It is great that terrorists have been pushed out of Baga, Bama and others but how does that translate into electoral advantage for Jonathan in places like Chibok where hundreds of families are still grieving over their missing daughters? How does it help him with families across Adamawa, Yobe, Borno, Gombe and Kano who lost husbands, wives and children as the insurgents rampaged unchecked over the last four years?
Six weeks have evaporated like a puff in the wind and the postponed day of reckoning is finally upon us. Voters would pass judgment on All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, General Muhammadu Buhari’s, past and present and decide whether they want to go on an adventure with him and his party.
Crucially, the March 28 election is even more about President Goodluck Jonathan and his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) being placed on a scale by the people they have ‘served’ over the last four years.
The polls are not about Prof. Attahiru Jega and his performance as chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). Neither are they about the alleged sins of former Lagos State Governor, Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) campaign has devoted countless millions producing negative advertising and hate documentaries against the two men you would be forgiven for thinking Jonathan was running against them instead of Buhari.
If the president had sat out this election, next Saturday’s contest would have been defined in a different way. But he’s on the ballot seeking four more years in office: that automatically transforms the polls into a referendum on his tenure.
In seeking a revalidation of his contract with Nigeria he will face the same parameters used to judge people who want a renewal. First there has to be a review of what has been done in the initial term and a decision made as to whether the individual who has put himself forward is the man to lead the organisation going forward.
So what has Jonathan made of the four-year mandate he received in 2011? Has he done enough to earn a fresh contract? Will Nigeria be a safer, respected and more prosperous country if left in his care for another four years?
Granted that most voting decisions are neither objective nor rational, I still believe that a sizeable number of voters – especially the undecided – should be asking these questions as they make up their minds whether to return him to the presidency.
Jonathan took office with overwhelming goodwill. Riding on the back of the national need for healing following the unscripted demise of Umaru Yar’Adua, he brushed aside Buhari’s 2011 challenge. People wanted him to succeed and expectations were high because he and his late boss were Nigeria’s first university-educated executive presidents.
It was refreshing that he was from the Ijaw minority in the South-South zone – breaking the usual three-cornered Hausa-Igbo-Yoruba power struggles. His grass-to-grace story was attractive and romantic – offering the possibility of a fresh start under a humble head of state after a succession of arrogant and autocratic leaders.
That goodwill translated into him getting 10 million votes more than Buhari. Although many still dispute those figures as rigged, they are the ones recorded by INEC for posterity. They are also the ones upheld by the courts.
Usually, incumbents face very testing elections when they seek a second term. The margin of victory often contracts when compared to the first time around. However, it takes some special talent to blow away 10 million votes such that, today, Jonathan stands on the verge of making history as the first incumbent president in Nigeria to lose his reelection bid. How did things get this bad for him?
Although expectations were high, the new president raised the bar even further by promising ‘transformation’. But instead of a landscape transformed, what we have after four years is a country devastated on many fronts.
Jonathan apologists have printed reams of glossy paper itemising his supposed great achievements. They churn out statistics to open our eyes to the transformation we cannot readily appreciate. The things I always remember are that he established 12 federal universities, built almajiri schools and Nigeria’s economy became Africa’s largest under his watch.
This list might impress party hacks but that’s as far as it goes. There was a time where opening universities was a big deal. Not anymore. Private individuals are establishing them all over the place.
As for the size of the economy, the tag is just a salve for our egos and not much more. Nigeria’s economy might be the biggest on the continent but that honour is vitiated by one of the iconic images of the Jonathan era: the National Stadium, Abuja packed full of the unemployed who had gathered for an ultimately fatal Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) recruitment exercise last year.
Ours is the largest economy in Africa at a time when our currency is lying prostrate against major currencies of the world. It would have been a boon if were exporting goods, but because we are enslaved to imported petrol this massive economy is headed farther and farther into the woods.
In any event, I cannot imagine that Jonathan and his team – with a straight face – would claim that the ‘magic’ they performed in the last four years was what shot the country atop the continental economic rankings.
The problem with Jonathan’s ‘achievements’ is captured by a link that his online supporters keep retweeting. It says something like ‘If you are from Ogun State please click here to see how GEJ has transformed your state’! If I live in a community and cannot see this so-called transformation then it is just fiction – or whatever has been achieved is being oversold as transformative.
