- Wole Adejumo
It may not be wrong to describe Dr. Goodluck Jonathan,
Nigeria’s fourth Executive President as the most criticized and most spoken
about President in the country’s history. When Dr. Jonathan became Acting
President in February 2010, many Nigerians believed he would bring acceleration
to governance at the federal level which many agreed went rather slowly under
President Umar Yar’ Adua. By May, when he became substantive President,
Jonathan moved from being one of those playing at the big table to being the
main man.
Words that have however been used to describe him since then
include “clueless, go slow” and many more. No thanks to his style of
administration. To some, his Transformation Agenda should earn him another four
years as President, and that will earn him a place in the records books as
Nigeria’s longest serving President, a feat that may not be equaled in a very
long while.
But his opponents would have none of that. They have described the
transformation in even worse terms than those used to describe the President
himself.
But where did Mr. President go wrong if he actually did? Interactions
with members of the People’s Democratic Party seem to be unanimous in the
belief that Mr. President did not lay his cards on the table from the
beginning. What has been described as a strategic error, which continues to
haunt the administration is the fact that at the outset, Dr. Jonathan preferred
to be a silent achiever who did not allow his achievements to be showcased.
The top echelon of the PDP has come out to agree that they
have run “an administration that has been highly misunderstood and misrepresented”.
Their major undoing according to one of the members who spoke to The Anchor
Online is that “the Bible says you don’t light a candle and put it under a
bushel. Out of ignorance, we have lit a major candle and put it under a bushel”.
Speaking further, the PDP member confirmed that ‘about a
month ago, I was in Las Vegas and one of my partners who is very vast with what
is going on here told me that ‘if Nigeria misses that man, it would be such a
big shame”. I didn’t understand so I asked him, ‘who are you talking about?’.
He said President Jonathan and I was like, where are you coming from? How? And
he said “when you look at certain indices that have been put on the table,
today, we have the largest economy, being one of the fastest growing economies,
being one that has been declared the preferred destination, there is a reason:
we don’t want to go into an investment in a country where we are not really
sure of what is happening. But your president is one person who has come and
has been able to lay certain things on the ground that makes it easy for you to
understand what exactly you are going to do and have a reasonable projection
because foreign companies work best on definite projections.” And he said,
“that has attracted so many of us, that is the reason we are having the stuff
that we are having. Before now, I would not have made that mistake”.
The President’s supporters cannot but talk of the systems
and structures and certain things that are being put in place, especially about
the rule of law. While comparing the Joanthan administration to what obtained
with past administrations, they pointed out that “Nigeria has not had the spate
of impeachments that became a characteristic feature of Nigerian politics years
ago.
In the area of education, they were quick to point out that “it
is only once that we have talked about strike in the academic sector in which
case our children are almost sure of when they would graduate”.
Under President Jonathan, the rule of law has also been more
pronounced as the country has seen several reversals being made on several
offices including governorship and senate. Issues such as those are believed to
have been translated into “weakness” of the president. PDP members have however
posited that it is indeed part of what should be counted as the strength of the
president because the rule of law is something that shouldn’t be traded for
anything in the world.
The handling of the Ebola crisis was also mentioned by
another top PDP member. “Certain things have defined destinies in humans or
continents or in nations and a little thing can actually make a man to win or
lose election but in Nigeria, how do we treat the case where the whole world,
faced with a global crisis, comes to your house to learn how to combat that
problem. How can we for goodness’ sake dismiss with a wave of the hand, the
Ebola victory? The US, Great Britain, Russia, all these countries came to
Nigeria to say please, how did you do it?
The capture of Osama bin Laden was enough to say let the man
go back. We all know, an event, it redefined the parameters. When a man wins a
global battle and we look at him in the eye and say “for what, it doesn’t
matter, I don’t care”, we are not being fair to ourselves.”
Speaking further, he said “we got to a point where
insurgency was really killing us, was taking over the landscape, of course the head
of the country takes responsibility. Now if it all happens that all of a
sudden, miraculously, call it fate or anything, the man is winning the battle,
will we be fair to ourselves if we say it doesn’t matter?
We have found out that we have a man who has largely been
misrepresented and that is our principal Mr. President.
