President Jonathan seeks divorce from abusive relationship… in last week’s news with a pinch of salt

by Stanley Azuakola

Labaran Maku, the achiever

Last week, President Jonathan launched a new book, Slow and Steamy Transformation: A Progress Report. It detailed the stellar achievements of his ministers. Whereas all the ministers had amazing achievements, the Most Outstanding Minister award went to Information Minister, Labaran Maku, who keeps proving that he was born to do this job. Maku’s great national achievements include:

  1. The design and distribution of federal government diary and calendar, a remarkable feat which none of his predecessors ever achieved.
  2. Under Maku’s watch, President Jonathan has transformed from the most liked president on facebook to the most abused president, showing that he is doing well, because in the words of motivational speakers, “if you don’t have vocal enemies, then you are not doing something right.”
  3. Maku has also personally transformed from one of the staunchest critics against the removal of fuel subsidy to one of its champions and still manages to live in the same body with his conscience. Great accomplishment.

It’s the tour season

From the stables of the organisers of First Lady Patience Jonathan’s Thank You Tour, comes another eagerly anticipated tour, The Labaran Maku Good Governance Tour. Following her husband’s victory at the 2011 polls, Dame Patience embarked on a Thank You Tour of states. The highlight of her tour was the massive traffic jams it unleashed in the states she visited as entire roads were blocked to welcome her. Now, Information Minister Labaran Maku, in conjunction with the Governors’ Forum, is scheduled to embark on a National Good Governance Tour of states from this Thursday. The highlight of Maku’s tour would be the opening of people’s eyes to see the transformations going on all around them that the gods of this world have blinded their eyes from seeing. After Maku’s tour, the next scheduled tour would be the Knowing Joe Tour, to be headlined by Reuben Abati, who knows the President Jonathan that the rest of us don’t know. The last tour before 2015, would be undertaken by the president himself, and is titled the Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn Tour.

President Jonathan seeks divorce from abusive relationship

The Attorney General of the Federation, Mohammed Adoke has given reasons why he has lately been scarce. He said he needed time off to prepare for a major court case involving the president. Adoke would lead a government legal team that would argue before the Supreme Court for an end to the abusive relationship between President Jonathan and the 47 percent of Nigerians who keep abusing him no matter what he does. The argument of the Attorney-General is that if we do not expect a woman to remain in an abusive home, we shouldn’t expect the president to remain in an abusive national relationship. It is unclear however what the nature of the divorce would be. Would the president leave if his request is granted? Would he get a restraining order on the 47 percent? No one knows.

CROWNED CLOWN (CeeCee) OF THE WEEK

About a year ago, A Pinch… did the unthinkable. President Jonathan had just given National Honours to individuals like the former Police IG Ringim, SSS DG Ekpenyong etc, at a time when under their watch, the menace of Boko Haram was at a frightening peak. So upset was A Pinch…at the charade that it gave President Jonathan a Grand Clown of the Federal Republic (GCFR) award. That award caused quite a stir, as a few believed that it was done in bad taste. A Pinch…did not think so then, and doesn’t think so now. But to prevent a rehash of that argument, A Pinch has decided to soft-pedal.

So even though the president promised last year that he would reform the process for the award of national honours and failed to do so, but instead promised us the same thing again this year, we would still not give him the Grand Clown award. And although it was shocking to hear the president say last week that he believed the January subsidy protest was fake and stage-managed, A Pinch… would still not give him the clown award because they say it will be in bad taste. Ordinarily, some might say that President Jonathan deserves the award for choosing to wrap himself up in a pretentious, defensive cocoon on that issue which saw Nigerians come out in their numbers to express anger at a woeful government policy, but so be it—A Pinch refuses to give him the GCFR, no matter how deserving anyone thinks he is. So there you have it, President Jonathan does not take the award of Grand Clown of the Federal Republic (GCFR) this week. Hope everyone is satisfied now?

Follow A Pinch…on twitter @stanleyazuakola

Editor’s note: A Pinch… is sattire

Comments (2)

  1. Really hope Nigerians have enough sense not to waste votes during the next elections…

  2. Labaran Maku is the night-soil man of the Jonathan administration.

    Brought up in abject poverty & deprivation akin to his shoeless master, his lucky elevation from the obscurity of a rural upstart to a Minister has completely fazed his provincial mentality.

    His vicious grip on the trappings of power in his new position has totally eroded all loyalty to conscience and morality, supplanted by a single-minded desperation to retain the office at any and all costs.

    A one-time pseudo activist possessing a single trademark brown kaftan, he now dresses in the latest agbada and brocade that is an exclusive of his once-hated oppressors.

    Lacking any serious practical experience beyond a paedagogical stint in a village primary school where he once taught and a brief romance in journalism that ended in a fiasco, he desperately craves to assure his boss that he is relevant in tje EXCO.

    For want of original ideas, he embarked on a poor imitation of the failed policy of one of his predecessors, Jerry Gana, who invented the infamous "media tours" under Obasanjo which Maku has now re-christened "Good Governance Tour". He is transforming to the past.

    The printing of calendars & diaries that Maku flaunts as a celebrated achievement is, ironically, one of the first policies OBJ banned across the entire public service along with gift items like pens, etc, on resumption of ogfice in 2003.

    Labaran Maku is transforming this administration to a past that failed Nigeria. GEJ is yet to see the last of his appiintees that misleading him.

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