The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • Okonjo-Iwealanomics: N9b stoves in time of austerity

    The problem with Hardball is that he must be an illiterate, one-armed economist. He is so stiff-necked that he does not understand that the science of economics is always about: ‘on the one hand and on the other hand.’ But Hardball is a one-track minded fellow with a plebian, brick-and-mortar idea about economics.

    But sorry Mr. Hardball, economics is an arcane science; especially when it dovetails into the fine realms of fiscal macroeconomics; the econometrics of recurrent elements in sovereign appropriations or the monetary equivalences of fiscal measures, etc. Wow, this surely is beyond my ken I must confess.

    Again, economists will always close every assertion with the phrase: “All things being equal” knowing for sure that all things never get to be equal. But simpletons like Hardball, burden by their untutored minds, would always expect things to be equal. This explains why he is forever hitting his head against the wall as if he was born to fret.

    If only Hardball could get it into his frothy skull that economics is merely intellectualised madness; a tool made popular by world governments for the domination of world peoples. It never provides definitive answers, it is imprecise, malleable, and sometimes, outright dubious. If, therefore, a country expects to ever find solution to her growth and developmental problems from fine economic theories, then such a state would end up a basket case just like Nigeria.

    The situation is worse, if not doomed when a country’s economy is overseen by a purist economist. This supple subject becomes an end in itself with its rich, endless debate the only result to be derived. This is the mire Nigeria is stuck in today. With Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala managing Nigeria’s economy we are not likely to witness what we, the laymen know as growth and development.

    Trained at the best institutions of the West (Harvard and MIT), she trades in growth rate figures and fine theories and projections. So long as the numbers and ratings are looking up, then the economy is doing well. By her projections and prognosis of her people at the World Bank, Nigeria under her watch has been growing at the rate of between five to six per cent in the last five years they say.

    Recently, the folly of economics and even economists came to the fore in Nigeria with a mild dip in the global price of crude oil. No sooner did this happen than Nigeria is almost embroiled in economic crisis. Mrs Okonjo-Iweala quickly declared a puerile cost-cutting called austerity measures, including the need to introduce luxury goods taxes.

    Now there is no power supply, no industrial base, no refineries, no standard railway system and no agricultural sector. This country, run by an economist is a mono-economy living on massive importation of all her needs, including food stuff. For over two decades, she has been exporting her crude oil and importing refined petroleum products – a huge drain on the economy.

    You would think that the looming crisis has sobered up a wasteful, quick-fingered government, but not in the least. Nigerians woke up last week to find that the Federal Executive Council has approved N9.2 billion post haste, for the procurement of cooking stoves for rural women. Now what manner of economics is this!?

     

  • Aso Rock badge show

    An interesting picture of what may be described as the latest fashion accessory in the country’s corridor of power came through a noteworthy observation by The Punch presidency watcher, Olalekan Adetayo, who writes a weekly column called ASO ROCK Lens. He wrote recently: “As the 2015 presidential election draws nearer, President’s men are falling over one another to display their loyalty to the man who has been endorsed as the sole candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party.” Of course, he was speaking about President Goodluck Jonathan.

    Adetayo continued: “One of the ways they are showing their loyalty is the way they attach pin-ups on their lapels and dresses in the case of women. Some of the lapels only have the President’s portrait. There are other pin-ups with only inscriptions such as ‘Goodluck to you’ among others.”

    It would appear that Adetayo was speaking of promotional badges. To go by his observation, badge producers with the right political connections must be doing well; more specifically, badge makers who have the ear of the politically powerful must be laughing all the way to the bank, considering that, apparently, money is no object when it comes to the Jonathan re-election project. It stands to reason that if expense is no object, then providers of such items related to the Jonathan re-election ambition must be in paradise.

    It is conceivable that, given the circumstances, those who are interested in profiting commercially from the opportunity would reach not only new heights of creativity but also new depths of desperation. Instructively, Adetayo also observed: “The Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs introduced another dimension to the matter when it produced digital pin-ups, seeking votes for the President. The item which is rechargeable has the message scrolling on the chest of whoever attaches it to his lapel.”

