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Tag: President Goodluck Jonathan

  • Fed Govt to stop unnecessary importaton

    Fed Govt to stop unnecessary importaton

    • Directs MDAs to execute comprehensive investment, trade programme

    President Goodluck  Jonathan yesterday  said  he has directed the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment to work with other relevant ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) towards increasing local production of goods and services in order to substitute unnecessary imports.

    To this end, he ordered the MDAs to execute a comprehensive investment and trade agenda.

    He gave the directives at the first Presidential Dinner for Top 100 Businesses in Nigeria held at the Banquet Hall of the State House, Abuja.

    According to him, the falling oil prices at the international market is a strong signal that the country could no longer rely on one commodity as a foreign exchange earner.

    He said: “We can no longer continue to export raw materials. We must produce what we consume and consume what we produce. We must diversify our economy, even though we know no one nation is an island.

    “In pursuit of this noble objective, I have directed the Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment to work with the Central Bank of Nigeria in the execution of a comprehensive investment and trade agenda to create local production to substitute unnecessary imports with our local goods.

    “This is to ensure that our country becomes self-reliant and to cut down on imports which drain foreign exchange. This is a game changer because it will re-position us globally and rapidly boost our foreign reserves.

    “The Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment and the CBN are already working with the Ministry of Petroleum Resources to cut down import of petroleum products.

    “They are also working with the Ministry of Agriculture to cut down import of food products, and with the Ministry of Mines and Steel to cut down imports of metal related products.

    “This will be one of our boldest initiatives to finally make our country self-sufficient.

    “I’m confident that if we are able to produce in Nigeria most of what we consume today, the bulk of investments required to make this happen will surely come from the top 100 companies.”

    Commending the top 100 companies, led by ExxonMobil, for their “significant contributions” to employment generation, wealth creation and poverty reduction, he described them as the heartbeats of the economy.

    He said: “You are shining stars, the central component of our economy. It is companies like yours that bring government’s economic policies to life.

    “This is because you are in the trenches everyday, investing, expanding and ensuring that your businesses keep working. The entire nation and I are very proud of you.

    “Although you may all seem different at a glance, there is something inherently common to you all: “You are all truly Nigerian, your achievements have been remarkable.

    “You have shown boldness and vision in enterprise and confidence in this country.

    “Through your investments, you have contributed significantly to employment generation, wealth creation and our overall economic development.

    “As the top 100, you represent the very best of corporate Nigeria, besides your entrepreneurial success.

    “We celebrate you today because your investments in Nigeria is an investment in the Nigerian people. Every naira you spent locally is one more Nigerian to drive this economy.

    “Each job you create is one more job to support a family. Each expansion plan you approve is one more project to support future generations of Nigerians.”

    Jonathan also acknowledged the contributions of millions of micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs), which provide the supply chains, operational logistics and distribution networks to the larger enterprises.

  • Jonathan pledges to link 36 states by rail

    Jonathan pledges to link 36 states by rail

    PRESIDENT Goodluck Jonathan has promised to link the 36 states by rail.

    Speaking at the 17th  Honorary International Investment Council (HIIC) meeting in London, Jonathan said the rail network would boost the economy and reduce the pressure on roads and highways.

    He acknowledged that no meaningful development can take place without addressing the challenges in the rail sector.

    According to him, with adequate rail coverage, the roads and highways will be better maintained.

    He said: “If we do not link state capitals by rail, our roads will not last.’’

    On upgrade and expansion of the roads, Jonathan said: “We cannot mould the economy without good roads.

    “Quite a number of companies still construct roads to their sites. This is not supposed to be so. We are committed to addressing this, we have been working hard and we have improved our road networks significantly.’’

    He assured that all federal roads will be resurfaced within the next three years.

    “We intend to construct new ones that we consider as very critical, especially one that would link Port Harcourt and Bonny, the major gas exporting terminal of our country,” Jonathan said.

    He restated the government’s commitment to securing the air space and improving airport terminal buildings.

    Jonathan assured that the government was determined to end the security challenges facing the country.

    The HIIC Coordinator, Baroness Lynda Chalker, said the organisation, since inception, has focused on various sectors of the economy.

    “This 17th meeting will focus on rail transportation given its critical role to the economy,” she said.

    She said positive news about Nigeria was over-shadowed by what is happening now. “We must work together to project Nigeria’s positive news and achievements because it is not in anybody’s interest to run Nigeria down,” she said.

    The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) listed other topics discussed at the forum to include opportunities and reforms in the power and construction sectors.

    The Ministers of Transportation, Power, Works, Aviation, Finance, National Planning, Trade and Investment and Defence also made presentations.

    The HIIC, comprising prominent investors around the world, advises governments on economic development.