I am one of those that believe that probably the word
Transformation was not the right word for Mr. President but probably the word
‘future”. If you want to build an 18-storey building, the foundation is going
to be different from if you want to do a bungalow and it is going to probably
take you so long and you have got to be a man of the future, a man of insight
for you to be willing to lay the foundation of an 18-storey building because
all you are doing on a daily basis is burying rocks on the ground, burying cement
in the ground but the other man, you can see his house. The walls are coming
up, the walls are being painted, the roof is coming up, everything is coming up
and you are passing this other man and all he is burying rocks in the ground.
He ought to have communicated to his people that he was building an 18-storey
building. If he did not communicate to people, they might lose patience with
him.
A man comes at the turn of the century, when Nigeria was
faced with that almighty threat of disintegration, and a man who is assumed to
be weak, a man who is assumed to be clueless took the bull by the horn and said
we must get to the table and sit down and talk about this. Past administrations
were scared to do it and because we could sit down and talk about it, because
we could vent our spleen and then let our differences come out, we could talk.
And because we could talk, have we realized that a hundred years have passed
and we are entering a new century? The threat of disintegration is no more
staring us in the face the way it was before. Somebody took the bull by the
horn. This is a major victory in being able to keep this country one, and
somebody says rubbish, I don’t care, and so what? We are not being fair to
ourselves. And they say we should change. I said change what? Where is the
direction?
II blame us that we have not communicated the direction but
whatever it is, they say better late than never. “
A member who supports the Almajiri School initiative pointed out that “one of the challenges
that we have had all along which is the problem we are still having today is that
the North is not being educated the way it should be. There is a certain
culture that the northerner might not be able to break but a southerner might
be able to break. It is the situation where one man is the lord and all others
are his subjects. They come to him and he doles out his largesse, you know,
everybody bows to him. You have that in one section, whereas the children in
the other section are going to school, redefining their future, they don’t care
whether government exists or does not exist, they are doing their thing and
running their stuff. A day will come, they will become men. When these children
in the South become men, running their businesses, what will the children in
the North become? If you can’t have education, you must have power. And those that
have gone to school will wake up one day and say excuse me, this country
belongs to all of us and there is going to be a struggle. And that struggle is
not going to end easily.”
He continued that ‘the “born to rule” mentality is
inculcated into some people from childhood and that child meaning no harm,
grows and see you as usurping his powers, his right, his birthright. It’s like
you are in your house, you are playing a video game and you have a visitor and
you say play one game and the guy plays one game and decides to play a second
game. By the time he goes to the third game, you will ask him that “my guy what
is the problem? This is my right; can you just respect yourself and leave?”
The only way to counter that is to massively and
aggressively embark on the education of the child of the North from the first
grade schools. That is what the President is trying to do. Why has this not
been done all along? It is because the intelligence is a little different. What
he is seeing the others have not seen. So, it is the only way the Nigeria of
the future will live in peace and harmony where the Northern child is no longer
a beggar, is no longer dependent on the largesse of the rich. He is empowered
through education, empowered through what comes through education, and he
becomes a man whether he becomes the president or he doesn’t become the president
is not his cup of tea.
There will be a Nigeria where nobody will be born to rule
and others are born to be subjects in their fathers’ house on their fathers’
land’.
Of course, he didn’t stop without talking about the All
Progressives Congress. While advising the party, he said “what we need is a
step up from Jonathan. Let us not out of annoyance, out of our offences, take
action that will not work well for us. I believe the APC needs to appreciate
the broom concept. The broom concept is that if I stand alone, you can break me
but if we are together, you can’t break us. How can we build a party on one man
who has integrity? It just doesn’t add up because one man can never change this
country and we all know that. And the hawks are just waiting for him. The day
you get into office is the day you will realize that a democracy and a military
dictatorship are different worlds. You find this man corrupt. The first thing
you are going to realize is that there is no military tribunal, except for the
police to investigate him and you are going to wait for the report of the
investigation of the police. When they finish the investigation, you take it to
the court and you are going to wait for the report of the court. Tell me what
you as Mr. President would do.
I believe that Jonathan, in being able to put roadmaps and
structures and processes may be slow but the man has looked into the future and
has said for me to keep this man in jail will give me two problems, number one,
I have to build the jail to put the man, number two, I have to keep feeding
that man with the little resources that I have. So what do I do? If I can put a
barrier that will stop that man from stealing, what do I do? I have saved
myself the cost of taking care of him, and also free him to become resourceful.”
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