    However, it is equally imaginable that the sycophantic badge wearers may also exhibit creativity and desperation. For instance, there could be individuals who would display more than one or two different badges, and wear them in ways thought to be maximally visible and effective.

    Indeed, this observed publicity approach in the place of power reminds Hardball of the new age advertising concept known as “human billboard.” In effect, the badge wearers have chosen to play the role of billboards, but that isn’t all. They could also be seen as “mobile billboards”, another development in modern-day advertising. So, this particular activity of the advertisers of Jonathan and promoters of his presidential re-election dream may be considered a study in how to sell an unappealing product to an unwilling market. It is an example of high-pressure salesmanship.

    Interestingly, it should not be surprising if the pro-Jonathan badges are regarded as emblems of allegiance in Aso Rock, where power seems to be all that matters and service to the people appears to be of no importance.

    But beyond Aso Rock, these badges more likely suggest grovelling of a nauseating kind. Those who strut around wearing them must be small-minded men of straw, which includes the women too.

     

     

  • From godfather and godson: purgatory

    You can, with flat contempt, dismiss former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s comment on President Goodluck Jonathan: that the president’s performance was below average; and that he won’t take responsibility for Jonathan’s failures, since everyone (perhaps, every invalid is the more correct expression!) that lands Aso Rock needed some help.

    On the first point, though, the judgment of the godfather on the godson is spot on: Jonathan’s has been the most disheartening and uninspiring, if not outright catastrophic tenure, if not in Nigerian history, then certainly in this democracy. Indeed, in Hardball’s view, “below average” is too mild for his brilliant failure — brilliant because it is a grand failure that swaggers around with grand self-delusion.

    But, the second point, on not taking responsibility, is the usual Obasanjo holier-than-thou bluff and bluster; that tries to extricate him from the dire consequences of bumbling failures he selfishly heaps on the polity.

    It is the classic Obasanjo sense of privilege without responsibility. It is not only cheap, it is rude, it is crude and it is extremely annoying. It easily insults the intelligence of the rest of us.

    In Yar’adua and Jonathan, Obasanjo sold Nigerians a disaster, pure and simple. Umaru Yar’adua (Allah bless his departed soul!) was a noble soul and Fulani aristocrat. But his failed health delivered his presidency dead on arrival — though Baba would claim ignorance of that open secret. Jonathan is a childish mind encased in an adult’s body: hence his child-like simplicity and happy lack of rigour.

    Yar’adua and Jonathan are an accident too many — and could not only have just happened: after a failed third term bid, Baba wanted to call the shots from the sidelines. Both frail Yar’adua and simplistic Jonathan would need Baba as spine. But the plan backfired big time!

    Still, you must visit the Jonathan response — of claiming to be the best Nigerian leader ever — with the most concentrated contempt you could muster.

    Now, Goodluck Jonathan as a private citizen deserves the respect of all, as fellow citizens under the law. But Goodluck Jonathan as a failed president, who nevertheless crows about some mythical achievements, deserves the flak of all.

    Yet, Doyin Okupe claims Jonathan is Nigeria’s best president ever. Seriously?

    Sure, he is the best in incompetence, in the basic chore of security: he met Nigeria whole, and he risks leaving it in permanent tatters, given his clueless response to the Boko Haram insurgency.

    He is the best as presidential simpleton: that is why he would discuss Boko Haram ceasefire with Chad’s Idris Debby who, weeks later, would allegedly pay an aide to buy arms for Boko Haram, according to news reports.

    He is the best in failure to conceptualise even the simplest of terms: that is why he would declare that “they call ordinary stealing corruption”!

    He is the best in destroying state institutions: that is why he smashed the Nigeria Governors Forum because his man lost the election; and is turning the Police and DSS into private harassment organs — because he cannot appreciate that without the law that made him president, Goodluck Jonathan has no power, even over the most modest of his neighbours.

    Conscience-stricken godfather and godson should keep their empty purgatory to themselves. Both have done enough harm already.