    The areas of the HIIC’s partnership with Nigeria include reduction of corruption, attracting foreign direct investment and promoting private sector driven economy.

  • Automatic tickets: Senators give Jonathan fresh condition

    Automatic tickets: Senators give Jonathan fresh condition

    •Bank on Mark to make things happen
    •Senate President, Ekweremadu, Ita Enang, Ndoma-Egba, Adeyemi, other principal officers may survive

    AS the clock ticks towards the selection of party candidates for next year’s elections, automatic ticket-seeking PDP Senators have given President Goodluck Jonathan and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) a fresh condition.

    The Senators have come up with a “Doctrine of irreducible minimum” of auto-ticket for at least one returnee Senator from states controlled by the party.

    The Senators are banking on the President of the Senate, Chief David Mark to wrap up negotiation with the President and PDP early this week.

    But there are indications that only a few principal and high-ranking Senators may benefit from the application of the doctrine of irreducible minimum.

    Investigation by our correspondent revealed that negotiation on the fate of PDP Senators, who are seeking automatic tickets, has not been concluded.

    Although it was initially agreed that 40 Senators should be given automatic tickets, PDP governors rejected the proposal and pruned down the number to 20.

    The Senators however felt short-changed by the decision of the President and PDP leadership to renege on the “unwritten agreement” reached some few weeks ago at the Presidential Villa.

    It was gathered that the development has led to fresh talks on the fate of the PDP Senators.

    The Senate President is expected to lead the last phase of negotiation with the President and the leadership of the party.

    It was learnt that one of the options is concession of automatic tickets to some principal officers, high-ranking, performing Senators and chairmen of sensitive committees

    Some of them are Mark, Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, Senate Leader, Victor Ndoma-Egba; the Deputy Senate Leader, Abdul Ningi; Deputy Chief Whip, Hosea Agboola; the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Rules and Business, Ita Enang; Chairman of the Senate Committee on

    FCT, Senator Smart Adeyemi; the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, Ahmed Makarfi; Chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriation, Maccido Muhammad Ahmed; and the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Information and Media, Enyinnaya Abaribe among others.

    A principal officer, who spoke in confidence with our correspondent, said: “It has been tough negotiating automatic tickets for PDP Senators in the last few weeks. The governors have decided not to concede the auto tickets to Senators from their states.

    “We are having serious problems in Bayelsa, Cross River, Benue, Adamawa, Ondo, Delta, Enugu, and others.

    “This is why we are tabling a new option of “Doctrine of irreducible minimum of at least retaining one Senator per state.”

    A high-ranking Senator said: “We have mandated the President of the Senate, Chief David Mark to wrap up talks with the President and the PDP leadership on this “irreducible minimum option.

    “The governors cannot have their cake and eat it. This is how far we can go. They must also concede too because politics is about give and take.

    “I think we may end up with 20 to 23 Senators getting automatic tickets after the final phase of talks with the Senate President, whom we have all entrusted our political destiny. Mark has a peculiar maturity with which he tackles this kind of problem.”

    When contacted, a member of the National Working Committee of the PDP said: “You have raised a serious issue which I cannot respond to because we are still addressing this challenge of automatic tickets for Senators.

    “As soon as we make headway, I will let you know. But spare me some moment on this issue.”

    A Senator from South-East said: “The feedback from the Presidency indicated that the automatic tickets for Senators will be re-negotiated by our leaders.

    “We are looking at different yardsticks on how to manage the situation without rancour. Already, some Senators are embittered having seen the handwriting on the wall that they won’t come back.”

    The  President of the Senate and 60 Senators  recently met with President Goodluck Jonathan at the Villa to ask for automatic tickets.

    At the end of the session, the PDP leadership was mandated to go and consider the modalities of giving 40 Senators their return tickets.

    Based on the harmonized list, those expected to return are as follows: Mark; Ike Ekweremadu; Ahmed Makarfi, Nenadi Esther Usman, Smart Adeyemi, Atai Idoko-Ali, Barnabas Gemade, Ita Enang; Barth Nnaji, Pius Akinyelure, Boluwaji Kunlere, Philip Aduda, Enyinnaya Abaribe, and

    Uche Chukwumerije.

    The list includes the Senate Leader, Victor Ndoma-Egba, Bassey Otu, Benedict Ayade, Zainab Kure, Simeon Ajibola, Adeseun Ayoade Ademola, Agboola Hosea Ayoola, Emmanuel Bwacha, Umar Abubakar Tutari, Suleiman Adokwe,

    Also enjoying concession are Maccido Muhammad Ahmed, Abdullahi Danladi, Hassan Abdulmumin, Emmanuel Aguariavwodo, James Manager,

    Emmanuel Paulker, Heineken Lokpobri, Tukur Bello, Hassan Barata, Lidani Joshua, Alkali Saidu Ahmed, Andy Uba, Margery Okadigbo, Magnus Odion Ugbesia, Garba Gamawa Babayo, and Adamu Gumba.

