliation of the Niger Delta environment. Today the flora and fauna of the Niger-Delta and the people’s source of living are gone.’ It is to this environment that Mr President would ultimately retire. Pity the nation, pity my people. But then I am pragmatic enough to admit that no matter his very glaring inadequacies, this President is very likely to be returned elected in 2015. At that time, we would then have no other option but to live with him in the saddle for another four years and continue to ‘look up to the hills from where our help comes.’ Good morning Nigeria.