Opinion: President Jonathan is guilty of incompetence

by Olukoya Obafemi

President-Goodluck-Jonathan-in-Nigeria-army-uniform

The ineptitude of my president seems so gargantuan. The country has been radically plummeted to the lowest nadir ever since. The government that has flirted and conjugated so much with this word “corruption” that it has almost become a norm.

Vituperation you said? Yes I agree if my freedom of speech is considered vituperation. I am a dissident, yes I am, because I’ll always hoist my voice for being an oppressed Nigerian. Consider it felonious, I’ll succumb to being tried if that’s the price I pay for not sugar coating the truth. The pen knows no fear. Evil thrive in a society where the good ones keep quite. “Sovereignty belongs to the people of Nigeria from whom government through this Constitution derives all its powers and authority” (Section 14, subsection (2) Article (a)). Posterity will never forgive us, if we all decide to remain taciturn and not fix culpability where it belongs.

The ineptitude of my president seems so gargantuan. The country has been radically plummeted to the lowest nadir ever since. The government that has flirted and conjugated so much with this word “corruption” that it has almost become a norm. I blame it all on Olusegun Obasanjo. That is my personal opinion that can be proved. He never leaves office for the competent, antecedence has proved this. Everyone that has succeeded Olusegun Obasanjo has done one harm or the other to our dear nation, mention it! Starting from Shehu Shagari under whom the nation witnessed so much grim, dire, and doldrums before Gen. Buhari paved way for tentative change, down to Umaru Musa yar’ Adua who ‘unintentionally’ spends more time under the surgical knife than in his constitutional office. Now down to GEJ who baba OBJ claims to be next to God in his ascension to the office.

National pardon was granted to his ally Alamieyeseigha. That was the genesis of our fight against corruption, indeed! This was vehemently criticised by the whole world, but Nigerians ignored. That was the first sign we should have read. Worse than ever before, corruption is now fully grown in Nigeria. Stealthism among government officials is reigning supreme. The felicity and vivacity of being a Nigerian is everyday starved by these facts. Our president’s presidential fleet cannot be compared to any other presidents’. This is a farcical fact. Armoured cars costing the fortune of some islands in the world were bought by one of the ministers we all know, gold plated iPhone and iPad were ordered by government officials, just to mention a few. 20 billion dollars got missing just in nineteen months, the whistle blower – Sanusi Lamido Sanusi was sacked, which bothers on an argumentative fallacy ‘Ad hominem’. Yet the shoeless man will tell us he’s fighting corruption. Yes indeed! The EFCC that used to be a dreaded organisation is now a tamed lion. ICPC is now after the market men and women. Nepotism reigning supreme in the government is the rationale for this all of this canker In Nigeria. Bamanga Tukur was removed from the supremacy of PDP and immediately made the chairman of railway cooperation. We still all await the next office that will be nepotised to our beloved felon, Stella Oduah.

Section 14, subsection (2) article (b) states and I quote “the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government” Anything short of this, is deemed as failure of the government. This administration has remained a consistent failure. There has been synonymy of violence that rocked the nation over time now. This has brought the presidency and the military under severe scrutiny in recent time. My father once told me, ‘son, it’s only a fool that tries one same method times over and expect different results’, which is the exact synopsis of the presidency and the military as in the case of fight against boko haram. We are fighting insurgency with literary conventional methods, what happened to intelligence? What does the SSS represent? Anyway they now chase after dissident. They have already bigoted the main essence why they are been dreaded in the country. Moving the military base to Borno isn’t the solution. The basic cause of this insurgency has been deduced as poverty and indigence. This has been analysis of the reasons for this insurgency. 100% of their foot soldiers has been analysed to be indigent and without education. Can’t poverty of the North be addressed? Will this not amputate boko haram’s strength? To buttress my argument, even the United State Department urged Nigeria to counter these extremist groups “through a combination of law enforcement, political, and development efforts, as well as military engagement.”

Between stimuli and response lies the ability of a man to make decision. It is a small sensitive space. That is the space my president makes shilly-shally. Bama was attacked in succession of two days; the next action from my president was to suspend Sanusi Lamido Sanusi. Such correlation of course deserves an award. “The president condemned the recent attack” – This disgracefully outdated statement proves yet again the springboard for a leap into the ocean of mediocrity that’s been our natural habit of the presidency ever since the Boko Haram insurgency.

Tony Blair, the former prime minister of the UK resigned on 27 June 2007, from office because “the casualties of the Iraq War was increasing, and Mr Blair was accused of misleading Parliament.”  A sum totals of 179 UK ‘soldiers’ were lost ‘in war’. Between the times our shoeless president emerged and now, statistics provides that thousands of souls of innocent civilian citizens have been lost. The security welfare of the people which is the primary purposes of government is indeed protected.

Richard Nixon, former president of America too resigned from office on August 9, 1974 because he lost popularity as a result of the “Watergate scandal”. Now what was Watergate scandal? The term Watergate means an array of clandestine and often illegal activities undertaken by members of the Nixon administration. Those activities included “dirty tricks,” or bugging the offices of political opponents and the harassment of activist groups and political figures. Is GEJ not guilty of any of these?

Spiro Agnew former vice president of America resigned from office on October 10, 1973, because corruption charges were levelled against him. Such charges include tax evasion and bribery. This includes $100,000 in bribe and $10,000 in tax evasion. He took on the courage of a man, and he resigned from office admitting to all of these. Back to our context, the ousted CBN governor accused the presidency and NNPC of $20,000,000,000 missing in 19months, but our president is still lingering round Aso Rock and Madam Alison Deizani still holding firm to her position.

Shall we say our president isn’t guilty of any of these? Shall we say he doesn’t accept responsibility for the fortune and its antonyms of the nation? Shall we blame our president-the leader for having us as bad followers? Shall we blame his associates, Reuben Abati-who is a paltry shadow of his former self or Reno Omokri who seeks attention by any means necessary or Okonjo Iweala? Shall we say our president should have passed through the propaedeutic class? Shall we say he deliberately neglects? Shall we say we citizens ask too much of the government? Shall we say Nigeria no longer possess enough human resources to move the nation forward?

I will end this article by quoting from the popular speech – “Citizenship in a Republic” by Theodore Roosevelt  “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

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This article was published with permission from Omojuwa.com

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

 

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