  • ‘Jonathan’s reelection bid is not God-ordained’

    ‘Jonathan’s reelection bid is not God-ordained’

    The Spiritual Head, Episcopal Church of Zion, Abuja branch, Rev Babatunde Oguntimehin, spoke on why President Goodluck Jonathan should not seek reelection and sundry national issues. Excerpts:

    Some of the nation’s prominent preachers have said the elections of 2015 will be hitch- free and peaceful. Do you share their optimism?

    The honest truth is that there will be violence and bloodshed. What I must tell you is that God is not happy with the way our President is running the affairs of the nation. The Almighty God wants our President to purge his administration of corruption, impurity and criminality. His matter will be like the first King of Israel, King Saul.

    The poor masses are getting poorer and their cries have got to the throne of the Almighty. Instead of our President listening to their plight, his is only listening to the looters, deceivers and the propagandists who are only stampeding him into reelection just because of their own political and economic interests.

    Are you saying the President should not re-contest?

    If some of us cannot understand the things of the Spirit, they should be able to understand the physical things. If you give a man a job to do for you and he collects your money and does not do it or does it very poorly, would you give him another job to do for you?

    The answer is no. Spiritually speaking, he should not re-contest. If he goes ahead to re-contest, the consequences are terrible. He should organise fear and free elections, hand over to the elected ones, gives thanks to the Almighty God who brought him up from nowhere to this enviable position.

    But some religious leaders have given him the go ahead to re-contest that he would win and without any problem….

    … Look, who are these big pastors and prophets you are referring to? Most of them are not known in the spiritual realm as pastors but politicians, merchants and businessmen and women. If you read your bible very well and you fervently pray, God will reveal them to you.

    How can serious men of God get the time to be found always at the corruptive corridors of power? Do you see Pastor W.F. Kumuyi of the Deeper Life Bible Church, hobnobbing with these corrupt politicians? Go and study Samuel, Elijah, Elisha and the Apostles of New Testament, they never moved intimately with the corrupt people of this world.

    If you do not preach holiness and you do not even believe in it, how would your members apply it? Look, the bible says it without ambiguity: follow peace with all men and without holiness no one will see the Lord.

    All pastors must not only preach it but must ensure their members practise it. That is the only ticket to get to heaven. Unfortunately most of the people you call big pastors today would not preach it because they are merchants.

    They are just extorting their members. Unfortunately, judgment would start from them says the Lord. If you are Holy, there will be transformation in your life- in the way you dress, talk, behave and doing things generally.

    But serving God does not mean we must be poor and wretched, isn’t it?

    Are you saying if you are Holy, you will be poor? Infact, if you are Holy, you will be blessed by God exceedingly. You may not be superrich but you will be contented and comfortable. There will be peace and joy of God in your life.

    Most of the super rich people fraudulently got them and will lead them into hell fire. Therefore, what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and loses his soul?

    You said earlier that you saw bloodshed and violence in next year’s elections. What efforts are you making to avert these? Is it not proper for the men of God to arrange prayer summit?

    I don’t believe in prayer summits because it may lead into political prayer or hypocritical prayer which God will not answer. It may even compound the problems. Late General Abacha tried it and failed. Obedience is better than sacrifice.

    Let President Jonathan have a flashback into how God brought him up and shun all the sycophants, undesirable elements and the political jobbers around him and do the needful. Then, it shall be well with him and the nation.

    There are a lot of genuine men and women of God who are painstakingly interceding even crying unto the Lord for mercy. As you are doing this, the most expected beneficiaries of these prayers keep on committing evils and atrocities. It will be difficult for the prayers to be heard. Do not forget that righteousness exalts a nation but sin reproaches it.

  • Vital documents in suit on Jonathan’s eligibility stolen

    Vital documents in suit on Jonathan’s eligibility stolen

    A Lawyer involved in the prosecution of a case challenging President Goodluck Jonathan’s eligibility in next year’s election, Wahab Olatoye, has said the vital documents needed to prosecute the case have been stolen.

    He said some men broke into his office in Abuja last Friday and stole “most of the files containing documents to be used in the eligibility suit and other vital documents.”

    Olatoye and Adejumo Ajagbe filed the suit before the Federal High Court, Abuja seeking an order restraining the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the Attorney- General of the Federation (AGF) from allowing Jonathan and Vice President Namadi Sambo to seek re-election next year.