     

  • So very Okonjo-Iwealaesque

    So very Okonjo-Iwealaesque

    Dear reader, what do you do with an employee who thinks he is doing you a favour? He is lost in his own world; he turns his nose up at you, he talks above your head, he could never seem to understand you and you too can’t seem to get through to him. As the years go by, the business diminishes, but he still turns up in fancy dresses and maintains the façade of normalcy with exotic espousals, slogans and faddish jargons. You, the businessman you are haemorrhaging to death and he your technocratic employee tells you about reforms with long-term gestational accruals and incipient values derivable from emerging strategic options. Phew!

    Damn it, this company is dying, this ship is sinking; you may find yourself screaming. This is the story of Dr.Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nigeria’s two-time Finance Minister and currently with an additional omnibus title, Coordinating Minister of the Economy, (CME). She was a World Bank senior staff before she was head-hunted to lead Nigeria’s Finance Ministry during the Olusegun Obasanjo era. But as it has turned out, a seat at that ultra-Western and ultra-capitalist leviathan erroneously known as the World Bank does not necessarily make a man a good manager of a country’s economy. She really has not made much of this job, Hardball must surmise.

    But for a country that is bereft of ideas and quality leadership, she had to be drafted once again to the same job she performed so very woefully the first time. The job may be a bit complicated but it is well cut out: to remould a poor economy that is lacking in all the basics of a modern economy.

     This time, she is given even more powers and an expanded scope of duty. In essence, in the last 10 years or so, Madam World Bank has been at the driving seat of Nigeria’s finance and economy; but it appears she has been wrestling with a monster she is incapable of fathoming its head or tail.

    But so very Okonjo-Iwealaesque and like the employee described above, she would not admit that she has no clue about this animal called the Nigerian economy. Instead, she grandstand and grandstands some more even as the roof falls on our head. Just a few days ago, Madam woke up and took Nigeria back 34 years ago when the phrase, ‘austerity measures’ crept into our national lexicon. She actually unveiled (read invoked) austerity measures upon us all as if she is ever gonna be subjected to it.

    Recall that just a few days before, standing on her haughty pedestal, she had broadcast that ‘Nigeria is not broke.’ Before then, she had often regaled us with favourable sovereign ratings from her friends in Standard and Poors among such sepulchral trappings of the capitalist world. We had also been told recently that we are the biggest economy in Africa and number 26 in the world; among other rubbish she has fed us.

     But with this latest announcement, she has finally unravelled and not unlike the economy she tends. After announcing her so-called austerity measures, she seems to have smacked her lips when she stated: “Every country that is well managed doesn’t just seat and allow a situation to happen to them. If they are well managed, they prepare the right set of policies to deal with the situation.”

    Can you see our predicament? She does not even appreciate the problem; she thinks it’s about cutting costs and charging more taxes!

  • Power and a shadowy trio

    A confounding numerical issue involving the Ekiti State House of Assembly, with claims and counter-claims about numbers flying all over the place, has understandably attracted public attention. The 26-member legislature, made up of 19 members of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and seven members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), lawfully needed nine members to form a quorum. But as some of the lawmakers have shown, perhaps without compunction, the law is one thing, while observance of the law is another.

    Interestingly, those who sat in the state’s legislative chamber on November 17 to endorse three commissioner-nominees presented by Governor Ayo Fayose of the PDP, and empower him to appoint 12 special advisers and to constitute caretaker committees for 16 local governments, were identifiable, and indeed nameable, except three of them who remain strangely shadowy.

    It is obvious that without the mysterious trio, the business of the day could only be seen as an arrangement of doubtful legality, not to call it illegal. So, it is unsurprising that in order to give the dubious sitting a face of legality, the PDP caucus leader, Mr. Samuel Ajibola, reportedly insisted that it was in order, contrary to the evidence.  He said: “The quorum is nine and we had 10 members who attended the sitting. That shows that we formed a quorum.”

