The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • Ebola: un-Solomon-ic wisdom

    ON the claims and counter-claims on the Ebola success, President Goodluck Jonathan has provided Hardball a delicious piece of un-Solomon-ic wisdom!

    Remember that famous case the Biblical King Solomon adjudicated: the case of the two prostitutes disputing over two babies, one dead, the other alive?

    King Solomon, after listening to the adamant claim of the two, suggested that, since both claims were convincing, the palace guards should halve both live and dead baby, and the disputing women should take each of the two!

    The mother of the dead child jumped at the offer, hailing the King’s decision.  But the mother of the live child demurred, pleading with the king to spare the live baby, saying that perhaps when it grew up, the baby would somewhat trace its mother!  Solomon promptly handed the woman the baby, saying that her compassion had proved that she, indeed, was the mother of the child.

    Hardball would crave your indulgence, dear reader, to apply this feat of Solomon to President Jonathan’s take on the Ebola success claim and counter-claim.

    Speaking at the Aso Villa, Abuja, at the launch of the Tony Elumelu Nigeria Empowerment Fund, the president declared: “No president (meaning himself) or governor (meaning the duo of Lagos Governor Babatunde Fashola, the arrowhead of the battle against Ebola; and Rivers Governor Rotimi Ameachi, who rubbished his perceived Jonathan government’s sloppy response to the threat, both on the other side of the partisan aisle) should claim any credit.  The credit,” he insisted, “should go to the ordinary Nigerians for their cooperation and buy-in.”

    Inasmuch as Nigerians deserved every praise for “their cooperation and buy-in”, the question is who provided the plan and offered the leadership they were buying into?  Certainly, not President Jonathan!

    So, the president hardly deserves any praise in the matter, for he wasn’t recorded as part of the painful chore when the battle bitterly raged.  Besides, nothing “just happens”,  as the president seemed to suggest, in his all-too-familiar boyish faith.  Someone has to take the initiative. That person was Lagos Governor Babatunde Fashola.

    So, you can see where Solomon’s adjudication of the dead baby dispute fits in?  Like the woman that jumped at killing another baby, simply to “equalise” the tragedy, the president is advocating denying the Lagos governor his due, if the president cannot share the glory with him! Disingenuous, isn’t it?  But perhaps it didn’t strike His Excellency that way!

    Besides, the claims and  counter-claims would not have arisen, had the president’s men not started their bogus claims; filing the Ebola breakthrough as a presidential achievement and another “proof” of Jonathan’s electability in 2015.  The president was not reported to have cautioned them to put the records straight.  In any case, not until Governor Fashola spoke on the matter, in his October 1 putdown.

    But even as late as October 15 when departing Information Minister, Labaran Maku, was serenading the president and claiming he was responsible for the Ebola check, the president did not still cut him short, blissfully drinking in the undeserved praise.

    Mr. President, give honour to whom it is due. That, in itself, is a form of greatness.

  • Rice, chicken and the scientific age

    Within one week, two events, one after the other, carried thought-provoking lessons for the polity. First was Ekiti State Governor Ayo Fayose’s October 16 inaugural ceremony at the Oluyemi Kayode Stadium in Ado-Ekiti, the state capital. His address on the occasion was a gripping study in self-definition, and even self-clarification. He seized the moment for a concrete reinforcement of his image as possibly a pedestrian thinker, or a thinking pedestrian, never mind if such phrasal usages sound like a contradiction in terms.

    Listen to His Excellency who informed his listeners of his intention “to appoint a special adviser for stomach infrastructure”:  ”I have forgiven Ekiti for removing me unjustly and I declare peace, prosperity, progress, employment, food and stomach infrastructure. You can put tar on the road but if I don’t have a car and I’m hungry, then that tar is meaningless. Tarring our road is wonderful but putting food inside this stomach is very important.”   He added: “Already, I am grooming your chicken for Christmas. I am getting your rice ready to do stomach infrastructure. When I defeated them, they said it was as a result of stomach infrastructure. I will banish hunger in your midst. I will work hard to put food on your table.”

