Monday
May 24, 2010 |
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For those who ever had doubts,
Goodluck Jonathan is emerging as just another occupant of the office of
president, one with little or no clue that his job is not a ticket to
party all night and all day.
Last week, barely two weeks after Jonathan’s swearing in as “president,”
his wife took off on a trip to Lebanon via Dubai. That trip showed that
Mrs. Jonathan’s priorities stink. It also exposed her husband as
politically deaf, just another imposition for whom Nigeria is simply a
source of exploitation.
Saharareporters.com, which has become the scourge of Nigeria’s misruling
politicians, reported that Mrs. Jonathan’s business in Lebanon was to
buy jewelry. In a ridiculous rejoinder, Mrs. Jonathan’s media assistant
demanded that, rather than vilifying her, we should be in awe of her
humility and huge sacrifice. The report by Saharareporters, according to
Ayo Adewuyi, the woman’s spokesman, “smacks of an attempt by the authors
to rubbish the goodwill of a modest woman who has chosen to waive her
privileges as the First Lady and travel on a commercial flight for a
private visit.”
Of course, Mrs. Jonathan and her megaphones would never admit that her
image troubles – and her husband’s – are self-inflicted. Intent on
finding a straw man, they accused the website’s reporters of harboring
“malicious intentions.” The reporters, Mr. Adewuyi stated, “are bent on
carrying out the orchestrated plan of their sponsors.”
Adewuyi’s sorry rejoinder characterized the report that Mrs. Jonathan
had gone to Lebanon on a gold-buying spree as “ungodly and an
unnecessary distraction that is not needed now.” The rejoinder seethed
with words, but the spokesman could not answer the simple question: What
business took your boss to Lebanon?
The closest he came to providing an answer amounted to an evasion. He
stated: “For the avoidance of doubt, Her Excellency, the First Lady is
on a private visit which has been scheduled long before her husband was
sworn-in as President.”
Yes, the rejoinder dripped with supercilious titles. The spokesman
wanted us so badly to know that he was speaking, not for a mere mortal,
but for “Her Excellency, the First lady, Dame Patience Goodluck
Jonathan.” In case some of us didn’t realize how extraordinary was the
woman’s pedigree, Mr. Adewuyi wrote: “The First Lady has come a long way
as the wife of a Deputy Governor, wife of a Governor, wife of the Vice
President and wife of the acting President, it therefore defy any
logical reason that it is now that she will be scrambling to buy gold.
This is uncharitable.”
Let’s forget the terrible grammar that blights the above quote, and
infects the entire rejoinder. Let’s hasten to the clincher: “Mrs.
Jonathan rather than being vilified should be commended for maintaining
low profile, being modest and considerate for choosing to fly a
commercial flight for the visit even though she has the privilege of
requesting for the use of a Presidential aircraft.”
Let me repeat: the timing of Mrs. Jonathan’s trip, private or official,
betrays a stinky sense of priorities. If Mr. Goodluck Jonathan approved
his wife’s trip, then his sense of judgment is even worse than I ever
suspected. If he didn’t approve, but his wife went all the same, then
Nigerians have much to be afraid of. A man who cannot check his wife’s
excesses has no business presuming to govern the complex, crisis-ridden
organism called Nigeria.
To be clear, there’s nothing remotely excellent about Mrs. Jonathan’s
choice to go to Lebanon. Guess what? Lebanon’s reputation is as a center
of the jewelry trade. And also – justified or not – as an address for
laundering loot.
The Jonathans must know this. If they didn’t, they must have people
around them to advise them. If they don’t, well, it’s their
self-authored disaster.
The trip raises deeply disturbing questions. Why didn’t it occur to
Jonathan that a gallivanting wife sends the message that he has no clue
about the depth of Nigeria’s crises? Why do Nigerian officials delight
in basking in countries built up by the vision and energy of purposeful
leaders and people? Nigeria’s rulers love to revel in the picturesque
beauty and modern facilities of Dubai, Cape Town, and Accra. Yet, their
policies turn Nigerian cities into slums.