    Olatoye said his office at Suite 33, Manga Plaza, Garki Area 11 was burgled on Friday night and vital documents he was using to pursue his case against the President and other vital documents were taken away.

    He said he had reported the incident at the Garki Police station.

    “It is really a great surprise to me, when I was called on Saturday morning that my office had been burgled by yet- to-be identified persons. It was my office alone that was burgled of the offices in the plaza. The thieves came in through the ceiling and ransacked the files.

    “Although, they made away with the money I left in the office, they also stole documents, especially the ones I am using in pursuing my case against the eligibility of President Jonathan to contest the election.

    “As a plaintiff in the matter and a lawyer, there are some documents  I need to hand over to my lawyers, which I kept in the office. My computers were also destroyed, the office safe was damaged.

    “The matter has been reported at the FCDA Police Station in Garki. The police have promised to come on Monday morning for further investigation”, Olatoye said.

    Olatoye and Ajagbe are contending that by the virtue of provisions of sections 132(1), 135(2)(a) and (b), 137(1)(b), 142(1) and (2) of the constitution, the President and the Vice President elected in the same election and sworn into office on the same date were taken to have been elected for one term of four years.

    The plaintiffs also contended that by the virtue of the oaths taken by Jonathan and Sambo following the death of President Umaru Yar’adua in 2010 and their subsequent re-election in 2011, both of them were deemed to have completed the two terms allowed by law.

    Justice Ahmed Mohammed has fixed December 1 for hearing in the suit.

  • Jonathan approves committee to showcase achievements

    Jonathan approves committee to showcase achievements

    •DSS, Police, NIA, others form list

    PRESIDENT Goodluck Jonathan has approved a 23-man list involving government and Non- Governmental Organisations (NGOs) to showcase his achievements within the last four years covering major sectors of the economy.

    Department of the State Security Service (DSS), Nigeria Police Force, and the Nigeria Intelligence Agency (NIA) form part of the committee

    Briefing newsmen on the development, the Special Adviser to the President on Social Development and Special Duties, Mrs. Sarah Pane, said the event tagged international exhibition on the transformation of Nigeria will be declared open by President Goodluck Jonathan by December 18.

     

  • Jonathan, Tompolo and Delta Gas City

    Jonathan, Tompolo and Delta Gas City

    PRESIDENT Goodluck Jonathan was last week billed to perform the ground-breaking ceremony of the Delta State Export Processing Zone, otherwise known as Gas Revolution Industrial City (GRIC). No one was sure he would, considering his reputation for vacillation and preferential treatment. High Chief Government Ekpemupolo, alias Tompolo, an Ijaw repentant militant, had warned that the ceremony could be disrupted if it went ahead in disregard of their protests over the naming of the project and other sundry issues relating to the ownership of the project. They advised that the president should not perform the ceremony. But the Itsekiri people, on whose land the epicentre of the project was to be located, advised that the project should not be halted for any reason, for, according to them, even the parts of the project land claimed by the Ijaw are historically Itsekiri. The state government had waded into the dispute early in the year and believed the problem was settled. Apparently it was not.

    Though there was no indication Tompolo spoke for the entire Ijaw, but was instead fighting for his community which is contiguous with the Itsekiri, the problem sadly became defined as Itsekiri versus Ijaw. President Jonathan, an Ijaw himself, was unfortunately seen or painted as an interested party in the controversy. He, therefore, needed a generous amount of statesmanship to navigate the controversy and come out clearly as a decisive, fair and just president. He also needed a lot of diplomacy to pacify the warring groups and make everyone look like a winner. Rather than do these, the president emerged from the dispute like someone who had taken sides. By postponing the ground-breaking ceremony, the Itsekiri concluded that President Jonathan was merely being true to his Ijaw roots. The Ijaw, through Tompolo, unfortunately backed him and described his action as salutary.

    After the debacle of the disputed Soku/Oluasiri oil wells, in which Rivers State alleged that President Jonathan had sided with his home state of Bayelsa to take control of the disputed oil wells, the president should have proceeded with extreme caution in the Delta EPZ case. He should have waded into the matter after it emerged that Tompolo and his group were dissatisfied with the mediation of the Delta State Government. The problem was definitely not unmanageable, and the issues in dispute not impossible to resolve amicably. But the president left the matter alone, while his actions and inaction made him look like he had made up his mind in favour of the aggrieved Ijaw groups.

    In its real essence, the project should not even be controversial, and the president should have pointed this out. Originally planned to be located at Koko, in Itsekiri, it was later moved to Ogidigben, also in Itsekiri land because of its deep ports possibilities. It would begin as a gas making and petrochemical manufacturing industrial park, and slowly spread out into other industrial activities embracing other Itsekiri and Ijaw communities. It is in fact designed as an economic inclusive park beneficial to thousands of people. Importantly too, though it is an industrial city estimated to cost about $16bn and driven by the federal government, it also involves private sector participants, among them oil companies. Unfortunately, the project is now needlessly stymied.

