SAVING PRESIDENT JONATHAN

“I think the voters misunderestimated me.”
George W. Bush

If you dropped into the country from outer space in the last one week; and read newspapers or listened to private radio and television or browsed the social media, you would wonder what can possibly be done to save President Goodluck Jonathan from the Nigerian people. If you are a stranger to Nigerian politics and history, you will be forgiven if your think Nigerians are the most uncharitable people, and their president is the most maligned leader on the face of the earth. How is it possible that an entire nation will find nothing positive about a leader who only last year promised radical transformation and abundant fresh air to build a new nation out of the restrictions and limitations of its past? Chances are, you will think there is no satisfying the Nigerian people; and you will shake your head in pity for anyone who even dreams of stepping into Presidents Jonathan’s shoes in future.

It appears just about everyone now joins in this lynching of President Jonathan, no matter what he does. Just think, what could be more unfair than the Speaker of the House of Representatives choosing a day when the nation celebrated its new democratic tradition, with a PDP President who had just reeled out his achievements, to castigate President Jonathan for being less than diligent in assenting to bills? Although the President replied with a few blows of his own, the damage which this public falling out over a very important matter had been done. It was made worse for the President when the Senate President, a man seen as one of his most reliable pillars and who is being rumoured to be the handpicked successor to Jonathan, also joins the fray on the side of the Speaker, and insisted that the President is frustrating the law-making functions of the national assembly, and denying Nigerians fuller benefits of the democracy they just celebrated.

This quarrel is going on against the backdrop of rampant complaints that the President is foot-dragging over the full implementation of the recommendations of the House Ad Hoc Committee on Petroleum Subsidy. Imagine! Not a word over whether these recommendations have met the minimal legal threshold. And the fact that a responsible President must study the recommendations and get inputs from his Ministers of Justice, Finance and Petroleum, as well as the E.F.C.C and a whole battery of regulatory agencies. And why should he not consult these important people, just because civil society says they have no business holding on to their seats after all the revelations during the hearing? Is he to sack them without evidence and legal advise, the type which only the Minister of Justice who again is being mentioned in the $1.1b Malibu scandal can give? Some even go further than the last one week and remind the nation that the President is relying on faulty legal advise to refuse to re-instate Justice Ayo Salami, when in fact the legal opinion which says he should is very likely informed by partisan considerations.

But if you are looking for evidence that there is a national conspiracy not to see anything good in President Jonathan’s decisions, you will not find stronger one than the uproar which followed his re-naming of the University of Lagos after the late icon of Democracy, Chief M.K.O Abiola. A move which even his worst political enemies should applaud as a masterstroke to regain him some ground in the south west was spun around by parochial forces to portray the President as insensitive, isolated and untutored in Yoruba and Nigerian politics. And to think those who engineered the spontaneous rebellion against the decision thought it will stampede the President into re-visiting the re-naming. Of course they have been proved wrong. Even some members of the Abiola family have written a formal letter of appreciation. But knowing Nigerians, this is highly unlikely to be the end of the matter.

Almost by the day, this chorus of President bashing finds new grounds and manifestations. A few days ago a coalition of civil society groups in Kano decided to sue the Joint Security Force (JTF) for a litany of offences committed in their pursuit of Boko Haram suspects. Many of these offences involve extra-judicial killings. Two days after, a very powerful and very elderly group of northerners visited the President with a long shopping list of grievances and demands, most of which the President is unlikely to have solutions to. They want the president to call his security agents to order, and they want him to rein-in his legion of spokespersons in different guises or forms who abuse and insult the north, and who are sowing dangerous seeds of discord.

These elders left homes quite possibly habouring Boko Haram activists in their neighbourhoods, and yet they want President Jonathan to find solutions just because he is President today. They want him to ask godfathers and official spokespersons to shut up, so that those who abuse him and say he has no handle over Nigerian problems will have their voices heard louder. These same elders did not descend on General Buhari when he used an analogy involving blood in commenting over the 2015 elections, yet they were led by an 85-year old blind man to ask him to play statesman and redress serious security and economic problems, most of which have roots which predated his presidency.

In fact, the evidence that Nigerians are after their President is almost inexhaustible. He asks them to use energy-saving light bulbs, and the nation rose up as one and says it would rather he cancels the increase in electricity tariff which he is just introducing. He posed in January for a European fashion magazine, admittedly at a time the nation was up in arms over the subsidy removal decision, and someone chooses this movement to flood the cyber space with the details and pictures of the President posing. Now, why on earth shouldn’t the President pose for a fashion magazine?

Even his own security agencies appear to be in on the act. How else do you explain the attack on a house in Kano in which all Boko Haram bigwigs meeting in the house and a German hostage were killed? If the security agents had good intelligence that such prime targets were available, you would think the thing to do was to arrest them, or at least try, and therefore gather huge intelligence and boost morale. But no. Truck loads of soldiers and helicopters invaded the building, killing everyone. According to the security forces, the insurgents killed the German before being killed themselves, possibly so the President cannot claim credit for a freed hostage.

This penchant for tearing up the records of achievement of President Jonathan was taken to global airwaves, when the BBC hosted Nasir el-Rufai, Alhaji Gulak and Dr Kabir Mato, as well as hundreds of tweeters and face bookers in a discussion on his performance. It was a very sorry outing for a President committed to righting massive wrongs, to hear Nigerians dismiss his performance so comprehensively. It makes you wonder what can be done to save President Jonathan from the Nigerian people?