HAVE WE BEEN BLESSED WITH A CLUELESS PRESIDENT?

At the rate he is going, His Excellency, President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, will soon land himself a deserved place in Nigerian history… as the most clueless president the country ever had. This isn’t just a spurious assertion or a personal attack on his Excellency for one only need look at the line of evidence he has lined up against himself to come to the same conclusion.

When the Independence Day bombs went off some few hundred metres from the Eagle square on that fateful day and after the initial shock and anger that I like most Nigerians felt, I was sure that the recklessness and impunity of some elements in the country will for once not go unpunished. Alas, how wrong I was. Over three months down the line with an additional eight to nine bombs going off in the cities of Jos, Maiduguri and again in the Federal Capital there is yet no clue that any justice will be dished out to the perpetrators. What’s worse, the President, instead of focusing his energies on these issues seems to have discovered the hobby of his predecessors and the bane of Nigerians: Self perpetuation even if it means subversion of the peoples’ rights.

The Delta State gubernatorial re-run, which a lot of people rightly considered a litmus test for the upcoming general elections turned out to be a sham. No, hold your horses, I am not blaming Jega here like many people have resorted to in the past few days since the results started coming in. I have always maintained that the Nigerian people hold the key to their future especially in elections. The leaders they vote will assume office as soon as they learn to cast aside their phlegm and complacency and ensure by any means possible, and I mean any means, that their votes count. Jega was never going to be superman and I feel sorry for all those who expected him to be. The angle to the Delta re-run I am talking about is that which has the president himself, a few months after his presidential declaration speech packed with promises of punishment for the bad guys, and free and fair elections, campaigning for Uduaghan, a man fingered in many reports to be an accomplice to James Ibori as he looted the state’s coffers with impunity. In a sane society, Uduaghan would be behind bars or at least answering questions that will shelve his governorship aspirations, but no, in Nigeria he gets backed in words and in action by a president who is fast becoming adept at talking positive and acting negative.

Another dazzlingly worrying miss-step is that which has the president himself issuing an official statement directing that schools all over the country be closed till 30th January. Apparently the president is not worried about the decline in educational standard in the country and has no clue that as one goes down the age ladder the children become duller, unable to solve basic mathematics or make coherent sentences in English. What blatant disregard for time and the value of education, and an antithesis to the law of evolution! The progeny are meant to be better than their parents.

The final gaffe to prove that the president surely does not have a clue what he is doing came in the form of detention of Prof Okey Ndibe by men alleged to be of the Nigerian State Security Services. Alleged because hitherto, at least from 2001, I ceased to think they existed. How would they exist and not fish out the culprits of all the crises that have put almost all peace-loving people of Nigeria ill at ease? How could they exist and not be able to stop bombs from going off a few hundred metres from the president of the federal republic, even after evidence shows that security intel from foreign agencies was made available? How could they exist and these things I have mentioned will happen twice in some instances, in the space of months? However when it comes to the harassment of peace-loving, highly respected Nigerians whose records are almost flawless in the furtherance of democratic values, they show just how efficient they are. Well, this is what I think; Okey Ndibe’s arrest by the SSS is bad karma for the president. On the one hand, he could have sanctioned it, proving he does not understand the importance of allocating scarce security resource to solving the country’s real and pressing problems, not to talk about sanctioning the harassment of senior and respected scholar (the president is a PhD right?). And, on the other hand, he does not know, and did not authorize the SSS to detain Prof. Ndibe, proving he is not on top of things with the security apparatus he should be walking closest with. Both ways, I say he is clueless.

The sooner Mr President gets busy addressing the real issues facing the country and we start seeing results the better for all of us, but seeing as the election is already upon us, I am afraid the real issues have to wait till after the election. Hopefully, our votes will truly count.