  • Jonathan a hair’s breadth away from dictatorship

    Jonathan a hair’s breadth away from dictatorship

    For those who think democracy is alive and well under President Goodluck Jonathan, who believe that organising elections is about the long and short of democracy, Thursday’s combined security forces’ assault upon the National Assembly to bar Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal, from presiding over the affairs of the lower chamber should open their eyes. And for those who entertain the fanciful idea that Dr Jonathan is as honest with his protestations of being a democrat as his dramatic gestures and verbal flailing suggest, I offer to dreamy analysts his vengeful attacks against the opposition, governors who irritate him and his wife, the press which he loathes, and a host of other politicians and institutions that dare to sneeze near his majesty. It is doubtful whether we can find a president like Dr Jonathan, not even Olusegun Obasanjo, who effortlessly unites in himself such contradictory passions that pretend to speak to liberalism as they rhapsodise totalitarianism.

    Doyin Okupe, Dr Jonathan’s impetuous spokesman on public affairs, has struggled to dissociate the presidency from the police attack on the lawmakers. But there can be no justification for the horrendous attacks, the tear gas, the intolerable affront to the number four citizen, the display of ignorance of the police who continue to defend their atrocious behaviour, subvert the constitution, and see themselves as the private security organisation of the president and the ruling party. And there can be no hiding the fact that the attacks were inspired by the presidency and executed by presidential aides who have managed to convince themselves that their interpretation of the role and powers of the Nigerian president allow for the sickening brutality they exhibited before the whole world last week.

    The Inspector-General of Police, Suleiman Abba, it is clear, does not have the strength of character to resist the presidency’s unconstitutional behaviour, nor it seems does he even have the disposition and knowledge to draw a line between the president’s interest and national interest. And though he cannot claim ignorance of the limitations imposed on his office by the Police Act and the constitution, he is precisely the sort of official whose eagerness to please his employer is his lifeblood, as his withdrawal of Hon Tambuwal’s security aides showed shortly before he suddenly merited confirmation as the substantive IGP.

    It is inconceivable that Mr Abba acted independently in planning and executing the disgraceful assault on the National Assembly. The police claimed they received intelligence reports of plans by miscreants to cause mayhem at the legislature; but shouldn’t they have taken the leadership of the legislature into confidence and joined them in thwarting the efforts of the hoodlums and protecting the number four citizen? It is embarrassing the egregious and childish lies the police often tell. However, it has emerged that the real reasons for Thursday’s madness were connected with impeachment moves, one by pro-Tambuwal forces against the president, and the other by pro-presidency forces against Hon Tambuwal over his October defection to the All Progressives Congress (APC). It would have been foolish of the pro-Tambuwal forces to tamely give in to the police lockout, as some legal and political purists wanted, and then perhaps later resort futilely to litigation.

    The police were doubtless encouraged to desecrate the Speaker’s office and person because they knew the presidency was both remorselessly opposed to Hon Tambuwal and was willing to seize on any excuse to humiliate him. In June, at Hotel 17 in Kaduna, venue of a conference to which the Speaker was invited, soldiers subjected him to an embarrassing and provocative search. That was one of the earliest signals that the Speaker’s independence would not be countenanced by Dr Jonathan’s imperial presidency. The Senate did not see that humiliation as a dangerous precedent, let alone join hands to fight it. The harassments have since continued, culminating in the physical attack against him by the police and hooded secret service agents on Thursday. Since his defection to the APC, and notwithstanding the support he gets from his fellow lawmakers and the constitution, the presidency has been obsessed with unhorsing Hon Tambuwal using the security forces. Unknown to them, such attacks and subversion of the constitution in turn undermine their own legitimacy. They also misread the times, unable to appreciate how dangerously unstable the world has suddenly become, where revolutions and anarchy are precipitated by the tiniest of provocations. The mood in Nigeria is super tense and fragile. Does the rampaging Dr Jonathan know this?

    Though Hon Tambuwal survived the attack planned mainly to unseat him last Thursday, he should rest assured it will not be the last, for the Jonathan presidency will get increasingly desperate in its plans to get rid of the Speaker by any means, fair or foul. The president’s understanding of leadership, like Governor Ayo Fayose’s, is completely distorted by traditional and monarchical influences and a poor appreciation of the concept of multi-party democracy. In spite of his constant expostulation about democratic tenets, much of it lacking in depth and coherence, Dr Jonathan has behaved more frequently like an autocrat. After managing to subvert the Senate and co-opting it as an appendage of the presidency, he has sought to similarly castrate the House of Representatives. He would have succeeded had the Speaker lacked the character to stand up to the anti-democratic tendencies of the Jonathan presidency.

