by Olusegun Dada

In the past, President Jonathan and his spin doctors have often excused the many failings of his administration by asking mundane questions like: “did corruption begin during GEJ’s tenure?” “Did GEJ birth Boko haram or poverty?”.

A couple of months back, President Jonathan finally admitted that he is the “world’s most criticized president”. I wonder what took him so long. For once, it was gratifying to note that contrary to the “I-dont-give-a-damn” toga the president adorned at the presidential media chat a months ago, he finally sounded like he gave a damn. Or so I thought.

At the 52nd meeting of the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA), President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan (GEJ) had said; “I am the most criticized president in the whole world but before I leave office, I will be the most praised president”. These words sounded to my alter ego (who, by the way is pessimistic about the President’s agenda) as some cheap bluff or “braggadocio”.

Personally, I do not criticize blindly. But President Jonathan deserves every bit of criticism now streaming his way. At the moment, President Jonathan’s face should suffice as an emblem of cluelessness. No one man appears as overwhelmed or submerged as President Goodluck Jonathan presently is, in the 21st century leadership spectrum! He seems incapable of rising above the responsibilities of State he has been handed and often portrays the image of one completely at sea with the demands of overseeing even his family roles. It is a pitiable situation. Really sad!

Our country is at the moment a shadow of its former self. It is only fair enough to state that Nigeria has had issues even before the current president was born. But has it ever been this chaotic and shambolic as it now is under the man from Otuoke’?

Today, as in recent times, our nation is ravaged daily with bombings, kidnappings, high-level corruption, poverty, anger, excessive loss of lives, gross misconduct and abuse of office by public office holders etc. Who do we blame for all these tribulations? My Father? Of course we will blame the ‘purported’ leader! The man who employed all the shibboleths and shenanigans at his disposal to get to power should ideally take the flak. A man who after he got the power he craved for, didn’t know what to do with it, should have no one else but himself to blame. Today our nation is in a quandary and no one is even sure about what tomorrow offers. Why then should the president not be criticized or worse still, lampooned with insults and invectives in the new media and elsewhere?

In the past, President Jonathan and his spin doctors have often excused the many failings of his administration by asking mundane questions like: “did corruption begin during GEJ’s tenure?” “Did GEJ birth Boko haram or poverty?”. These may indeed be valid questions but they shouldn’t arise out of the lips of a man who practically begged his way to power and who rode on the coat-tails of his party’s infamous rigging machinery to become Nigeria’s Number one citizen.

A lot of people may not know this, but the office of the president is not for ‘Sissies’. It is not an office a man enters and feigns inexperience. It is an office where a serious minded man will roll up his sleeves and get down to work. Serious work with no excuses. It is an office where you are expected to clear the mess left by your predecessors–you accept all the assets and the liabilities. No excuses, just clean up the mess and leave your own legacies. You take the punches on the chin and carry on with the job of State. Just ask Obama who is now blamed for all of America’s woes even though he inherited George Bush’s mess.

Our president has refused to view things from this perspective. He is so engulfed in the mess and he is seriously gasping for fresh air (forgive the pun). On the issue of security, he will give lame excuses, he will condemn, mourn, cry and promise that “the perpetrators will be brought to book”. Up till date, no high profile terrorist has been prosecuted or convicted. On infrastructure, our president is quick to throw his hands up in the air in total surrender. On social services, our president will state how his predecessors have left so much rot and decay for his feeble hands to grapple with. Like I have always stated, the presidency has become an automated condolence machine; a total waste of time and the country’s resources, and a personal enrichment scheme for the president and his many cronies. For Pete’s sake, why can’t he just step out of the kitchen if he can’t stand the heat? *sighs*

Before I start sounding like an “Alaseju”, (Apologies to Reuben Abati), the president promised at the NBA conference that beginning from 2013, we will start enjoying the fresh air from his clichéd transformation agenda. He went on to state categorically that he would be known as “the world’s most praised president”.

On a personal note, I can’t wait to start praising GEJ. When bombs no longer ravage the homes of my brothers and sisters in Yobe and Borno states and blood no longer flows in our land like ‘sapele water’, I will praise the president. When we are no longer in pitch darkness, I will praise GEJ to high heavens. When our hospitals are no longer mortuaries in disguise and patients need not run about to look for prescribed drugs from private pharmacies, I will sing the president’s praises. When our roads are no longer catalysts for sending hundreds of lives to the great beyond daily, I will roll on the ground with praise of the president on my lips.

When the foul-smelling and suffocating odour of corruption is cleansed from our nation, with the known criminals in the president’s cabinet going to jail and refunding their loots, I will not only praise the president, I will kill a white ‘he-goat’ in his honour. When we get the fresh air we were promised during his elections, I will get a tattoo inscribed with the words: “I love my President Jonathan” on my dark glistening forehead.

But until we achieve all of the aforementioned basic deliverables, the president and his spin doctors must learn to live with the criticisms, the insults and the banters they get from not just the “ordinary people” but also from “all the cynics, the pestle-wielding critics, the unrelenting, self-appointed activists, the idle and idling, twittering, collective children of anger, the distracted crowd of Facebook addicts, the BBM-pinging soap opera gossips of Nigeria”.

I can’t wait to shower praises on Mr. President and break into the ‘Azonto’ dance. I really can’t.

————————-

Dada Olusegun is a registered member of Congress for Political Change (CPC), he is a writer cum social change advocate. He is a political columnist on #EkekeeeDotCom and contributor on numerous online blogs and newspapers. He is a motivational speaker who is also involved in youth empowerment and enlightenment programs nationwide. He tweets from @Dolusegun.

 

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.