    If it could be considered a plus in this context, Fayose proved to be a man of his word.  Among the first appointments he announced, he named Sunday Anifowose as “personal assistant on special duties and stomach infrastructure”. The move helped in defining not only the laughable seriousness the governor brings to the funny phrase, “stomach infrastructure”, but also his thinking (that problematic word again) on good governance.

    Now, let’s change the setting. The second happening was a ceremony in Ikeja, Lagos, to mark 2,700 days of Lagos State Governor Babatunde Fashola’s administration. Fashola announced the appointment of Dr. Adekemi Oluwayemisi Sekoni of the Lagos University Teaching Hospital as his chief scientific adviser. He said: “Some of the lessons learnt are the need for a Government Scientific Adviser to be our coordinator, not only for providing scientific information about infectious diseases but also coordinating other areas of science-based research, food sufficiency, water sufficiency, air pollution and all other things that are likely to affect our well-being.”

    It is interesting to note that Fashola was thinking about “food sufficiency” and “water sufficiency”, among other things, in connection with the duties of the scientific adviser. In other words, his thoughts accommodated scientific food production and water generation, and the developmental implications.

    On the other hand, Fayose’s idea about feeding the people not only lacks scientific substance; it is also deficient in long-term vision. His words suggested that he most likely wasn’t thinking beyond the elementary level of distributing foodstuffs, which is indeed a narrow way to travel in the modern global village with all the creative resources available to achieve social development. There must be a word for someone who manifests this sort of backward thinking. Shall we call him a primitivist?  It is apt to wonder just how far back he may likely take the state, considering that he is apparently living in a preindustrial bubble.

     

     

     

  • #Bring Back Our Bulldog (BBOB)

    In Doyin Okupe,the presidential bulldog roars! And its object of irritation is the BBOG coalition, which keeps on telling the Jonathan presidency the “satanic verses” it would rather not hear; showing it the hateful self-image it would rather not see!

    But as a dog barks out of fear and not out of might, the presidential bulldog roars to cover its fear and panic.

    Bring Back Our Girls has sent Doyin Okupe into a tizzy. On Chibok and its ill-fated girls, Goodluck has murdered sleep, so Jonathan will sleep no more — to parody Shakespeare in his play, Macbeth.

    But that presidential plight is driving the presidential bulldog irritable and excitable.  But alas! Chibok would just not go away!

    For Okupe, the Chibok saga would appear especially haunting, even on the personal front. The other day, this medic-turned-presidential bluffer was the reported author of the president’s own satanic verse, to cancel out the satanic verse it would rather not see.

    In an infamous parody of the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls, font-for-font, syllable-for-syllable, Dr. Okupe came up with the thoughtless #BringBackGoodluck2015. But the hare-brained idea drew so much odium, and its mass flak hinted at #ThrowOutJonathan2015, that even the president ordered its immediate scrapping!

    So, each time Okupe tries to show his loyalty to the chief, in his own peculiarly eerie way, he ends up in shame. Yet, he appears unable or unwilling — or both — to learn from his own exclusive debacles.

    The latest offensive of the presidential battler against the Chibok girls and their parents is his panic twittering. He called for the disbandment of the Bring Back Our Girls coalition — but who will do that: Police AIG Mbu Joseph Mbu, who for being reported as controversial (well, is he not?), bundled the reporter into gaol? Or the president himself, claiming imperial powers?

    Mbu may misguide himself that he can, with fiat, abolish citizens’ rights; and even flatterers may kid Jonathan that, with the famed humongous powers of the Nigerian president, he has powers to change a man into a woman or vice-versa! But as long as Nigeria’s democracy lives, and everyone plays by the rule, Okupe’s wish remains a pipe dream and rude nightmare.

    Still, in the interim, the bulldog is entitled to its barking rights (woof! woof!), even if it is all petulance, bad grace and wilful wishful thinking.