    However, Dr Jonathan’s limited success in stultifying democratic practices in the legislature has not discouraged him from trying over and over again. He is satisfied that the heads of the security services lack the character to draw the line between presidential orders and the provisions of the constitution. In addition, his aides grovel before him, desperate to keep their jobs no matter what principles they are forced to disavow. The Council of State is too polite and soulless to caution the president. Some geopolitical zones, especially the Southeast and the South-South, have also completely surrendered to the president’s whims, eager to dine with him and massage his ego. As a sign of final humiliation, Nigerians have uncritically allowed Dr Jonathan to exploit religious sensibilities, thereby dividing the country largely along Christian and Muslim lines. Even the usually questioning Southwest has embraced Dr Jonathan’s hypocrisies, hypnotised by a barren national conference designed principally to hoodwink and deceive.

    With the entire country taking leave of its senses and metamorphosing into a parched land of sterile thinkers, the House of Representatives quickly became, in addition to a small section of the media, the champion of democracy and liberalism. The situation required the president to seek for imaginative ways of working with the critical House of Representatives, and harnessing the opinions and suggestions of the opposition and diverse critics for the country’s betterment. Instead, he chose not to understand the utility of dissent, and prefers to either compel support or destroy the opposition. Sadly, the president himself is surrounded by aides, security advisers and military chiefs who find it much satisfying and rewarding to tell the president what he wants to hear, indulging in the practiced buffoonery that has laid many African countries waste.

    It is unlikely Dr Jonathan will caution either himself or his overzealous police over the Tambuwal affair. He is also unlikely to find intelligent ways of getting his hostage presidency to relate with critics and opponents in a democratic manner. Thursday’s attack on the Speaker and other lawmakers, the feverish intrigues to undermine opponents, the lack of imagination in the fight against Boko Haram, the reliance on hunters to fight wars, like Sierra Leone’s Kamajors (hunters) were made to do during that West African country’s implosion, and the subversion of opposition states and governors who disagree with the Jonathan presidency, seem all designed to produce perhaps the worst dictator Nigeria has ever had. By every consideration, we are in fact only a hair’s breadth away from dictatorship. If he is allowed, Dr Jonathan will talk wonderfully about the 2015 elections, but will surreptitiously devise means of subverting the polls with all the viciousness he can muster.

    Our carelessness produced Dr Jonathan in 2011, a man so ill-suited to the demands of leadership in a modern and complex society. If he does not drive a permanent wedge between ethnic groups and religions before the next polls, we would be lucky to emerge unscathed should we have the apocalyptic misfortune of electing him into office next year. Should that happen, the first casualty will of course be democracy, followed by an exploding country no one can manage.

  • A dream for Nigeria

    Snooper suspends all intellectual hostilities this morning to wish President Goodluck Jonathan well as he takes full charge as the third elected president of the Fourth Republic of Nigeria. This must be a moment of charity and sober reflection. Nigeria’s history has been a long nightmare punctuated by sleepwalking. This columnist is dreaming sweet dreams this morning and we urge Jonathan to become a visionary dreamer too, if he is to rescue Nigeria from the purgatory of damned nations. The odds may be stacked against him at this point but that is just the point about visionary imagining.

    Without dreams, nations and people must perish. Without hope life is a sour and surly joke. But being optimistic about Nigeria carries extremely grave risks. It is a deeply compromising ritual. To start with, analytical integrity may have to be abandoned. Hard facts on the ground may have to be ignored. The logic of events will have to be sacrificed. Yet we must dream our way out of the current nightmare. It is not the failure of nations and state collapse that we must fear. It is the failure of national will.

    This is why children and youths are the best nation builders. Because they carry no ancestral baggage of resentment, no evil memory of ancient tribal feuds, youths have a better capacity to dream and to will into existence a new society. But we are already beginning to poison that romantic well of national wellbeing. Our youths are gradually being sucked into a vortex of fear and trembling. The Other is hell. Ask prospective members of the National Youth Service Corps.

    When he was asked why he remained defiantly at odds with the Italian state and cheerfully hopeful about the future despite bitter defeats, stunning reversals of gains, persistent harassments, incarcerations and the murder of his colleagues and comrades in arms, Antonio Gramsci retorted that it was due to optimism of the will and pessimism of the intellect. Optimism of the will is the ability to dare and dream ; the capacity for continuous exertion and permanent struggle for a better society even where the intellect tells you that it will all be to no avail in the end.

