The Goodluck Jonathan presidency is neither brilliant nor boast much claim to character. For evidence, look no further than its continuous bungling of the Chibok affair.
Dr. Jonathan’s is an especially noxious strain of presidential parasitism. Not for it, the presidential chore of freeing the Chibok girls, despite the arresting voice of the Oby Ezekwesili-led free-the-Chibok-girls lobby. But all for it, the prospect of presidential lollies for four more years.
By their body language, the president and his team would wish everyone forgot about Chibok; so they could “move on” to the far more important task of campaigning for — and winning — the 2015 presidential election: and why not?
The man that romped into office on the vacuity of good luck is eager, willing and ready to make his second term case on the vacuity of bad luck. Sympathisers to emotive vacuity abound!
It is, after all, the high season of demagoguery, cynicism and spite. Hard, rigorous thinking has since taken a flight of fancy!
With its latest manoeuvre on the Chibok affair vis-a-vis electioneering for 2015, the Jonathan presidency’s indifference to honour just boiled over.
The Nation, on July 3, reported a pressure group, which called itself GEJITES (which somewhat rings of Kegites, the merry palm wine drinkards club in Nigerian tertiary campuses), invaded the precincts of Unity Fountain, Abuja, with giant billboards of a smiling pair of President Jonathan and Vice President Namadi Sambo, virtually beaming down on Nigerians with their “good news”, these past four years.
But Mrs. Ezekwesili’s comments on this latest manoeuvre is instructive: the fountain was a public facility. All the BringBackOurGirls lobby wanted was the preservation of its constitutional right to free assembly and protest. Well and truly said.
The offence, therefore, is not really GEJITES supporting or opposing anyone. Like the Ezekwesili group, it is their constitutional right.
It is rather the cynical symbolism of trying to occupy the high shrine of the Chibok protest, and crowding out its message with some Jonathan tinsel; even as the president continues to show shocking impotence more than 80 days after the kidnap.
Meanwhile, at the same precincts, the Chibok advocacy group were holding a press conference marking the 80th day of the girls in Boko Haram captivity, a message the president and his men are clearly loath to hear!
So, from the First Lady’s Dia ris God o burlesque on live television, to suspected hired thugs smashing at peaceful Chibok protesters, to a lawless commissioner of Police outlawing what the Constitution has guaranteed, to the Police fending off save-our-girls protesters from Aso Rock, and now, billboard invasion of Unity Fountain claiming a phantom past and pledging a future of mirage, the trend is stark: the Jonathan Presidency lacks the brains to crack the Chibok kidnap conundrum. But it also lacks the grace to admit its glaring handicap.
Its forte? Neither brilliance nor character.
Still, which one is more comical: the fond attempt to blot out Chibok or the implausible deniability over GEJITES?
Again, GEJITES did no wrong by supporting Jonathan. The awry thing was their attempt to blot out a grave presidential failing which, in saner climes, would be fatal to Jonathan’s second term.
So, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) could tell to the marines its claim not to know GEJITES. That would be as plausible as Sani Abacha claiming not to know Daniel Kanu’s Youth Earnestly Ask for Abacha (YEAA), or even a first-term Jonathan claiming not to know Neighbour-2-Neighbour!
To stamp Chibok from public consciousness, knowing that the girls’ parents (innocent Nigerian citizens that have the right to state protection under the law) are inconsolable over the tragedy is bad enough. That is a clear presidential failure.
But even more pernicious is hushing up Chibok as symbolism for grand cynical manipulation, as electoral strategy. Just as the Jonathan presidency is trying to blot out the Chibok cries from public consciousness to hide presidential incompetence, the federal ruling party appears bent on its new-patented demagoguery.
To be sure: no political party is free of demagoguery, if it can get away with it. PDP tries to manipulate the electorate; and abuses “federal might”, as it did in Ekiti. The All Progressives Congress (APC) too is not immune to playing to the gallery. Politicians would try any trick to steal one on the electorate.
Still, the debacle of Ekiti — short-term debacle for the losing APC, which may yet turn long-term debacle for the polity — and its aftermaths are well and truly scary.
The APC lost though there was consensus Governor Kayode Fayemi delivered on his mandate. So, if a governor “performed” but still lost, what is the future motivation to perform?
On the other hand, the victorious PDP swept the polls on a virtually empty agenda. If President Jonathan, with his jumbo resources, had run Nigeria the way Governor Fayemi, with his meagre resources, is running Ekiti, Nigeria would not be in the present terrible pass.
If Governor-elect Ayo Fayose had done any innovative thinking and quality project implementation in his first coming, there would have been little need for the Fayemi aborted Ekiti renaissance, which Prof. Niyi Osundare, an eminent Ekiti son himself, sorely lamented in his trending poem, “The People Voted Their Stomach — Blues For An Arrested Renaissance.”
Yet, the Ekiti voters thrashed Fayemi, with nary anything to look forward to in the Jonathan present, or to glorify in the Fayose past — except, of course, short-term emotiveness. What is this then — the advent of an irrational electorate?
Again, the build-up to the Osun August 9 election is even more instructive. If Mr. Fayose pulled off a win in Ekiti, without articulating any superior ideas to the incumbent’s record, Iyiola Omisore is also fancying his chances, against demonstrable performance by Governor Rauf Aregbesola.
True, Mr. Omisore’s stiff play at the “man of the people”, ala Fayose, is well and truly comical: hiking Okada around, scowling down at two cobs of maize on a campaign romp, and buying popcorn at the corner stall, even as a sinister masked gunman hovers behind — and in a country of law!
It is tribute to the Jonathan presidency’s lack of scruples, when the matter is winning at all costs, that not his CP in Osun, nor anyone, is calling Mr. Omisore to order, as his masked gun people trail him on electioneering. What sort of election would it be, were everyone to invest in masked gunmen? A civil war by another name?
And for the elite of spite busy demonising infrastructure and innovative thinking, selling the emotive masses the illogicality of “stomach infrastructure”, simply because their own politics of the belly is not at all assured, what the polity risks is even more massive poverty — for which economy grows without sound infrastructure?
True, demagoguery ala Fayose’s Ekiti would thrive. But what is democracy without development?
Still, such self-destructive illogic would be a fitting tribute to the Jonathan presidency, which boasts neither brilliance nor character.