    The Doyin Okupe tweets, according to a report in The Punch of October 16: BBOG group are a “sordid affair”; they “exploit the national tragedy for selfish gains” and seek cheap attention; they “abuse and harass” Mr. President, “roaming the streets” of Abuja; they must change their tactics: “The present style is neither working nor producing the desired results” — says who?  And if that were so, why is the bull dog in such excitable tizzy?

    And the bulldog-ic sour grape: “Their outing with 48 people (so Okupe was busy counting!) on Thursday was a no-show.”  And the clincher: “With the poor and shameful outing by Dr. Oby Ezekwesili and her team, they should be disbanded and asked to go home …”

    Mr. President, please #BringBackOurBulldog (BBOB) before it  inflicts on itself irreparable harm!

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Fayose and the 1,000 clerics

    We are in for a good time. I mean we the reader and writer, starting from 16 October, 2014, Ekiti State would become the honey pot for juicy Hardball materials. Those who know the new governor, Mr. Ayodele Fayose can vouch that he doesn’t take prisoners. He ‘shoots’ from the hips and he can outgun any cowboy.

    Fayose is like the proverbial animal in Igbo lore that chews his food coolly while the hunter exhausts himself shooting at it – anu ana gba egbe o na ta nni! We expect to get, at least, one titillating gist per day from that quarter with Fayose now fully in charge. The game is on already. On Tuesday at a live television interview, he challenged all the clerics in Ekiti to report en masse and effect spiritual cleansing of the government house before he would step into it.

    Hear him: “I am expecting all the pastors; they would first be at the new State House to carry out a thorough spiritual cleansing before we enter the building…

    “Even if they are up to 1,000, they should all come for the spiritual cleansing… but any pastor who is not sure of his calling shouldn’t come.”

    This is a foretaste of the ‘goodies’ to come from Bobo Fayose, the only governor with ‘street credibility’. Imagine a thousand clergymen raining ‘fire’ on the demons that may have been implanted in the imposing new edifice on the hill. It would only be by the special grace of the almighty that even the building will not be razed along with the ‘enemy’.

    Whoever thought there was something untoward in Fayose’s victory (other than the power and ingenuity of stomach infrastructure) would be convinced by the upwelling of excitement in the state last Thursday. Ekiti shut down for Fayose, was the blazing lead headline of some newspapers. The state was indeed shutdown and the star of the day was in his elements; he did not let anyone down.

    A man of his own wiles and ways, he is not constituted to impress or conform to your ways or mine; he does it his own way regardless. Thus on his special day, his inauguration as governor for the second time, he turned out in open-armed, almost body-hugging, danshiki. For the uninitiated, danshiki is hunters’ dress. He matched it with a cap that would have better suited a flowing agbada and he covered his eyes with a lightless photo-chromic glasses.

    His turnout on his big day reinforced the victory of the street and signposts the days ahead. He insinuated so much in his inauguration speech that it would be business as usual, but this time in an unusual way, if you can decode that. He rode into the venue in a Mercedes Benz 200 1965 model; he told squirming multitude that the out-gone government had thrown the state into an ocean of debts totaling about N84 billion, though he had not even set his foot into the governor’s office yet.

    And here is the banger: he announced his advisers shortly after and feted the loyal people of Ekiti with what must be their just dessert: a Special Adviser in charge of STOMACH INFRASTRUCTURE. Wow, it must be a-dream-come true for the great people of Ekiti, a great reawakening.

  • Baba is back (BIB)!

    Babais back! And you could feel his victory, over his grovelling enemies, from his patriotic declaration, flush with triumph:  “Today, Nigeria needs all hands on deck to deal with our pressing problems of security, including the issue of Chibok girls, widening inequality, infrastructure, impunity, corruption, poverty and youth education, skill acquisition, empowerment and employment.”

    That is Baba, Chief (General) Olusegun Obasanjo, the Ebora Owu, Nigeria’s double president, under the military’s jackboot and under democracy, Grand Architect of Modern Nigeria and Grand Visionary of Contemporary Africa!

