The haste with which certain individuals rush to pin everything wrong with Nigeria on President Goodluck Jonathan has made one begin to question the motives of these accusers, and these suspicion gets confirmed with the daily occurrences in the polity.
It is called the danger of a single opponent.
Quick question: What is the name of the Chairman of your Local Government Area? No idea? How long has s/he been in office? No idea, I guess. Okay, this should be easier. Who is the member representing your constituency in the House Of Representatives or in your State House of Assembly? What bill has s/he sponsored that will improve the socio-economic condition of the people in the constituency? Still no idea? If I was P-Square this is where I would say ‘Haba, habatically!’ But I am in a good mood today so, since most of us cannot provide answers to the foregoing questions, I will ask a bonus question. Who or what is the problem with Nigeria? I can almost hear the chorus: ‘Goodluck Jonathan and the PDP!’ Funny, yet sad.
The haste with which certain individuals rush to pin everything wrong with Nigeria on President Goodluck Jonathan has made one begin to question the motives of these accusers, and these suspicion gets confirmed with the daily occurrences in the polity.
When, on Tuesday, July 16 2013, Senator Ahmed Sani (Yeriman Bakura), from Zamfara State, raised a motion in the Senate that led to a reversal of an earlier vote to expunge from the Constitution of the Federal Republic a clause that effectively gives the entire nation’s imprimatur to a paedophile’s marriage to an underage bride, all the stops were pulled the next day on Nigeria’s social media with the hash tag #ChildNotBride.
Commendably, the campaigns have moved from ‘mere online rants’, as some described it, to active engagements with law makers. The attempt however by some opposition politicians to drag the President’s name and office into the ignoble affair is, to say the least, sickening. They have deliberately developed amnesia, forgetting that Senator Sani who caused the unfortunate and controversial reversal is not of the PDP but a chieftain of the opposition. They also chose to turn a blind eye to how the Senators representing them voted on the fateful day. The President’s Special Assistant on New Media, Reno Omokri, also got involved in the shameful mudslinging when he tweeted that it was an APC Senator that moved the motion, forgetting that, out of the 35 Senators who voted to retain the clause, 24 were from his PDP. This is what the mono-focus on Aso Rock causes; Blindness, amnesia, inter alia.
These Senators did what they did irrespective of their party affiliations. This disregard for individual political leanings is the type of synergy we need to employ if we must correct the ills as mudslinging never helped anyone. We are Nigerians first before belonging to our different political parties. Like it or not, humanity will always trump politics.
The rancour between Governor Chibuike Amaechi and Nyesom Wike, Minister of State for Education, has also often been blamed on the President with a total disregard for the personal ambitions of these men and how that can influence the course they take in their individual political navigations. Both men are from the same region in the state that produced the governor which makes it improbable for Mr Wike to want to aspire for governorship after Amaechi’s tenure, leaving the race for the Senate in 2015 as a veritable reason for dissension. Regardless of the Jonathans’ interest in Rivers State politics, the responsibility for the restive situation in the state should be put on the laps of these two.
I shook my head when I read of the visit of the governors of Kano, Jigawa, Niger, and Adamawa States to Gov Amaechi. These governors all have their states in the grip of Boko Haram terrorists but they ignore that log of wood in their eyes to go and talk about the dust in Amaechi’s eye. This is what happens when you cannot identify who your real opponent is.
Agreed, Goodluck Jonathan’s presidency leaves much to be desired judging by the way he has handled power supply, insecurity issues, corruption and allied matters, and the country’s indebtedness to others. The fact remains however that we have neglected other arms and levels of government as if they do not share in the blame when we talk about Nigeria’s under-development. It is high time we talked about electing the right people into every level of government. Except if we say these offices do not matter.
One last question: Do you know what your Local Government Chairman is doing right now?
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