If Mrs. Jonathan were a politically attentive and sensitive spouse –
rather than a self-absorbed one – she might have reckoned that, in the
absence of an emergency, this was not a time to embark on a “private”
junket to Lebanon or elsewhere abroad.
Is Mrs. Jonathan concerned at all about her husband’s legacy? Has she
envisioned the kind of imprint she’d like him to leave? Has it ever
worried her that her husband, who in the days of his “acting presidency”
made some appealing promises, has since slipped into familiar
ineptitude?
Mr. Jonathan’s presidency appears headed, one fears, for bankruptcy.
From the look of things, his only vital sign that remains alive is a
preoccupation with how to retain the office of president in next year’s
election. To achieve that goal, he’s been willing to mortgage everything
else, including working to improve the lot of Nigerians, however
marginally.
Look at the company he keeps. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, whose
design for Nigeria is unquestionably evil, has become a regular guest.
Andy Uba, Obasanjo’s former Man Friday – a man who in 2004 stowed away
$170,000 in cash on a presidential flight bound for New York City – is
now a confidant. Jonathan’s administration is prosecuting Nasir El Rufai,
former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, for alleged acts of
corruption. Even so, in a sign of severe ethical blindness, Mr. Jonathan
has seen nothing wrong in welcoming Mr. El Rufai as a guest at the
Presidency.
One consequence of hobnobbing with the Obasanjo crowd is that Jonathan
has begun to run Nigeria’s shop the same way the hypocritical Obasanjo
did. His government has become an administration of speeches, no action.
Jonathan has conveniently forgotten that he once pledged to get cracking
on Nigeria’s energy crisis. For him, the whole rhetoric about electoral
reform seems to have boiled down to a gambit: how to manipulate the
process to ensure that, by hook or crook, he stays put in Aso Rock
beyond next year.
Jonathan has spent no political capital to persuade the National
Assembly to pass the kind of electoral bill that would make Nigeria’s
elections credible. He’s reportedly considering Mrs. Dora Akunyili – a
woman who described the electoral fraud of 2007 as an act of God – as a
possible chairperson for the national electoral commission. Why should a
woman who believes that God is an accomplice of riggers be mentioned as
a candidate for the job of electoral umpire?
Jonathan is of course a product of his tragic time and ghastly
circumstance. Far from spending any time to ponder what to do with
presidential power, he is a creature of Obasanjo’s mischievous,
nation-deadening 2007 scheme: to saddle Nigeria with two unprepared men
as its rulers.
Why is Jonathan obsessed with recapturing the presidency next year when
he doesn’t come across as having the foggiest idea how to use that
office to begin to solve problems? Why must woe-betide Nigerians remain
stuck with a man who hardly appears to realize the nature and scope of
Nigeria’s problems, much less how to change the situation?
Do Jonathan and his wife understand, or care about, the rut in the
educational sector; the worsening state of infrastructure; the
staggering rate of unemployment; the terrible state of health care; the
insecurity of lives and property? Where’s their blueprint for tackling
these profound problems?
True leaders don’t send their wives on expensive junkets abroad when
there are myriad crises demanding attention. If Mrs. Jonathan and her
handlers believe that her decision to travel by commercial flight
entitles her to canonization, then one has news for them. Both Britain
and Singapore are many times wealthier than Nigeria. Even so, the
leaders of both nations don’t boast a single “executive” jet; they
travel, as a rule, on commercial airlines.
It’s an anomaly – a criminal anomaly, in a country with Nigeria’s rate
of poverty – that Nigerian officials buy jets for their exclusive use.
Jonathan should ground his wife, initiate the process of selling off all
the jets in the presidential fleet, and roll up his sleeves to work –
for once – for Nigerians. Either do that, or ship out.
