“How awful to reflect that
what people say of us is true.” L.L. Smith
President Jonathan’s
mind-term scorecard would appear to have been aptly captured by the extended
melodrama culminating in the emergence of two factions of the Nigerian
Governors’ Forum(NGF). This farce has all the elements that characterize
President Jonathan’s sojourn since May 2011. Its crude maneuverings against
enemies and opponents will remind the nation of the bitter disputes and
potentially dangerous circumstances which gave birth to the Jonathan
presidency. The laughable (if that is the right word) disputes over the outcome
of an election involving 35 voter governors (majority of them PDP), complete
with allegations of illegal ballots, unqualified candidates, press conferences
denouncing results and emergence of factions will sound very familiar to
Nigerians. The President’s failure to stop the re-election of Amaechi will
signal a further dip in his hold over the political machinery he so desperately
seeks to control. There will be the other side of course, which will go to town
with the claim that he had at least crippled this albatross; and if he cannot
use it as a weapon, he cannot be harmed by it either.
There are a few other
dampers to the celebratory atmosphere as well, although you will not hear them
in the President’s broadcast. Like the NGF saga, there will be room for arguing
that the cup is half empty only because the opposition does not see very well.
Like Amaechi, President Jonathan will feel that a series of vicious battles
have left him with some territory and troops with questionable levels of morale
and loyalty, but he is still in charge. But his flanks are dangerously exposed,
and the enemy could strike at will while he takes stock of his strengths and
weaknesses.This will not stop him reeling out statistics and other details
which he quite possibly believes represent a fairer assessment of his record,if
only the stubbornly ill-informed Nigerian public will care to listen.
Two years since the boy who
went to school without shoes grew up to become President, the nation has shown
many signs that Presidents who come from minority groups and poor backgrounds
are not necessarily the best material for leadership. The first few months of
his Presidency showed an administration shell-shocked and frozen stiff by the
sheer depth and spread of the anger and violence which followed his election in
many parts of the north. The instinctive and knee-jerk reaction which labeled
the brief uprising as a partisan and ethno-religious resistance turned out to
be a tragic miscalculation. Much time and energy was devoted to attempts to
paste crimes to perceived masterminds, while many parts of the nation were made
to believe that the “born-to-rule” north has become a threat to the rest. An
insipient, religion-inspired and grievance-driven insurgency seized the
opportunity to expand and dig in. By the time it unleashed its full force, its
mis-classification as a northern Muslim resistance front began to be felt,
especially when it hit Muslims and Christians alike, and particularly when it
targeted high profile symbols of Muslim authority.
For all practical purposes,
the first one year of President Jonathan’s administration was wasted. Unable to
shake off the ashes of the post-election violence, it approached governance
with hesitation and a meek demeanor as if it was begging for space. No new
grounds were broken in improving the quality of the decision-making process.
All the old ghosts came back to haunt the new administration: inept management
of the economy; massive corruption, spreading insurgency and criminal
activities such as crude theft, kidnapping and crumbling institutions of state.
Bold initiatives such as removal of subsidy on petroleum products were stoutly
resisted by citizens in a manner unseen in the nation’s history. The
administration stepped back, exposing itself to more intense clamour for
increased transparency and accountability in the oil and gas sector. Responses
to this clamour merely exposed the administration’s limitation in the fight
against corruption. Ministers and other influence peddlers around the
administration shot down credible suggestions on improving openness. Scammers
in the sector tweaked weak regulatory systems, a corrupt judiciary and weak
boundries between government and big business to frustrate real reforms and
exposure of massive fraud. Other scams exploited the same weaknesses in other
areas which included looted pensions.
By the beginning of his
second year, it was obvious that President Jonathan was not going to win the
battle against large scale plunder of the nation’s resources. New challenges
were making him look even weaker. The Jamaatu Ahlil Sunnah Liddaawati Wal
Jihad (JASLIWAJ) was registering devastating blows on the capacity of the
Nigerian state to protect lives and property of its citizens, and was even
taking over territories from the state. Unprecedented levels and variety of
internal security challenges were being registered by the week: communal
conflicts, rampaging criminals that took over and killed many villagers;
kidnapping as a thriving industry; the systematic bleeding of the nation
through crude oil theft and the apparent collapse of routine policing, law and
order institutions in many parts of the nation.