    How can that Buruji Kashamu, confused, confounded and misguided, perhaps by Uncle Sam’s bullying tactics, ever think Baba, the whole Baba of Africa, would ever be irrelevant?

    The living Baba of Africa, of course reminds Hardball of another Baba Africa (though late), the incomparable Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, the Abami Eda, who had fearsome death in his casual pouch!  Both were no great pals, to be sure.

    But the Abami Eda may well, from the great beyond, be toasting the Ebora Owu, with one of his timeless numbers, the way Baba has dismissed his grovelling supplicants, earnestly begging him to come back to the PDP: “Unnecessary begging dem dey call am for area o, oro ebe o s’ele …”!

    Baba is indeed flushed with victory. The stone the Jonathanians rejected (stupid people!) has, quarter to the 2015 election, again become the cornerstone!

    The supplicants: “Please, Baba, we apologise; come and lead us. Even the President (Jonathan) is waiting for you to come and lead us; you are our leader, we appreciate you, we thank you for your leadership and your courage.”

    But Baba has thrown it right back, and if you listen intently, you could hear his famous hyena laugh, ringing clear: “Rather, I beg and appeal to those who are begging me to realise that we must put Nigeria’s interest above politics — party or personal — otherwise, we will all be judged at the bar of history, if not the bar of current affairs.”  How about that for linguistic symphony, just to rub it in!

    Certainly, Baba is back (BIB).  But that he is magnanimous enough to reply with counter-begging, rather than a ringing rebuke, does not mean he is going to soil his bib with aberrant political behaviour, taking an “indicted drug baron wanted in America” for his leader!  What would he tell his friends in Africa and beyond?

    Again, Baba’s tumbling adjectives came handy to express his outrage! He spoke of principle (that made him sell the Afenifere leaders a dummy in 2003); morality (that made him, as sitting president and oil minister, suborn the cream of the industry to his personal presidential library project); honour (that swore him to the credo of do-or-die during the outrageously rigged 2007 elections); integrity (that made him deny the zoning principle after Umaru Yar’Adua’s death, hoping to pave the way for Puppet Jonathan); and character (that is making him turn against Jonathan, simply because he hasn’t turned the hoped-for puppet)!

    Indeed, the evil that men do live, in Baba’s case, right there with them!

    Baba (indeed) is back (BIB).  But his protective bib is not just for anybody — not, the least, an “indicted drug baron wanted in America!”

  • Abati’s spatio-temporal mutational wickedness

    You will have to pardon Hardball for pulling this old trick on you dear reader. Writers beat about the ‘bush’ when they don’t want to face the matter or are simply squirmish about taking an issue headlong. It is also a form of ‘Afghanistanism’; heeing, hawing, circumlocution, doing detours and taking the long or even the wrong routes to your destination. Do you notice that I have not only done it on the title of this piece, I have also taken you on rigmarole in this introduction; I confess: it is deliberate.

    So why is Hardball being unduly adipose and playing tricks on his reader? The issue is at once tricky and tacky and requires all the sensitivity and added sensibility of  one walking a land mine. It is about our president Goodluck Ebele Jonathan’s standing on African leaders’ rich list. Regardless of the fact that the list is in itself is a dampener for most Nigerians for deigning to put about six heads of some banana republic states before Nigeria’s ‘big boy’. Here is the presidency pushed to the point of denying the fact of our being downgraded. In other words, President Jonathan is over-rated they say.

    For once, Nigeria, the giant, the big brother of Africa seeks modesty, insignificance and inconspicuousness in the comity of African nations. Just when most Nigerians were ready to put the totems of sango, amadioha or ogun to their lips and swear by them that Nigeria’s number one man must be number one in all things in Africa. To say Nigeria’s president is worth a paltry $100 million dollars does not add up one bit; not after the recent rebasing of her economy which scaled her up to the position of the largest economy in the land.