    Were the officially known seven PDP members joined by three members of the other party? This question is inevitable and critical, especially because the 19 APC members were said to be nowhere near the place of meeting on the day. It is instructive that a statement by the APC Publicity Secretary in the state, Mr. Taiwo Olatunbosun, said: “We make bold to say that at the time the seven APC lawmakers were holding their illegal sitting in Ado-Ekiti, the 19 APC lawmakers, including the Speaker and his deputy, were on a live programme on Adaba FM in Akure.” Olatunbosun also argued: “There are 26 members in the House of Assembly; if 19 were on a radio programme in Akure, only seven should be sitting in the Assembly, and if they are more than seven, it means they are rented.”

    If not for the gravity of the picture and the serious implications for democracy, it would have been easy just to laugh at the suggestion of hired impostors in the legislative chamber, which is expected to be a place for honourable persons. In this case, it should be emphasised that the fakes were dishonourable and those who brought them in were less than honourable.  This is no laughing matter. That such a scandalous operation was conceived and carried out is disturbing, particularly because it bespeaks an unbelievable depth of contempt for an important democratic institution.

    Beyond the revealing reality that the ridiculously defensive PDP has failed to release the identities of the controversial trio, which would have helped its case by showing that they were lawful members of the legislature, if indeed they were, it is noteworthy that the contrived sitting happened in an atmosphere of crude display of  power. “Fayose provided seven members of PDP with 300 armed mobile policemen, complete with armoured vehicles, to conduct a plenary,” the Speaker, Dr. Adewale Omirin, said. Regrettably, this mix of unconscionable dishonesty and possible megalomania can only harm the state.

  • Giant of Africa, my foot!

    When a South African team, including military, forensic and autopsy personnel, came to Nigeria to collect the bodies of their compatriots killed in the September 12 building collapse at the Synagogue Church of All Nations (SCOAN) in Ikotun, Lagos, there were lessons to be learned by the Nigerian side. But it is a different matter altogether whether the lessons were learned, or would ever be.

    A report said: “The South Africans, who arrived in the country in two aircraft, shunned local facilities and items. They came with four forensic pathology trucks, generators, water, buses, pick-up vehicles and other items.”  The Chief Medical Examiner of Lagos State and Consultant Forensic Pathologist, Prof. John Obafunwa, was quoted as saying: “They brought in everything including trolleys, dustbins and water.”

    In case anyone missed the point in the country, it should be pointed out that it was a most embarrassing experience for Nigeria, speaking specifically of the implication that the so-called giant of Africa could not be relied upon even in the smallest detail.

    “When we talk about Nigeria being the giant of Africa, I think we are just fooling ourselves,” Obafunwa said. He elaborated on this put-down. Speaking about the disaster refrigerated vans flown in by the South Africans, he said: “It is puzzling that Nigeria can conveniently provide 10 to 20 of this, yet none is in existence. I don’t see any reason why each state cannot provide its own disaster refrigerated vans. It is highly useful in the scene of mass disaster. One doesn’t need to take in a body into a building; but with this disaster refrigerated vans one can carry out forensic analyses.”

    Obafunwa further said: Nigeria needs a functional forensic science laboratory. And why is this too difficult for the Federal Government to establish? We don’t have a single functional forensic science laboratory in this country.”

    Against this background, is it surprising that the South Africans came with everything they needed, and did not leave anything to chance?  It is noteworthy that, shortly after the tragic incident, in an impressive demonstration of overseas crisis readiness, a South African team of experts in forensic science and disaster management promptly arrived in the country to focus on specific areas: “body recovery and repatriation, victims listing and confirmation, post-mortems as well as assessing of injured persons to determine the medical condition and the required levels of care”. In furtherance of this timely intervention, 25 injured South Africans were flown back to their country to continue treatment at the time. So, that first experience must have given the South Africans a sufficient opportunity to physically assess the state of things in the country, particularly in the health sector; and they must have arrived at the realistic conclusion that the country could not be depended upon.

