I’m afraid, he is the only one that can help himself
It is not in my character to react to people’s comments. But I found the comment by Jide Ajani of Vanguard titled “Goodluck Jonathan: A president in need of help” quite interesting. The beautiful piece was published in the May 11, 2014 edition of Vanguard. The piece was a recap of the Presidential Chat of May 4 and the dinner that followed.
It is not that Ajani said anything that we did not know. But the beauty in his write-up is that what he said was not based on conjecture or wild imaginations, but an account of what took place at the president’s residence. When, for instance, we say Nigeria’s rulers are surrounded by sycophants, we tend to see the sycophants as some ghosts that mill around the seat of power, ever ready to sing the praise of whoever is in charge. This ‘dance-on-we-are-solidly-behind-you orchestra’ is as old as the country’s seat of power; perhaps older. I cannot recollect any government where they did not feature; interestingly, they almost always have the ears of those in power. This means that our rulers love being deceived or flattered. The sycophants last so long in government while those who say it as it is don’t.
Those who have worked closely with some of our political rulers, including presidents, governors and even local government chairmen know that this is one of their worst challenges. A former governor in the south-west had an information and strategy team when he became governor. For the better part of his first term, this team functioned well and was able to help the government, which also made the job easy for the team by its initial impressive performance. But decline set in when political considerations and petty ego took over, with sycophants making the governor to see only what he wanted to see.
There is no doubt that it takes the grace of God for one to be able to maintain a cool head while occupying certain influential positions. One will indeed pity these rulers when you see the caliber of people deceiving them (the rulers) usually for what to eat and sometimes for inexplicable reasons when one realises that some of the sycophants are men and women of means and not those of straw. Even many of us who only have the privilege of managing a few hundreds of people sometimes become something else with the little powers in our hands.
Most of us saw the last presidential chat and we rated it poorly as usual; vintage President Jonathan. But, according to Ajani, the president’s handlers hailed the performance. Hear him: “At the end of the two-hour session, the coterie of staff and a few friends were all smiles. ‘Mr. President, well done’; ‘Mr. President, that was a good one’; ‘Mr. President, that was great”. Those were the comments from virtually everyone around. So, you needed to do a reality check: Were these guys referring to the same media chat that had just ended; a chat that saw Mr. President avoiding some questions and instead launching into a series of expeditions? But then, you were quickly reminded that by Mr. President’s own standards, this was one of the best performances”.
Now, to specifics, quoting Ajani again: “On the question of corruption and the NNPC, President Jonathan missed some points. He did not need to attempt to define corruption and its relationship with stealing. He did not also need to drag the legislature into it – by saying he smelt legislative dictatorship in the conduct of the activities of the House of Representatives; he also did not need to attempt to draw a parallel between corruption, inflated pump-head price of petrol and the popular rally of January 2012.
“On the need to curtail the excesses of petroleum products’ marketers who are selling beyond the official rate, President Jonathan sounded very distant. There is the Department of Petroleum Resources, DPR, statutorily mandated to monitor activities in the sector. But Mr. President first embarked on a voyage of disbelief; that he finds it difficult to believe that the claim was true; and that Nigerians were responsible for the serial inhumanity against fellow Nigerians. Then suddenly, Mr. President remembered that there was DPR which, he admitted, should begin to do its job”.
This is what Mr. President’s aides were commending. Curiously, Ajani singled out presidential spokesman Reuben Abati and Labaran Maku, the Minister of Information, as being different from the pack. Well, I do not know whether he merely said this to humour them because, I may not know Maku well but the Abati I knew would have written volumes and volumes of negative things about the Jonathan presidency if he is not involved. I said I do not know if he is humouring the duo because Ajani spoke of Maku in the same piece thus: “Watching our Information Minister on CNN, shouting and attempting to use decibel to break down their microphone smacks of panic response. Yet, I can bet you, as indecorous as that action may be, there would be some people in the Villa who would say, ‘Well done, Mr. Minister,’ ‘You did well, Mr. Minister’.
Of course, we do not need Ajani to tell us that people who commended this kind of terrible media chat were jesters. I have no problem with the president surrounding himself with jesters, but they must be quality ones and not those who “cracked jokes that were at once dry and unproductive”, as Ajani puts it.. With this kind of jesters in the Villa, the president’s sense of judgment in recruiting his aides or even choosing those around him becomes questionable.
Even if they are deceiving someone and those deceiving the person pretend not to know they are deceiving him, the person being deceived ought to know when he is being flattered. If your handlers say you had a great performance today and the next day, the media and other opinion moulders condemn the very thing they said was a scintillating performance, then you should know something is wrong somewhere. The worst disservice many Nigerian rulers do to themselves is to see every criticism as being politically motivated. If, for instance, any news medium said the president did well during that chat, that medium would be shooting itself in the foot. If it persists along that line in its treatment of matters from or concerning the Jonathan presidency, it is only a matter of time for that medium to begin to rely on crutches from the seat of power instead of its own integrity and professionalism for survival, and consequently consign itself to history. President Jonathan would be naive to think that the media can do well by reporting that he is doing well when even the blind can see that he is not. The media mirror the society even as they set the agenda.
Matters are not helped by President Jonathan’s kith and kin in the Niger Delta who believe that their ‘son’ is being vilified because of where he comes from. I find this sickening because the president has not just ‘naturalised’ as a south-south indigene; we knew he was from there when he was massively voted in in 2011. If today the music has changed or is fast changing, it has nothing to do with where the president comes from; it is more of a function of a people who are disappointed that the man they invested a lot of hope in three years back does not have an idea of how to solve any of the country’s multifarious problems.
Then the president’s wife, Patience. We know that there is little we can do concerning what God has joined together. We also know that love is thicker than water; even if Mr President has not done full disclosure by giving us an idea of how madam performs at the home front, her marital and conjugal duties and all, but we know her meddlesomeness in governance is unhelpful to her husband and the country.
One thing that President Jonathan should understand is that he cannot be doing the same thing the same way and expect a different result. I do not know if it is not late in the day for him to retrace his steps because if the perception of his government must change, then he has to do away with many of those aides that have been giving him the wrong feedback about how Nigerians rate him and his government. I know political exigencies and even the fear of missing their melodious even if ultimately injurious tunes may not make that possible. But the ball is in his court. As they say, ‘heaven helps those who help themselves’.