    Though the list has been dismissed as fake, even then, how could Angolan President Eduardo Dos Santos top the list with $20 billion? Though Angola produces oil too, it is not in Nigeria’s league. An unknown Moroccan King comes second with $2.5 billion; Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea an unknown destination is said to own $600 million; embattled Uhuru Kenyatta, just few days on the job, is placed at $500 million while Paul Biya of Cameroun is ascribed to having $200 million. How then would our own numero uno, and Africa’s president of presidents, be said to be worth only $100 million? It comes across as the usual imperialist plot to demean Nigeria.

    Yet Hardball’s own comrade (is he now a come-raid?) in ‘arms’, now the president’s spokesman, Dr. Reuben Abati swears on the innocence of his boss. Hear him: “What that internet site and those copycat media houses tried to do was to give the impression that the president is corrupt… It’s absolutely untrue. President Jonathan has not stolen anybody’s wealth.

    He is a very honest and decent man. Those who know him know that he is not in office to amass wealth but to serve Nigerians to the best of his ability …”

    What can Hardball add? There must be a straight line between wealth and stealing? Our friend of the pen now on the other side has suffered spatio-temporal mutation and his temperament has changed. One only wished he was writing this; it was his favorite subject. Oh, space and time, how wicked!

     

  • Beggars’ orchestra

    When the high and mighty resort to begging, there must be something really big at stake. No, you don’t need to picture a beggar with a begging bowl. This is about a different class of begging, not for food or money, but for the benefit of influence, which could bring food and money.

    The national secretariat of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Abuja was turned into a beggars’ place, no insult intended, as the party welcomed Otunba Gbenga Daniel, a former governor of Ogun State, and his loyalists back into its embrace. The party’s National Chairman, Alhaji Adamu Mu’azu, could be said to have led the beggars, by virtue of his position, although he was not the first to introduce begging; again, no insult intended. He said: I want to join Governor Daniel to appeal to our Baba, President Olusegun Obasanjo, to forgive us. We are your children and we have been making mistakes; we have made mistakes and so we apologise. Please, Baba, we apologise; come and lead us. Even the President (Goodluck Jonathan) is waiting for you to come and lead us; you are our leader, we appreciate you, we thank you for your leadership and courage.”

    He was also quoted as saying: “Baba should please forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us. We are your children; we have made mistakes. Please, forgive us and come and lead us to victory in the 2015 elections. Baba should not throw away the baby with the bath water.”  Aha! So, this is all about next year’s elections, and the apparent desperation to win, even if lords have to behave like beggars.

    The President of the Senate, David Mark, added his voice, as one of the beggars; no insult, please. Mark said: “In any disagreement of this nature, the older person is always right. All of us in the PDP are appealing to you to come back to the party.”

    It was Daniel who launched the beggars’ orchestra; again, no insult, please. He was the first to tender his apology to Obasanjo, pleading that he should not abandon the party, and adding that in a quarrel between a father and his son, the son could not claim to be right.

    Interestingly, to go by Obasanjo’s response, which came by way of a statement, it would appear that the beggars failed; or perhaps more precisely, they can’t get what they want, at least not until they satisfy Baba’s condition.  By the way, why call them beggars? Well, what would you call people who beg, even if not directly for food or money?

    Obasanjo said: “As a former President…I cannot accept that the zonal leader of my party …will be an indicted drug baron wanted in America…I have national and international standard to maintain and reputation to keep and sustain. For these reasons, I opted to remain active only at the ward level of the party till the leadership does the needful.”

    Never mind Obasanjo’s grandstanding, which he is perfectly entitled to, even though it rings hollow, and it is so unimpressive. The question is: What will the beggars do next?

     

     

  • What Jonathan Forbes told Diezani…

    It is an outright dubious award. It is so dubious it stank even to Jonathan Forbes as he served the odious dish. You should have seen the grimace on his face and his body language as he presented the worthless token to our Petroleum Minister, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke. He knew he was suckering her but why not, let the Niggers pay. Even the dainty lady and her coterie of aides and favour-chasers knew they were being had big time but all is fair that transpires in the Big Apple.