    Perhaps a redeeming feature in this story of unjustifiable negligence, if not an inexplicable blindness to the demands of disaster management in the modern world, is the creditable role of the local forensic team headed by Obafunwa. He said: “It is of note that South Africa has not complained about how we handled the forensic investigation. We have been working together.”

    Only small-minded observers would interpret the South African approach as showing off. No, it further highlighted the failure of Nigeria’s crooked leadership.

     

  • Hunters ahoy!

    Were Hardball to be nasty and maybe a tad mischievous, he would wink that the military’s loudly-announced recapture of Chibok (Chibok, of the captured school girls, the nemesis of the Jonathan presidency!) was the government’s answer to local hunters’ reported liberation of Mubi and Maiha, two besieged towns in Adamawa.

    So, what local hunters can do, the military can do better, right?

    No, that is no joke. And it is certainly, no flippancy, because the security of a country is serious business.

    It is just a grave pointer to the precarious state of the Nigerian state, when basic security is the issue.

    But to fully understand the matter, it is back to the very beginning of the state: the Social Contract.

    By the Social Contract, the people in their sense of self-preservation, ceded some of their rights to a central Leviathan (read government) which, in exchange, would secure them; and take them out of Hobbes’s state of nature, where life is nasty, brutish and short.

    In essence, therefore, the basis of any state, let alone of the modern state with all its panoply and sophistication, is security.  So, any state that cannot secure any part of its territory is no state; or, if you prefer the tragic process, is a failing state.

    So, some parts of Nigeria, particularly the Northeast, where Boko Haram captures even garrisoned towns at whim, is technically close to a failing state. That was the illogic that, in the first instance, threw up the brave local farmers who, perhaps fed up with the paralysed state of things, decided to call the Islamists’ bluff.

    Still, even with its short-term glory and romanticism, hunters coming to the rescue of a state with a standing army is long-term bad news.  Boko Haram is today’s enemy, which must be defeated by all means.  But watch it: today’s patriotic hunters could be tomorrow’s hated guild of insurrection, thrown up to challenge the might of the state.

    How did Boko Haram and even the Niger Delta insurgents emerge?  Boko Haram cadres were convenient tools, for politicians to crush local opponents, just as the Niger Delta insurgents were armed goons to muscle opponents, maim and kill for their political masters and help to fiddle the vote.

    But then came a crisis of unmet promises and expectations, which made an armed band, not disarmed after elections, resort to violent self-help!  Welcome, the pristine Boko Haram!  Welcome, Niger Delta militants!   Goodbye, peace and security in Nigeria!

    But, if local farmers were to come to a tragic epiphany: that there is no mystique behind the standing army of the state, any more than ordinary hunters vanquishing Boko Haram where the army could not?

    What if, they think, in Fela-speak: uniform na khaki, na tailor dey sew am?  What, after all the noise of war, these hunting braves are flush with a me-too syndrome, and decide to create their own security nuisance? Scary, uh?

    The emergence of the hunters just shows how parlous Nigeria’s security has become.  So, the distracted Jonathan Presidency had better handle the matter with tact and extreme introspection.

    Else, Boko Haram’s nemesis today may well be the fundament of tomorrow’s fresh security meltdown.

     

  • Hardball challenges Fayose to a beering contest

    Hardball challenges Fayose to a beering contest

    Now Hardball is full of envy for the great people of Ekiti State. Why am I not an Ekitite? Perhaps one should begin to consider relocating to that land of knowledge and learning, considering the epochal novelty exfoliating therefrom.

    We, the untutored, were grappling with the concept of Stomach Infrastructure (SI) and having our laughs when whiz governor, the new kid on the block handed us the operational definition of SI without further ado. He simply created a Department of Stomach Infrastructure (DSI) in his Expanded Executive Council and appointed a Special Assistant and a Personal Assistant for that all-important task. All this happened on inauguration day – no debate, no grammar and no memoranda. Governance made easy, simple and straightforward. The KISS factor – keep it simple stupid!