In the midst of all these
challenges, the political terrain was also shifting away from the President.
His attempt to improve his hold on his party, a vital pre-requisite for another
term, was being challenged by elementary mistakes in the management of the
emergence of its leaders, as well as the determination of governors to continue
to be the dominant players. He ended up with a weak leadership and a host of
new enemies that saw his ambition to pocket the party as an asset towards 2015
as a serious threat. Reinforcing his hand with the appointment of Chief Tony
Anenih as PDP Board of Trustees Chairman does not appear to have done the
magic. If you want to be charitable, you could say President Jonathan has
succeeded in breaking the ranks of the Governors, including PDP governors that
he will need to rely on for 2015. If you are not, you would say he had spent
too much time and energy chasing shadows and the wrong enemy.
As his party eluded him
routinely, the opposition finally found the political will to attempt a merger
that will represent a credible challenge to the PDP, come 2015. A few clumsy
attempts to frustrate the merger exposed how jittery the President’s party is
over the development. Spurred by the impression that the PDP’s internal
squabbles and an abysmal record of the administration will guarantee electoral
success, the opposition made credible attempts to solidify the merger, although
it is by no means certain that it is out of the woods. It has many vulnerable
points which even a PDP at half mast can exploit, and the journey between now
and 2015 can be made very hazardous by the manner the opposition itself handles
sensitive issues such as leaders, flagbearers and internal democracy and
cohesion.
Midway into his term, you
are unlikely to find ten informed Nigerians that will tell you that President
Jonathan will not want to run again in 2015. The nation he has led is a lot
more insecure than it was when he started in 2011. Corruption, insecurity and
poverty are much more widespread, inspite of his two-pronged approach to
dealing with insurgencies. The nation is making huge money from legitimate
export of crude, and a few people are making billions from stealing the crude
and revenues from it. More people are getting poorer as insecurity threatens
economic activities in most parts of the North. More Nigerians live with fear
from a variety of threats to their lives and property than perhaps any other
time in the history of the nation. Dire consequences are threatened by the
President’s loyalists if he is not re-elected in 2015. Equally scary rhetoric
answer such threats, and young Nigerians in particular will be forgiven for
believing that they will spend their lives living with insecurity, poverty and crime.
The nation is more disunited politically than any other time, with boundaries
marked by poverty, blood and political enclaves.
In spite of the legion of
issues on governance and security begging for attention, President Jonathan is
still likely to focus his attention largely on re-election. He and his
opponents will turn the PDP inside out and tear it to pieces in his bid for the
party’s ticket. If he wants it badly enough, he will get it, at great cost to
the party’s fortunes in 2015, and even the unity and security of the nation. It
will be difficult to see President Jonathan declining to run again in 2015,
because those in his camp will find life difficult to live in Nigeria in peace
and with freedom, fortunes and their records in a post-Jonathan Nigeria.
Yet if the current levels in performance of the Jonathan administration are
sustained, or they decline between now and 2015, what he will bring to the
nation’s table during the electoral contest will make his chances of being
elected in a free and fair election even less likely. And this is where the
real danger lies: will President Jonathan allow the ballot to decide his fate
in 2015?
In 2011, the nation had an opportunity to elect
a leadership that will heal massive political wounds and bridge dangerous
distances between key components of the federation. It had the opportunity to
put into office a leader who will deal decisively with corruption, insecurity
and declining effectiveness of critical institutions of state. It had an
opportunity to stop the drift set into motion from the ill-health of late
President Yar’Adua right up to 2011. Two years into the journey, all those
opportunities have been lost. Sadly, the primacy of political office as a means
of private accumulation of wealth and power will compound the problems arising
from those lost opportunities. There is little to show that the next two years
of President Jonathan’s administration will be better than the first two.