    It would have been nice to publish the citation that earned our oil minister the Forbes Best of Africa Award in Leadership. However, her apologists have been assaulting Nigerians with what they consider her legacy achievements. They tell us she was the first female Nigerian director in Shell Petroleum but they failed to say it was a sideshow in Shell’s Staff Cooperative or that anybody whose parents were Shellite could easily join the firm and rise to any level. Neither did they mention the minority quota.

    They said she was the first female transportation minister and oil minister and Hardball asks: to what end? Just any folk could be so opportune. They said she introduced local content and I say the legislation was ready before she got to office. Besides, Hardball thinks that stuff is tokenistic nonsense. They need to find out what the Brazilians, Venezuelans and even Algerians are doing on their oilfields.

    They say she ushered the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) and I say what does that mean? Whatever it may be, she cannot push it through parliament in three years notwithstanding the huge war chest at her disposal. They said she has built oil and gas pipelines and I say why did she bother, she could simply have sold the crude in jerry cans.

    The cheek of it all: they said she has ensured there has been no petroleum scarcity and I broke down and wept for our much raped motherland. At what cost is this if nearly all the fuels consumed in this huge country are imported and largely from countries that have no crude oil deposit. By the admission of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Nigeria’s four refineries have been operating at 10 per cent capacity for sometime now.

    In 2012, after the fuel subsidy protests, Diezani told Nigerians that four Greenfield refineries would be built in two years. No earth has been turned anywhere for this purpose. The cost of importing just petrol into Nigeria in one year will build all the refineries we ever needed.

    If Diezani is truly a great African leader as Forbes wants us to believe, and if she was a Shell hot shot as her people have written, how come she cannot figure out that it is utterly stupid for Nigeria to be importing  all its fuels in the last quarter century? Does she not know that Nigeria is the only major oil-producing nation still importing its fuels? Does she not know that there are about 6,000 opportunities Nigeria is failing to tap in every barrel of crude oil it exports?

    If she was such a great leader, how come she could not see the strategic madness of exporting 6,000 products and buying back each of them at a premium? A thousand and one questions Hardball has for Diezani but what is the point, she will answer to history.

    But what did Jonathan Forbes say to Diezani as he handed her the odious trophy. Hardball was embedded and he can exclusively report that Jonathan said to Diezani: ah, mugu don fall!

  • Ogor, Boko Haram warrior

    Imagine a lawmaker losing no sleep as a lawbreaker? Take a look at Leo Ogor.

    His bona fides: Leo, the Honourable Gentleman, is unfazed Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) partisan, radical supporter of President Goodluck Jonathan, sworn anti-Boko Haram warrior and Deputy Majority Leader, House of Representatives, the People’s House!

    The Honourable Leo should strike a loud bell for the law and the sanctity of due process.  But if it is Boko Haram and its incessant mass killing, the likeable Ogor would rather the law be damned; and his own essence, lawmaking, be hanged on a 100-foot pole.

    It is, of course, his patriotic zeal in the virtual debate, between him and Femi Gbajabiamila, Minority Leader in the House of Representatives and stout opposition jouster in parliamentary cut-and-thrust.   The excitable topic is the double whammy South African confiscation of Nigerian money over alleged illegal arms purchase, otherwise starkly called gun-running.

    First, it was $9.3 million, the one that involved the Ayo Oritsejafor plane.  Then, the latest $5.7 million, that somewhat made its way through the banking system but which the South African authorities still suspect could be a not-so-lawful transaction.

    But our good Leo, clearly outraged at all the merry-go-round going on, when Boko Haram is busy killing innocent Nigerians, would not have any of the nonsense!  Hear the excellent lawmaker thunder: “If smuggling arms into the country is the only alternative to defeat the insurgents, we owe no apology to anyone,” The Punch quoted the patriotic lawmaker as bawling.

    No apology to anyone? Not to the House of Representatives and the sanctity of its laws, the very chore for which Leo was recruited by the people who elected him?  Not to the rule of law and due process, on which democracy, from which Leo and co enjoy all the lollies, is strongly anchored? Not to the right of the people to be ruled by law, not arbitrary temper, of which Leo is clearly fairly indicted; from his unthinking, not to talk of cavalier, pronouncement?