    There are reasons aplenty why some of us are lost in lustful longing for the Ekiti treat and would yet migrate to that Odua heartland. Have you heard that the ‘gallant guber’, the ‘gods’ gift to his people, Governor Ayo Fayose, is already preparing for a bounteous Christmas for his people in the spirit of stomach infrastructure?

    Hear him: “Christmas is coming, why do people go out of their ways to be shopping or doing other things if it is not just to make people merry?

    “So I’m grooming chicken, buying rice, yams, plantain and the rest of them. I am sure if I give them to families during the festive period, they will be happy. So stomach infrastructure is a way of life.”

    By Jove, it promises to be a bumper of a Christmas for the great people of Ekiti this season and for many seasons ahead. Wow, the thought of a specially-groomed chicken from the gubernatorial poultry! Good people of Ekiti, brace for the time of your lives. It’s goodbye to poverty, goodbye to hunger and your welfare is assured. It’s goodbye to crimes too for as your governor has posited, most people who commit crime do so because they feel that life no longer holds any sweetness for them and there is no comforter anywhere.

    This is unassailable Fayosean intervention which requires no further intellectual interrogation. But Hardball’s concerns and fascinations are with the governor’s proposition that he does his beer (not drink, mind you) with his people every Friday. Bingo! Hardball hereby challenges the quaffing governor to a beering session one of these cool Friday evenings.

    What joy that would bring; how that would release a glorious spirit of the Muse like a billion confetti into Hardball’s universe. And what would be the governor’s brand? What would be the accompaniment to his beer – nkwobi, isiewu, sizzling cow-tail soup or pepper snails? What would be His Excellency’s delight?

    How many bottles can he knock down? Real men; the beer parlour bums would undo their belt and kill the bottles until they lose count or they count loosely, whichever one happens first. In fact great aficionados would sit at the command position, make sure the table never grows bare or cold and they hold court as loudly as they can. Most notably, they seem to possess the supernatural powers to pass on their consumption to others around the table so that as the hours grow thin they can rise and traipse into the night, leaving their co-quaffers inebriated and in a semi-horizontal posture. Let’s meet at the parlour Mr. Governor.

  • When screening is a smokescreen

    Confusion must be ruling the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), considering the news that it has fixed November 26 for the screening of President Goodluck Jonathan who, from the look of things, is its recognised sole presidential aspirant in connection with the 2015 general elections. For the purpose of clarity, it is noteworthy that Jonathan’s aspiration has enjoyed institutional protection and promotion to the disadvantage of any other person who might have been nursing a presidential dream on the party’s platform. Indeed, perhaps it is unrealistic to refer to Jonathan as just an aspirant in the sense of someone seeking endorsement by his party, because he already enjoys the image of a chosen candidate.

    Of course, it is no news that Jonathan has been exclusively endorsed for re-election by the PDP governors, Board of Trustees and National Executive Committee, which effectively foreclosed the conventional presidential primary election to choose a candidate. Upon reflection, Jonathan’s stunning choreographic approach to next year’s presidential poll may qualify as arguably the most systematically planned and methodically controlled pursuit of power in the country’s history of democratic politics, which should not necessarily be seen in constructive terms. To go by the party’s latest timetable, November 15 is for “Return of Forms” by presidential aspirants; and it is expected that only Jonathan would do so because no one else was allowed to get the relevant form.

    Against this background, it is food for thought that, by fixing a date for a so-called presidential screening, the party is trying to give the wrong impression that it had not already approved Jonathan’s candidacy. Now, why would the party apparently consider it important to project an appearance of propriety when it has all along been a model of subversion?

    To think the unthinkable, is it possible that Jonathan could fail at this screening stage? Doesn’t having the prior backing of the party’s most influential organs and decision makers suggest that the advertised screening may be nothing but a smokescreen? In the unlikely event that Jonathan is unsuccessful at the screening show, he has a chance to appeal on the same date. What if the appeal fails? Remember, Jonathan is the sole aspirant.

    Predictably, at the party’s December 10-11 national convention, where its presidential candidate is expected to formally emerge, everything will go according to plan and premeditation, meaning that Jonathan will officially get the ticket, as if he had not always had it.

