Jonathan: Hard work, many foes, powerful critics

I always say to my friends that I pity President Goodluck Jonathan.
Why do I say so? He ascended power at the most inauspicious time. He
mounted the saddle at a time the manipulations of the system by a few
elites (both civilian and military) was coming to a head. It was a
period of subversion, political subterfuge, cunning and heartless
looting combined to produce a level of injustice, dislocation and
deprivation that was threatening to totally consume the citizens and
the nation. He came at a time the wickedness of afew men began to
spill dirty and nasty consequences. Trust conservatives to reinvent
themselves, they sought a "virgin" and found one in an innocent
Goodluck Jonathan. Since then President Goodluck Jonathan has had to
carry the cross meant for others. Yes, the trouble meant for those
before him.
This piece, which will come in series, is about my assessment of the
President's Transformation Agenda Mid-Term Report (2 years in office),
released in Abuja few weeks ago. It is unfortunate that in a nation
that says it is practicing democracy, that report has received more of
partisan and deep tribal responses as against critical review and
dissection that should be the case. All the opposition parties just
dismissed the report, while the usually vociferous voices from the
Western part of Nigeria, which went dead during Obasanjo years, have
suddenly regained momentum and the Mid-Term report has, to some
extent, provided them a new platform or standpoint for new style of
"redemptive" advocacy. I like that except that sometimes I get
confused about how to place or what to make of selective posturing.
Even in this dilemma, I do know that our national problems, to some
extent, have been made more complex by this style of selective
interventions.
While listening to one of the television analyst, I heard one of the
political party leaders say the President presides over one of the
most divided period ever in the nation's history and he laid the
blameat the feet of the president. That position has been chorused by
a lot ofwriters. Such position raises questions of correctness. It is
true we have security challenges currently on our hands; but the
threat they constitute never approximated that engineered by the
annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election supposedly won by
the late M.K.O. Abiola, himself a military apologist. Those who make
allusion to divided nation deliberately refuse to acknowledge that the
foundation to what is happening now was laid many years ago when the
military held sway and by fiat and force of arms narrowed state policy
and programmes to their whims and caprices. I have not read any of our
analysts tell me that the troubles of June 12 spilled over to 1999,
which produced a president whose people did not like and did not vote
for. Nobody mentions the Igbo who were better placed to win the
presidency at the time, but were edged out in very dirty circumstances
and terms, with some of the spurious excuses hinging on a civil war
that ended on asuperficial note of "no victor, no vanquished". We have
kept quiet as ifthat was not equally a case of edging out a race.
Former governor of Rivers State, Dr. Peter Odili, few months
ago,produced a book in which he detailedhis odyssey in relation to his
quest to become Nigeria's President in 2007 and how our usual
perversion of electoral process and abuse of state power resulted in
the imposition of a candidate for PDP and subsequently apresident that
was ill. Need I say more? I don't want to remember the period in our
recent history in which a vibrant political party in control of a
region chose to commit political suicide in the bid to save a
tribesman.Did that act take place in a very united nation or in a
nation full of hypocrites?
Those who like propelling the blame game syndrome and find it
convenient to talk about a deeply divided country and hold tenaciously
to it fail to also say it was a problem ignited long ago, which
maturity datewas bound to come long after the foundation was laid.
After all, a tree does not dry up the day it is cut down.I usually
tell some analysts friends that there was no way Jonathan wouldn't
have become the president at the time given where he was and the
history of this nation, which we all agree has never in any manner
favoured the minorities of the South-South, who we also know give more
than enough to sustain this nation.
Now, some say Jonathan has been indecisive and they hold tight to this
position. The truth, from what I can see, is that the situation and
variablesJonathan has had to confront are quite different from those
of ex-President Obasanjo's period. Northern key players have since
told us they engineered Obasanjo'scomeback to power, never mind that
many of them now express deep regrets for outsmarting themselves and
the rest of us. So, to a reasonable extent, they had an obligation to
uphold and protect the man they made, even if he made mistakes; of
course, he made many. Secondly, at that time they had nothing at stake
asis currently the case with their desperate desire to return the
presidency to the zone. Then, we must not fail to note that Obasanjo's
assault when he had security challenges were against Benue and the
Ijaw zones, areas not known for hard-line tendencies, whatever maybe
the issue. If one thing, Obasanjo's courteous reaction to the sharia
eruption in some parts of the North tells a story. Besides, a good
number still believe that even though there may be some relationship
between hunger and security challenges in the North, the huge
political disagreements over whether Jonathan should be stopped or not
obviously added an entirely new but frightening dimension to thewhole
development.