This needs be clear – the Northern Elders Forum (NEF) is not an impartial, objective organization.
It is a sworn enemy of President Goodluck Jonathan and has been an equal-opportunity condemner of everything he has done – from the state of emergency to the national conference.
It is against this backdrop that its demand for our missing Chibok girls to be found before the president can contest re-election should be viewed.
On any random day, this could be dismissed as the tug and pull of random politics, where under-employed politicians and hangers-on mount pulpits to ensure relevance.
Unfortunately, this is not a random day.
Only in June, the NEF made its agenda clear after Edwin Clark led South-South leaders to the villa to support a second term for the
president.
Lest we forget, there are very many Nigerians – as observation, polls and media prove – who also passionately believe Dr. Jonathan has done very well and want him back.
“His party, the PDP, adopted certain rules or guidelines,” the NEF spokesman, Ango Abdullahi said. “Even if they are not legal, but they are still traditional practices of the party, which ordinarily, as humans, we should be able to respect. If you have a memorandum of understanding, it may be outside the law but it still applies to you. You have that moral obligation to respect it. The north started in 2007, then President Umaru died midway in his term. The constitution allows Jonathan to carry on to the end of the first term, and after then, morality demands that based on the agreement that is known to everybody, the north should get the residency.”
There it is – the NEF wants the president out of the race because of an ethnic agenda.
Of course, there is the immediate push-back that the Nigerian Constitution is superior to all real and imagined documents politicians cobble together. But there are those who will say this bigoted agenda is somewhat acceptable in the contaminated Nigerian political space.
However, to – one month later – use the lives of over 200 innocent girls captured by the Boko Haram terrorists to a selfish political agenda is distasteful, repugnant and should immediately be countered and discountenanced by all Nigerians.
This board joins perceptive Nigerians in rejecting that silly demand.
Now, there are legitimate issues that might work against the president at the elections: the rapid expansion of the Boko Haram franchise, the poor state of our education and our health, the inability to send a clear message against corruption in and out of government, and rampaging income inequality to name a few.
But the operative word is election. If those who believe the above failings make a good case for getting him out of office in 2015 are afraid that the general public does not agree, they should not hide under infantile justifications to cover their failures.
Because, if there is one thing Nigerians decided in 2011, this is it – we no longer fundamentally care what part of the country candidate comes from. We are not intrinsically driven by ethnicity or religion. That is why large swaths of the Northwest, Southwest and others voted for this president. The times for the kind of primitive nation sharing the NEF is requesting have gone. For good, gentlemen.
More to the point, the constitution, with good judgement, has outlined the methods to get rid of any president: he can resign, he can be impeached, or he can be replaced at the polls. He cannot however be delegitimised because a few entitled ‘elders’ who have a history of feeding fat on bad governance make incendiary statements.
Lest we forget, there are very many Nigerians – as observation, polls and media prove – who also passionately believe Dr. Jonathan has done very well and want him back.
They look at the Lagos-Ibadan expressway and others that have recovered from decades of neglect, they look at what the government calls a railway revolution, they look at agriculture, they look at airports renovations, and they see a man who needs more time to consolidate. Many also see no need to punish him any more or less than all other presidents who are complicit in the damage that Nigeria’s governance has become.
What Nigeria deserves is a free and fair contest from both sides of the argument.
If Jonathan is really as unpopular and a failure as some say he is, then it is only a matter of time. The 2015 presidential elections are barely six months away; and – thankfully – the last three elections the country has held prove that we now have a strong tradition of credible elections.
Nigerian citizens will soon have the chance to make the call. Let them make their choice.
That is what democracy means.
I wonder where this poll really comes from and d so called good things the president as done, all his real agendas is to coin evreything for himself just like d fathers b4 him did, nt his own case has many opposition and controversies so he diverted everything to ethnicity, mr. President needs tome sincee to himself atleast for once.He as done nothing ood for this country, anything good he did will be d continuation of Late president Musa Yaradua’s agenda nd even in many he failed as Corruption in his regime is unforgetable. He is but a failure who wanted all for himself. To me very soon he will taste is own very medicine. Either good or Bad!!!!!