    Who is fooling whom? This is an inevitable question for both the puppeteer and the puppets. It would be intriguing to hear Jonathan’s speech at his party’s national convention, after the perfection of the execution of the mind-blowing plot. It would be equally interesting to note the response by party members to his address.

    Birds of a feather flock together, they say; and this should largely explain Jonathan’s strikingly stage-managed emergence as PDP’s presidential candidate in the coming elections. It is a tale that has not only further exposed the party’s fundamentally flawed character, but also its flawless darkness.

  • And Nero declares …

    Burn if you must, o Rome, but I must fiddle and make merry, said old Nero.

    Bomb all schools, leave a heinous trail of blood, heave off Nigeria’s territory under Islamists’ flag, but I must declare in peace, so says Goodluck Jonathan — or so it seems.

    In fairness, it is doubtful if President Jonathan, with his ill-fated declaration, would want the rather unflattering comparison with the notoriety of Nero fiddling even as Rome burned. But the sheer insensitivity of the event, its brainless timing and its unconscionable braggadocio make that comparison inevitable.

    Just look at the build-up: on the eve of the so-called declaration, Boko Haram struck at a Potiskum, Yobe State, boys’ secondary school. At the end of the carnage, no fewer than 35 innocent school boys lay dead, and another 79 injured, with grim omens of further deaths.

    The President’s reaction? The usual empty assurance that the anarchists would be found and brought to book. But not even that great tragedy could unhinge the all-important declaration.

    O yes, presidential spin doctors could even go ahead to claim the bombing was deliberate enemy sabotage to abort the declaration. In any case, the plans were already on — which sane mind would put it off, with the huge logistics put in place?  Which sane mind, indeed?

    But again, it’s only the language of power, hardly of reason, for which Jonathan and his gang have become latterly notorious, to explain away their obduracy.

    A day or two before the Yobe blast, Boko Haram released a video which, were Jonathan and friends to have any shame, thoroughly mocked the President’s claim as commander-in-chief. In the video released by AFP, Boko Haram artillery, with its crazed zealots wielding small arms, did a triumphant drive round an unnamed town. To boot, Ibrahim Shekau, three times killed but three times alive leader of the band unleashed a paternalistic sermon, his face even breaking into some satanic benevolence, looking at his captives, hapless Nigerian citizens Jonathan is heftily paid to protect!

    But all those are immaterial, Nero (sorry, Jonathan) must fiddle and declare!

    And a week or so before the video, the Jonathan Presidency, through Air Marshal Alex Barde, announced it had signed a ceasefire with Boko Haram, the news everyone wanted to hear: that the release of the Chibok girls was imminent with the sweetheart deal.  Well, all came to naught!

    But the additional pain was that, before the so-called ceasefire, the military appeared to have seized the initiative and, for once, bloodied Boko Haram. But the fatal stop reversed everything.  By the time Boko Haram reopened the front, after the ceasefire dummy, it was to go on a roll of annexing towns, including Mubi, Adamawa State’s prized jewel of commerce, and giving it another name!

    Now, a shamefaced Jonathan Presidency realised too late it had been had!  But really, is this government still capable of being shame-faced?

    Now, after all the frills of the so-called declaration, what is Jonathan saying?  Another four years of slobbering about government house?  Another four years of rank insensitivity?  Another four years of Boko Haram enslavement and cruel slaughter of Nigerian citizens he swore to protect?  Another four years of a bumbling government, the butt of universal jokes?  Another four years of new set of Chibok girls capture and the carnage at Federal Government College, Buni-Yadi?

    Indeed, at his Abuja declaration carnival, Jonathan and friends exuded the satanic triumphalism of Shakespeare’s Macbeth after his killing of King Duncan. But who does not know, as Macbeth tragically found out, it was only a calm before a terrible storm?

    The so-called declaration only secured the vacuity of the Jonathan political essence, and its racketeering hangers-on. The sweetest revenge?  Hefty punishment with the vote.  After all, those the gods want to destroy, they first make mad!