If Jonathan’s positives are not resonating, it is because his negatives are so overwhelming. Every regime has its fair share of scandals but this one seems to have a manufacturing plant that spews out sleaze. Over the last four years it has staggered from tales of billions of dollars allegedly missing from the NNPC, to flamboyant ministers blowing millions on armoured limousines to bungled arms purchase runs leading to embarrassing seizure of millions of dollars traced to the government in far away South Africa.
Just as the image of the president was taking a battering internally, the country was not doing better externally. The phantom phone call scandal involving Morocco left the president in the ridiculous position of having to deny something that his government officials had been vehemently insisting happened. It is not without reason that the administration’s critics call it ‘clueless.’
Another defining character of the last four years has been the subversion of the rule of law and the destruction of institutions. It’s as if from day one the scheming for a second term took hold of the president. In order for that ambition to be realised, key national institutions have been virtually destroyed and compromised. The police, DSS and armed forces have at various times been pressed into partisan political assignments on behalf of the president and PDP in ways that are just nauseating.
But ultimately the institution mostly badly affected by Jonathan’s desperate craving for another term is the ruling party. The PDP is going into elections in its worst shape since 1999. Under the incumbent, distinguished members have been deserting in droves as ambitions and interests clashed. Each time this happened, Aso Rock court jesters would dismiss the departed as paperweights who the ruling party could do without.
Governors Rotimi Amaechi, Rabiu Kwankwaso, Magatarkarda Wamakko, Abdulfatah Ahmed and Murtala Nyako were casually allowed to go without the political implications of losing five states to the opposition sinking in. Former national chairmen like Barnabas Gemade, Audu Ogbeh and Kawu Baraje left. House of Representatives Speaker Aminu Tambuwal and one of his predecessors Ghali Umar Na’Abba have jumped ship. So also have numerous senators, representatives and ex-ministers.
Add to that list of heavyweights former Vice President Atiku Abubakar who was humiliated out of the party because his continued presence was an obstacle to Jonathan’s second term bid. After dismissing him and calling him names, guess who came calling under the cover of darkness at the former VP’s Yola home a few days ago begging for support? Candidate Jonathan!
Even former President Olusegun Obasanjo who always swore he was PDP for life ended up tearing his party card in a farcical ceremony at his Abeokuta ward. His departure was celebrated too. Much as PDP would want to pretend that those who left weren’t politically relevant, these departures are akin to losing blood or limbs – the organism invariably becomes weaker.
One of the challenges that came to define the Jonathan years is the insurgency in the North-East. Several months after they carved out a caliphate on Nigerian soil, an African multinational force in collaboration with the Nigerian military has driven Boko Haram out of most towns they occupied.
A few days ago, Jonathan was quoted as boasting that the sect would be defeated within a month. There’s no question that the president and ruling party expect an electoral boost from the victories of the military.
But such unrealistic expectations come from a profound misunderstanding of the dynamics at play here. It is great that terrorists have been pushed out of Baga, Bama and others but how does that translate into electoral advantage for Jonathan in places like Chibok where hundreds of families are still grieving over their missing daughters? How does it help him with families across Adamawa, Yobe, Borno, Gombe and Kano who lost husbands, wives and children as the insurgents rampaged unchecked over the last four years?
Where there has been transformation it was of the undesirable sort. I, like many faceless millions, voted for Jonathan in 2011. Back then we used to say we were voting for him and not PDP. The result was the creation of a pan-Nigerian mandate that swept him into office. Today, a president who emerged as a unique Nigerian creation has ended up the hostage of Ijaw clan chiefs and ex-militants.
A Nigerian president has been reduced to manipulating ethnic militias like the Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC) and the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) whose agendas are largely separatist in his desperate bid to cling on to power.
Jonathan has been executing a cross-country dash from pillar to palace to pulpit – bowing before strange gods and demi-gods as he struggles to stave off a defeat that is increasingly looking inevitable.
And it was all so unnecessary. Imagine what the political landscape would have looked like today had the ‘New PDP’ faction not broken away from the ruling party? Perhaps there were too many interests to appease and none would ever have been satisfied with any form of compromise.
Unfortunately, the ambitions of the president deepened the fault lines. The upshot is that in a few days we all would cast votes that could radically alter the political landscape. If his party is kicked out of power Jonathan would then have truly delivered ‘transformation!’
