A rough observation of the current political developments in Nigeria shows a country gripped by a vicious, ruthless and violently repressive form of totalitarian kleptocracy, where the interests of the common man are being trampled upon with chronic impunity.
It’s mainly for this reason why any right thinking Nigerian, not only a northerner would dismiss all attempts by desperate opportunist sycophants to burnish the current system which has already become so blemished by the poisonous elements of official malfeasance, gateless corruption and legendary incompetence.
As Nigerians become more sickened by the rapid deterioration of democracy and the entrenchment of dictatorship, symbolized by politics of witch-hunt, intimidation, harassment and muzzling of democratic opponents who are determined to prevent the country from plunging into abyss, President Jonathan’s apologists have unleashed a legion of hungry spin doctors to distort facts in order to deceive ordinary people.
I read with much disappointment an advertorial by one Gidado Ibrahim, bearing the same title as this write-up in The Nation of Tuesday, January 14, seeking to denigrate Kano State governor, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso for voicing his frustration over the abject failure of President Jonathan to the address the predicaments of Northern Nigeria.
The writer who claims to represent one phantom ‘Coalition of Civil Society and Non-Governmental Organizations’, attempted desperately but unsuccessfully to exonerate Jonathan from his obvious failure to look into the sufferings of the teeming northern population with a view to improve their quality of lives.
As Ibrahim laboriously tried to present grotesquely false claims about Jonathan’s ‘achievements’ in northern Nigeria, facts on the ground reveal that the writer was only doing a hatchet job to appease his sponsors in return for some filthy lucre.
While I find it quite insignificant to join issues with the writer, it is very important nonetheless to refute the glaring falsehood peddled by the writer on the following:
• The Police Academy in Wudil local government of Kano state, which the writer referred to as ‘Police University’ was not set up by Jonathan but by former President Olusegun Obasanjo. The writer had used the term ‘university’ to deceptively give an impression that Jonathan built a new police institution.
• The Kano-Zaria-Abuja expressway and others across the north were actually rehabilitated by late President Umaru Yar’adua under whom Jonathan served as deputy. Remember, the Abuja Lokoja Road claimed more than 120 lives in 2013 alone! And still claiming more
• Malam Aminu Kano International Airport is said to be remodeled, but the federal government, despite claiming to spend billions of naira on the project could not equip its terminal with most basic facilities. It was Governor Kwankwaso who made the international terminal of the airport functional by donating most of the facilities including security and luggage scanners. This is aside from the plot by the Minister of Aviation Stella Oduah to divert to Enugu, most of the foreign airlines, including Turkish, Etihad, Ethiopian and Emirate airlines that indicated interest to be plying the Kano route.
• The ‘Almajiri schools’ purportedly set up by the federal government are empty projects that are yet to demonstrate any usefulness. But Governor Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso’s down-to-earth policy on education has boosted children’s enrolment rate by millions because he provides each child with free sets of uniform and free meals apart from instructional materials and conducive learning and teaching environment.
• Jonathan’s contributions in the agricultural development of Northern Nigeria only exist in Ibrahim’s imagination not on our vast and fertile agricultural lands. It is the same with our dams.
• The five-month old strike by university lecturers across the country has belied any claims by the Jonathan administration, of its commitment to education. Educational development is determined by quality and not just quantity of the institutions set up by government. • Also, contrary to claims that the Jonathan administration has completed the dredging of River Niger, the President had since 2010 stopped the project and diverted the N19 billion meant for the project to his native Niger Delta for ‘shoreline protection and land reclamation’. The dredging project was initiated by late President Umaru Yar’adua.
• The Zungeru Power project is a rip-off because though it has a capacity to generate only 700 megawatts, the project is expected to gulp about $1.3 billion dollars or N212 billion, making it more expensive than the world’s biggest hydro-power station – The Three Gorges Dam in China which generates 22,550 megawatts. Even at that, no meaningful steps have been taken to continue the project.
Considering the foregoing, President Jonathan has undoubtedly failed the North just as Governor Kwankwaso asserts and true patriotic democrats like him have more than a moral obligation to take all necessary steps within the ambits of law to embark on the crusade to reclaim the country from his asphyxiating leadership, which is only interested in protecting parochial, self-seeking, self-serving and dangerously nepotistic interests.
The only reason the agents of the federal government are determined to crush the timely crusade of patriotic Nigerians like Kwanwakso is to allow President Jonathan to foist himself in 2015, on a country that has become so sick and disgruntled with his failed style of leadership.
Therefore all right-thinking Nigerians should join visionary leaders such as Kwankwaso to dismantle this fortress of corruption and incompetence that could derail Nigeria’s democratic development and take the country to medieval-era penury and suffering that we would forever live to regret.
• Danladi wrote from Kakuri, Kaduna State.