    Gramsci should know.  He was a human exemplar. The great Italian journalist and outstanding leftist theoretician lived life as pure hell. A hunchback wracked by every conceivable human affliction, the great man produced seminal works under intense pressure and suffering. Here was a man sent to life-long jail by Benito Mussolini, the late Italian dictator, with the war-cry: “We must prevent this brain from functioning for twenty years!” Although Gramsci perished in jail, it was from prison and under the most abysmal conditions that he wrote his best works. You can imprison a man but you can never imprison his mind.

    Let us thank god for great mercies. Twelve years ago exactly today, the Nigerian military departed in a hail of controversy and ill-will. They turned out to be neither political nor economic messiahs. But they managed to hold the nation together in spite of themselves. It is still a tense and fraught unity with an American Nostradamus starring us in the face.

    In many countries, the military often act as the human incarnation of the providential will that wields together the heterogeneous forces of a nascent nation, forging an organic community from disparate nationalities and in the process turning a nation in itself to a nation for itself. But in Nigeria, the military goofed catastrophically and it was only by a divine miracle and the legendary luck of Nigeria that the armed forces survived the ethnic and religious fissures that have polarised the larger Nigerian society.

    But we cannot blame a river for being sluggish and tardy in midstream without looking at its origin. The Nigerian military began as an instrument of colonial pacification; an armed will of the metropolitan imperium. And for most of its post-colonial existence, the Nigerian military lived up to its billing as an army of occupation without an ennobling vision of a just and humane society or an enabling visionary for that matter.

    Yet in just twelve years of depoliticisation and re-professionalisation, we have seen how a professional military can act as a stabilising bedrock of the nation and of the political order, despite the suicidal antics of an errant political class. We salute the gallant men and women of our armed forces for this recovery of initiative and for their rediscovery of the ethos of the modern army. Had it been the army of yore, the past two years would have been sorely tempting indeed. Happy indeed is the land without the need for a military hero.

    Goodluck is lucky. He is beginning his real presidency on this happy augury of a military safely ensconced in the barracks. Secure in the knowledge that the military threat has receded, Jonathan ought to have his mind free for the great feats of social engineering required to return this country to the path of sanity and rationality. But he remains gaffe-prone and susceptible to unforced errors of political judgement which may prove fatal in the long run.

    Like all responsible electorates all over the civilised world, Nigerians must brace for the consequences of their choice. In the long run, the Jonathan presidency may be more important in terms of its profound symbolism than in terms of real achievement. While many Nigerians had thought that the social question of justice and accountability should be superior to the political question of regional hegemony and monopoly of power, the overwhelming majority of Nigerians had thought otherwise. For them, it is more important to lay down the rule once and for all that the Nigerian presidency is accessible to and attainable by all qualified Nigerians irrespective of origins or ethnic affiliation.

    For many Nigerians, then, the Jonathan presidency represents the first real people driven power shift in the country as distinct from the cartel-driven “army arrangement” that brought Obasanjo and Shagari to civilian power. But Jonathan is not his own creation and the myth of the “shoeless” boy who made the Nigerian presidency does not even begin to address the problems of power disequilibrium in Nigeria. Neither does his belonging to a minority among a minority group scratch the surface of the national question. A wound does not heal by merely clearing the pus of dereliction. It is just the beginning of the healing process.

    Yet the way history often unfolds in a neat and exacting symmetry defies human understanding. Exactly forty five years ago today, a monolithic north exploded in response to what it saw as the challenge of the five majors and the chain of events that brought General Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi to power. At this very moment forty five years after, the core hegemonists of the north are seething with anger and bitterness over the chain of events or what they believe to be the chain of conspiracy which has robbed one of their own of the presidential slot.

    It is to be stressed that neither Aguiyi-Ironsi nor Goodluck Jonathan initially sought to rule Nigeria. Both are beneficiaries of extra-human and cosmic forces precipitating sharp historical detours: the one profiting from a mutiny he knew nothing about but which decapitated civilian rule; the other a beneficiary of a biological accident which altered the power equations. But no man has ever been known to throw away a juicy piece of federalist morsel. Ironsi made hay by attempting to bring Nigeria under his unitarist anti-federalist jackboot. Jonathan has consolidated his grip in an election which has further exposed the hideous wounds and fault lines of the nation.

    As it was in May 1966, so it appears to be in May 2011. But if history repeats itself, it is not always under the same circumstances. Today, the northern core hegemonists are without their middle belt satraps, their eastern mercenary class of power profiteers, their Yoruba collaborators, their riverine subalterns and the military card they are wont to press into service when the going gets stormy. However, there are new kids on the bloc.

