You couldn’t help but sympathise with Goodluck Ebele Jonathan; you also couldn’t help but be very angry with him some times. Especially if you have a little knowledge about human psychology; and more especially, in those moments when he was put on the spotlight on national television; or during one of such encounters with hawkish foreign interviewers. One would watch him with much trepidation, with heart stuck in one’s mouth and emotions flitting between empathy and anger.
Such is the nature of Nigeria’s fourth elected president, Jonathan, who leaves office today. History may blandly record him as a weak president but that would be erroneous. He is simply a man providence raised far above his ken. He is a simplex (some would say simpleton). His simple mind just could not circumscribe the eminence of the presidency. He was for all the time in office, a boondoggling president, a smiling Simon quick to roll over with every punch.
Meek and of a gentle heart, he seemed to lack any guiles or on the other hand, he lacked the wiles to beguile. On few occasions when he tried, the outcome was as child-like as children playing hide-and-seek in a bare sitting room. Recall the attempt to undermine INEC Chairman Prof. Attahiru Jega during the run-up to the last election. A president or any leader at that sitting in a position where the stakes are high must be everything rolled into one – both angel and Lucifer.
The presidency stumped Jonathan real good and he had operated, it appeared, from under the scaffolding of the office for nearly six years. The big picture completely eluded him. There are dozens of examples to prove this.
First, if we ignore all the hoopla and shenanigans of the Boko Haram insurgency, how do we explain the Chibok girls fiasco? Bet Jonathan cannot wait to be through with this handing over matter and to walk off into the sunshine saying in his heart, “Chibok girls be damned”. But how do we explain the fact that for over one year, there was no official pronouncement on the abduction of these girls?
How come there was no special presidential inquisition on the matter of the girls? How come President Jonathan met with the parents only after about one year? For girls who were final year pupils in a government school, who had enrolled for WAEC, who were largely domiciled in a corner of the country, an intelligence panel would have revealed their exact number, their proper identity (including their parents’), their residences/domain among other vital information.
But almost nothing was done. The Presidency’s response to the massacre of male pupils at the school in Buni Yadi was more pathetic. Jonathan neither visited nor caused anyone to visit a school that was razed and tens of its pupils killed. Government officials only visited a year after during electioneering period.
This state of listlessness pervaded the Jonathan era. His motley crew of appointees did not help him either. In fact they exploited his glaring weaknesses. In the first place, plagued by the same ailment of heart and mind, he picked mainly people who are either incompetent, guileful or both. Let’s profile the key actors among them:
Okonjo-Iweala: much too over-rated One of the biggest mistakes of Jonathan was to have brought back Mrs. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. He even elevated her to the position of something of a prime minister by naming her Finance Minister and Coordinating Minister of the Economy (CME). But she neither managed the finances of the country these past four years nor did she muster the gumption to organise the economy.
She flunked woefully, the most basic duty of her office which was to manage the annual budget. In four years, not once was budget passed in time; not once did the budget perform by 50 per cent and not once was capital expenditure raised to as much as 40 per cent. But most troubling, she supervised an economy that was being pillaged like hell. Jonathan and his team could have been pirates sharing booty. It was either that Mrs Okonjo-Iweala coordinated the looting or that ravaging the treasury was a kind of economic policy she recommended. She will remain remarkable for setting the country back many years and leaving the economy in tatters.
Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke: queen of pearls While Okonjo-Iweala pretended to be coordinating the economy, Diezani was really the soft power behind the throne. She also sat atop the nation’s most strategic asset – oil. Sadly she is as incompetent as a basket for fetching water. And the position seized her little mind entirely leaving no fenestration whatsoever for light to filter in.
Just one example: in January 2012, she singlehandedly increased the pump price of fuel without consulting the cabinet. But in the ensuing national opprobrium, it came out that her so-called subsidy had been a scam through which she and her ‘oil marketers’ had been stealing trillions of naira from the treasury. Why anyone would be so callous to increase fuel price in the face of so much brigandage is a mark of Diezani’s character. Two years down the line, our so-called president, Jonathan did not muster the nerves to fire her or jail the ‘marketers’. One can raise a dozen examples of her bad behaviour in office. Hers’ was an atrocious and better-forgotten time running our prized asset. She must be the worst oil minister ever.
Mohammed Adoke: Minister of no justice Also chief among the fellows that damaged the Jonathan presidency was his Attorney General and Minister of Justice for four years, Adoke. Unfortunately, Ministry of Justice ought to be the next most important bastion of awe and integrity of any government after the presidency. Just as Jonathan told us he didn’t give a damn about the example of declaring his assets publicly, Adoke apparently gives no hoot about justice.
For Adoke, justice must be a worthless whore to be obtained and ravaged and discarded at will. He stymied the activities of the EFCC, he made sure no big thief was caught; he sprung more suspected big criminals from facing trial than were successfully tried and he just loved plea bargain and that that thing called nolle prosequi was his walking stick. No president who truly understood the true meaning of that word would have kept Adoke for one week. He helped in no small way in ruining Jonathan.
Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina: the popinjay minister He, like the rest of the team is actually a bit player who just hung in there and chased crumbs. But Adesina stood out just because he was so beguiling and managed to trick and bamboozle Jonathan with lies and silly slogans. And the president lapped up all those lies as if he was a boy in the kindergarten.
If Adesina was not manning the crucial Agric Ministry, he would never have mattered much. A man who is more comfortable in five-star hotels and private jets, he got our rice levy, our cassava bread levy and goodness knows which other levies he got and pocketed since he never accounted for them. Well, he gave Nigeria cassava bread just that only he and Jonathan eats it in the Villa.
It was indeed a boondoggle presidency – wasted time, wasted resources, no purpose, no result. Goodbye Jona.