Today, Nigeria is a nation dragging in the valley the way it should not be. This season of politics has been that of unworthy sensationalism, desperation and agenda distraction. For a while, democracy has not benefitted the masses in reality. Indeed, light has not been shining upon the nation’s darkness.
Yet, there are ongoing outlandish campaign promises of deceit and inanity, especially by the government that has been in control of power for almost six years – a full constitutional term and a half. As if all Nigerians are insensitive and irrational, they are being told what they need not hear, with plots against their will as if manipulation can resolve the nation’s predicaments.
President Goodluck Jonathan’s campaign started well ahead of the legal time through media fabrications by those who are around him in self-interest without being trustworthy to the settlement of the people’s dilemma. They tell cock-and-bull stories as if truth cannot become known. What they label as good works and transformation are vitally not what are in actuality. They want him to return to office for another four years to enable him reign in futility and vainness for a total 10 years. Yet, they know the reality that his comeback will make Nigeria hang about in dumped failures as he has proved his incapability to implement whatever he promises.
Only last week, the Ohaneze Youth Wing, the youth arm of Ohaneze Ndigbo of the South-east that massively voted in Jonathan as president in 2011 declared that they are now no longer happy with him. According to newspaper report after the Peoples Democratic Party’s presidential team had passed through the region on campaign rally, the youth organization declared that Jonathan has failed to fulfill numerous promises made to the Igbo people that gave him 98% of their votes. In its fuming communiqué after an emergency meeting in Enugu, it declared in contrary to the benefitting egotistical few that the President failed to keep his assurance of restoring the coal industry in Enugu and also futile building of the Second Niger Bridge through public/private partnership pact.
Quoted: “Our genuine demands, including the revitalisation of Enugu Colliery/construction of a coal fired power plant, construction of the Azumini seaport, acceleration of the dredging/expansion of the Port Harcourt and Calabar seaports, the exploration of the oil deposits of the Orashi and Anambra River Basins, etc have been ignored.”
If a leader failed to fulfill his promise to his own people who enthroned him, that means he was worse in performance to other sides of the country that didn’t vote much for him. Or what will the faded Afenifere accept as the benefit of Jonathan administration to the South-west in the last six years other than the confusing allocation of a federal university to Ekiti State, the derelict repairs of Oshodi-Apapa Expressway in Lagos and the dragging Lagos-Ibadan Expressway which links metropolitan Lagos to other parts of the country?
In today’s political campaign, the President keeps promising to create not less than two million jobs annually when he has not created one million jobs in six years and remains unable to explain why his government cannot pay the salaries of his civil servants and the pension of retirees as at when due. His ministers will be pronouncing Nigeria the way they want divergent to the way it is. Mrs. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala’s sweet mouth will pronounce Nigeria as the leading African nation in economy when poverty keeps flowing in the life of the masses like never before. Other evidently-corrupt associates of the President too would be assuring national development when all their stolen resources are being planted in already developed countries where the populace is in comfort.
Considerable funds have been wasted in the power sector as they are sold to several bungling businessmen whose priorities are to make much money even when there darkness still remains all round. It is as if nobody is recollecting Jonathan’s earlier pledge to give Nigeria 10,000 megawatts by December last year but could not afford what was barely 4,000 megawatts – which has even now dropped below 3,000 megawatts to a nation of more than 160 million people. Who is not aware that South Africa with 54 million in population boasts of no less than 45,000 megawatts?
Nigeria is being burnt today on the erroneous focus on politics which is ruling over the economy. More than N200 is now equivalent to one dollar in a nation where importation has become more principal than exportation of what is produced. Yes, some rice might now be less imported, but we still do not have the veracity of the government making agriculture the source of development the same way as the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo made it excel in the Western Region of old.
The crude oil that was bringing in much of the money being stolen by those in power is slumping by the day. Instead of having a leader who would have made refineries workable such that Nigeria could benefit from circulating produced oil across Africa, the lamentation today is because developed nations are no longer making our oil their priorities.
Isn’t it amazing that the President is consenting to threats by militants who are making money from the oil of the nation which they see as their own? For God sake, who is Mujahid Asari-Dokubo living in silliness, threatening to declare war on Nigerians who will not re-elect a lacklustre President? Why must he and those working for the President as Special Adviser and consultants, Kingsley Kuku and Government Ekpemupolo (Tompolo) be with a state governor talking tough as if they are men of value? Is that how to encourage people with intelligence to vote for who they only see as their man? And the President in power too has not seen the criminality by responding to the call of esteemed Gen. T.Y. Danjuma (rtd) to get the inane and incongruous militants condemned and arrested?
Please, who is of sincerity and devotion to the peace of Nigeria that will because of fear vote for a man who has proven his incompetency to handle insecurity? Boko Haram keeps wasting lives and threatening the entire country. This is a vandalistic group that has proven neither to be of religion nor of politics. I wonder, why can’t the same Nigeria that fought Biafra demolish the wicked terrorists destroying lives and properties of all manner of citizens?
The day President Jonathan was defending his inability to empower the military was most excruciating. His excuse that he couldn’t get arms for them on time is a depressing justification of the millions of the nation’s dollars still being withheld by South Africa over intended illegal arms importation (perhaps by militants?). Worse still was The Punch newspaper’s report of what opposition candidate Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (rtd) told United States Secretary of State John Kerry when he came to this country recently. “Buhari was said to have told Kerry that the Goodluck Jonathan administration had spent billions of dollars on defence and that a large portion of the money was diverted by those in power.”
Can faithful nationalists find it meaningful to follow a leader not moving actively against insurgency but would only go and campaign where lives of innocent citizens are lost on daily basis? Will the family and relations of the long-abducted hundreds of Chibok girls now vote for Jonathan because of Tompolo and Asari-Dokubo’s continual sham intimidation that Nigeria will break if Jonathan loses the coming election?
Won’t the nation decline further if people are enforced to continue to use a clueless leader under whom the nation has not enhanced in six years? Do militants want their man to remain in power so that they can continue to embezzle the nation’s resources?
After all, even if the failing oil totally fails today, the abandoned enormous natural resources which the Almighty God created in the land, just as oil, can prop up the nation better if under the right and capable leadership that will not allow corruption to stampede development.
What Dr. Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan says is not what he is capable and willing to do. He can promise, but he is not competent to transform Nigeria with his promise – in deed and in truth.
So, let the enemies of Nigeria’s progress go to war and God will arise and fight for His people.