    The immiseration and de-industrialisation of the north under the watch of its own military and civilian scions has dramatically expanded the vast underclass of ill-educated rabble and casual riff-raff ready to be pressed into murderous service at short notice. With their burning resentment now framed as a political jihad against their local oppressors and now framed as a religious project against an “infidel” state the stage is set for a genocidal explosion on a truly industrial scale.

    What this means is that under Goodluck Jonathan, Nigeria has slipped into a perilous conjuncture which requires brilliant statesmanship and extraordinarily creative political engineering. Like Ironsi, Jonathan may be ill-equipped for the job at hand. He may not have the wherewithal to deal with what is clearly an emergency situation. But unlike Ironsi, if anything untoward were to happen to Jonathan, the apocalyptic meltdown and descent into hell would be such that 1966 Nigeria and 1994 Rwanda would be a child’s play.

    This is not just another political game. We have arrived at the limbo between death and resurrection. It is the luminous zone of childlike reverie and collective daydreaming. In their dream, most Nigerians will vote for resurrection. Let Jonathan join in the dreaming too. It is a dream for Nigeria, a dream for Africa and a dream for the entire Black race. The alternative is a nightmare that is too cataclysmic to imagine.

     

    First published in May, 2011.

  • A fretting president

    A fretting president

    Jonathan’s last minute change of mind on EPZ trip bad for his status as C-in-C

    President Goodluck Jonathan’s failure to commission the groundbreaking of the $16 billion export Free Zone facility in Ogidigben has further raised questions about his administration’s commitment to development, fairness and justice. The project, billed to position gas as an alternative to over-reliance on oil as source of revenue for the country, is expected to generate jobs for the youths and sharpen the skills of indigenous professionals to wean the nation off dependence on expatriates to run the oil and gas industry.

    Unfortunately, the project is now mired in the local Ijaw-Itsekiri conflict. The Ijaw have raised query over the location of the project, claiming that the land acquired includes a large portion of Ijaw territory, especially the Gbaramatu Kingdom of Warri South West, while the Itsekiri insist that it is wholly sited on Itsekiri land.

    We find it disheartening that President Jonathan allowed militants long used to threatening the peace of the country to frighten him away from performing a statutory function to which he had committed himself. Government Tompolo, one of the Ijaw militants who received pardon during the presidency of the late Alhaji Umaru Yar’Adua was breathing fire and brimstone if the President dared step down from his jet to perform the task. And, the President, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces and symbol of the state lent credence to the suggestion that the Nigerian state is now too weak to show it as more powerful than any rabble-rouser or ragtag army.

    We find it difficult to appreciate the recent decline in the honour and power of the state. In the battle field of the North East, the Boko Haram scourge keeps raging. Territory after territory keeps falling to the insurgents and strange flags are being hoisted as if to show that our armed forces cannot rein in the terrorists. In the Second Republic when a similar sect, the Maitatsine, attempted to confront the nation, the fire was quickly quenched. The might of state was demonstrated and honour restored. No other sect attempted to test its strength against the Nigerian military. And, when forces from Chad made a move to annex Nigerian territory, the Third Armoured Division rose to the occasion by pushing them back far into Chad. It was reassuring.

    Nigeria has invested so much into resolving the Niger Delta crisis than to have this latest challenge of state power and authority. The project itself would have helped to assure the Niger Delta people that the course of reconciliation had not been abandoned. One of the grounds of the unrest in the region was that money being made there was being invested elsewhere; that the oil companies merely despoil the land of the South South, pollute the rivers and then build up Lagos and Abuja. In coming up with a project the size of the proposed EPZ, the Nigerian state was taking steps to correct the impression. But then, the likes of Tompolo and Ijaw irredentists have chosen to throw spanner in the works.

    We accept the submission of the Niger Delta that the region desires closer attention from the state and thus, investment in oil and gas should impact positively on the land. But, steps by men like Tompolo would not advance this cause.

    Tompolo who had earlier been touted as contractor handling the security of the waterways in Lagos, without the needed competence and experience ought to have been called to order by Dr. Jonathan who should have shown that no Nigerian President could be deterred from pursuing the just cause. It is high time Tompolo, who is fast becoming a Frankenstein monster was cut to size. Unless this is done, other militants would rise against the state in pursuing sectarian interests. Tompolo himself could begin to imagine that he is a Commander-in-Chief of the same stature as the Nigerian Head of State.

    We also call on Ijaw and Itsekiri leaders and governors of the zone to call their men to order. They should conserve the energy being exerted in this war of attrition for the war against poverty. The Nigerian state deserves honour from all for so long as we all belong to it. The symbols of state must be preserved and whoever challenges the country’s territorial integrity, sovereignty or stands in the way of development is a common enemy and should be treated as such.