By Earsmus Ikhide
THIS is the 6th year the polyglot nation of a tens of thousands ethnic
nationalities have been looking up to President Goodluck Jonathan for
political and economic redemption. Unfortunately for the people, the
salvation they seek seems merely blighted by issues that didn’t
transcend ethnocentric or religious struggles. To this end, sadly,
these issues are exploited to political ends and into a sinking foul
political morass.
This is what Adolf Hitler called “spiritual terror”, in his book
titled: Mein Kampf. “I understand the infamous spiritual terror which
the Social Democratic press exerts, particularly on the bourgeoisie,
which is neither morally nor mentally equal to such attack; at a given
sign it unleashes a veritable barrage of lies and slanders against
whatever adversary seems most dangerous, until the nerves of the
attacked persons break down… This is a tactic based on precise
calculation of all human weakness, and it’s result will lead to
success with almost mathematical certainty”.
Mr President’s pestilential politics of “religious terror”, cloaking
itself as democratic path way – which is absolutely divisive – is to
quench the peoples’ bated breath against his ‘Transformation
Paralysis’ that is slowly winding by. Nigerians have suddenly
forgotten President Jonathan’s electoral promises some six-year ago
that echoed from the shrewdness of political emptiness.
“We will fight for JUSTICE!, We will fight for all Nigerians to have
access to POWER!, We will fight for qualitative and competitive
EDUCATION!, We will fight for HEALTH CARE REFORMS!, We will fight to
create jobs, for all Nigerians!, We will fight corruption!, We will
fight to protect all Citizens!, We will fight for your rights!”
Those were the exact words of President Jonthan to a nation that has
gone through leadership brigandage for decades. The president repeated
those promises for his 2015 re-election on November 11 as he did on
September 18, 2010. Nigerians watched the president declared his
intention again for the highest office in the land after daunting
credentials of failure at the same Eagle Square. This time round, he
could not elicite that unusual hopes in the mass of Nigerians who have
been tortured with his unfulfilled electoral promises and lurid
Illusions of governance in the last six years.
Those reassuringly promises of renewed hopes which brought him to
power in 2011 have become big bluff. His initial profile of a profound
thinker and reticent leadership gave way to bewildering cluelessness,
bowing rather to a ruthlessly graft-infected and fractious ruling
class that brought the nation to its kneels. The president who has
risen from modest circumstance, whose political ascent of the hitherto
obscure son of a rural canoe-carver and fisherman from the
oil-producing south; decent at heart, generous, chivalrous and
tolerant man become suddenly weak-kneed.
That President Jonathan falls for their bait has everything to do with
his leadership credential. Even though he has everything it takes to
pacify a country with simultaneous on-again-off-again rebellions in
the north and south, as a PhD holder with all the Petrol-dollars,
Nigeria is still firmly in the grips of power failure, more feebler
than what I experienced in Somalia a few weeks ago.
The populace whose civic responsibility it is to constantly put the
president to task on the sanctity of the nation’s constitution and its
inviolability chose to hide under religious or ethnocentric
subterfuge. A nation is in danger if a backsliding president is not
reminded of his avowed, “We will fight for JUSTICE” and the taunted
rule of law’s matrix. Nigerians are unable to put the president to
task over the withdrawal of the security protection from the number 4
citizen. The electorate are not concerned about the Nigeria Police
illiterate interpretation of the nation’s constitution.
Thanks to the Nigeria Bar Association, NBA, Nigeria Labour Congress,
NLC, media concerns, several rights groups and other well meaning
Nigerians. The NLC and NBA came particular hardly on the presidency
and distinguished themselves as the bastions of the nation’s
democracy. “We at the Nigeria Labour Congress are appalled by the
withdrawal of security details of the Speaker of the House of
Representatives, Alhaji Aminu Tambuwal, ostensibly because he had
defected to the All Progressives Congress (APC).
“The act is shameful, distasteful, unconstitutional and demonstrates
our parochial sense of power and very little knowledge of history. No
part of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria says the
Speaker of the House of Representatives should come from the majority
party. “Section 50(1)(b) only says, “ There shall be …a Speaker and a
Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, who shall be elected
by the members of that House from among themselves…’
“In the Second Republic, the Honourable Speaker of the House of
Representatives, Chief Edwin Ume-Ezeoke, was elected from the ranks of
NPP, not just an opposition party but the third strong , after UPN and
NPN. We have other precedents across the world.
“We find it appropriate to cite the examples of Mimiko and Ali
Modu-Sheriff, governor of Ondo State and former governor of Borno
State respectively. Their security details were not withdrawn when
they defected to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
“It gives us concern that our political leaders are determined to
learn very little about democracy and always seem too keen to overheat
the polity over things that count for little.
“The police and other security agencies complicit in this disgusting
conduct should hold their heads in shame. Herein lies the essence of
strong institutions which we have always advocated. “For those who
take pleasure in converting to personal use, public/state
institutions, today’s men soon become yesterday’s men. What goes
around, comes around.
“In light of the foregoing, we demand immediate restoration of
Tambuwal’s security details and all the rights and privileges that
accrue to the Office of the Speaker. It is not about Tambuwal, it is
about the office which he holds. “And in any case, only few, arguably,
will contest that he has not discharged and acquitted himself as
speaker. We would like to be on record that we will not fold our hands
while little minds threaten our hard-earned democracy. Nothing should
happen to Tambuwal”, the NLC posited.
The NBA presented its objection more aptly: “There is no crime in
defecting to another party and the IGP is not the person responsible
for interpreting what the constitution says on any issue. That is the
responsibility of the court”. “The deployment of the security
personnel is not because of a particular political party but because
he is the speaker.” “His defection from the Peoples Democratic Party
(PDP), therefore, has nothing to do with the office of the speaker.”
NBA added.
Questions earlier raised whether he will have the requisite toughness
to negotiate the minefield that is political life in the country has
come to the fore, albeit disingenuously. Now, he has deployed his
newly acquired grim stuff into negative use – meddling in the politics
of another arms of government. Nigerians will continue to remember
President Jonathan for a long time to come if he redirects his
combative energy into terminating the nihilist Boko Haram group.
Nigerians are not so sure Mr president is truly committed to routing
the Boko Haram militia. Evidently, they could not comprehend what
drives their leader to Burkina-Faso to contrive a truce between the
military and the toppled Blaise Campaore after 27 years on the saddle
at a time his country is being dynamited by Boko Haram insurgents a
few days ago.
President Jonathan’s promise of: “We will fight corruption!” is not in
consonant with his past. The President who eventually succeeded the
disgraced governor, Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, now granted presidential
pardon by the same Jonathan has a tainted path with corruption. The
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC did seize $13.5 million
from his wife, Patience, in 2006 on suspicion of money laundering.
From the foregoing, Mr President’s 2015 promises of zero-tolerance for
corruption-related cases; power generation, infrastructural revamp,
agrarian rejuvenation, rule of law, Stepping up to the Boko haram’s
plague and the like cannot be relied upon.
The President’s six years of democratic desecrations or political
corrosion are not mere coincidence of mishaps as he rose through to
the pinnacles of his political career. They are cautiously shambled to
determined end. This is the reason Nigerians must rise to end
President Jonathan’s charade, come 2015.
Erasmus Ikhide, a public affairs analyst wrote in from Lagos.