ADRIFT IN TROUBLED WATERS.

“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.