    How can a lawmaker clearly announce his eagerness to be a lawbreaker and still pretend he is no affront to the very institution of state, which has thrust him upon the Nigerian consciousness?

    But the doughty Leo is not done yet: “President Jonathan can go the extra mile (in outlawry?) to import arms and ammunition,” The Punch of October 8 quoted him some more.  “We will support him all the way if we must stop the slaughtering of our citizens like animals.”

    So, the House deputy majority leader would banish laws just to worst Boko Haram — and after that, what?  May the devil take its own?

    Still, don’t blame Ogor for declaiming his very essence as a legislator.  He has blurted out his sad blurts because he is only enraged that Boko Haram is wreaking a sad harvest!

    But there is something about wise ignorance that makes Nigerian leaders (or mere power dealers?) mouth sheer profanity, in patriotic exertion to justify sacrilege.

    So, crushing Boko Haram and following the law are mutually exclusive?  It is the making of a lawmaker as a lawbreaker!

  • Jonathan, the Anglican

    For anyone wondering about President Goodluck Jonathan’s religious roots and the foundation of his moral life, the man gave a helpful clue on September 30 when he received a “Primatial Award of Excellence in Christian Stewardship” from a delegation of the Anglican Communion, led by Most Revd. Nicholas Okoh, at the Presidential Villa in Abuja.

    In a revelatory moment, Jonathan said: “I grew up as a member of the Anglican Church…I have been a part of the church from the beginning. I attended the Anglican Primary School as a pupil. So I have to be very grateful to the Anglican Church that brought me up. I am what I am today because of the Anglican Church.”

    If Jonathan sounded like a proud product of Anglicanism, then the questions should arise as to what he was taught in that framework, if he was taught anything, and whether he is practising what he learnt, if he learnt anything.

    However, from the testimony of Primate Okoh, who probably should know about these things, it would appear that the Anglican Church is equally proud of him and his representative status. Listen to Okoh’s words in justification of the unprecedented award: “By this award, we affirm that you, as the leader and President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, has shared, allocated, distributed the resources of Nigeria fairly, equitably, and judiciously to the East, West, North and South of Nigeria, to all, including the traditional religionists, Muslims and Christians alike, to men and women, to the youth and children, including the Almajiri. This is the essence of this award. Congratulations. May God honour you.”

    Against the backdrop of such a glowing tribute, Jonathan must deserve hearty congratulations. What is more, Primate Okoh should be thanked for highlighting Jonathan’s perceived solid achievements in office, even though it looks like the alleged successes are not generally appreciated. Or more precisely, they are generally unrecognised.

    Now that Primate Okoh has supposedly shown just how fair-minded Jonathan has been, and possibly continues to be, it may not be out of place for the reportedly numerous beneficiaries of his non-discriminatory goodness to reciprocate. So, in the days ahead, specifically, considering the approaching 2015 general elections in which Jonathan may likely seek re-election despite his current game of calculated suspense, it shouldn’t be surprising if other recognisers come up with their own fancy awards in aid of the presidential second-term project.

    Just imagine how colourful and reinforcing it would be for Jonathan to be given awards by the representatives of the categories defined by Primate Okoh: “the East, West, North and South of Nigeria…including the traditional religionists, Muslims and Christians alike…men and women…the youth and children, including the Almajiri.” It would be a carnival of highly favourable publicity and praise, which Jonathan would, no doubt, enjoy.

    It is interesting that, in his remarks on the occasion, Jonathan made thought-provoking comments which, ironically, he may not have fully grasped in terms of their relevance to his presidency. Jonathan said: “But God has a reason for everything. I believe whatever is happening to Nigeria will be very temporary.”

    He probably doesn’t realise that his administration, warts and all, is one of those things “happening to Nigeria.”  Who knows how many people are praying that his time in office would be “very temporary?”