JONATHAN'S SIN

JONATHAN'S SIN

by Fashina George

All indications regarding the outcome of the coming presidential elections in Nigeria on Saturday, 28th March 2015, point to the fact that Nigeria is facing the first time that an incumbent president might be loosing an election in the country. This is a good thing in itself because it shows that Nigeria's democracy is growing and democratic ethos is beginning to take firm root on our shores. By the time the results of the elections are read out, many might want to ask why Goodluck Jonathan lost the election. They may want to conjecture what was the leading factor that led to his defeat by Gen Muhammadu Buhari at the 2015 presidential elections. Some will suggest his weak stance on corruption; others will explain that his wife's unbridled and uncouth utterances was his waterloo; and yet others will say that the Nigerian people truly bought into the "CHANGE" mantra of the All Progressive Congress (APC). I wish to state in this article that the leading factor in Jonathan's defeat at this year's polls was his inability to curb the violence raging in the northern part of Nigeria. Jonathan's singular sin is insecurity.

President Goodluck Jonathan inherited a precarious security situation when he came to power in May 29th, 2011. Boko Haram (BH) had been attacking parts of northern Nigeria and it was the job of the newly installed chief security officer of the country to curb the violence. It didn't stop. Rather, under Jonathan, the violence perpetrated by BH only worsened - these evil people even had the effrontery of encroaching on Abuja, the nation's seat of power with bombs at the United Nation building, the Police Headquarters and the bombing of various motor parks at Yanyan. Rather than action, all that the Nigerian people got from their president was condemnation, regrets and promises to deal with the perpetrators. Promises that never found fulfillment. Then came the ignominious kidnap of more than 200 secondary school girls at their dormitory in a government secondary school in Chibok, Borno State, as they sat to write their final examination. At first, the government of Goodluck Jonathan denied that the girls were kidnapped but after weeks of inactions and more denials, they finally accepted. Those who tell the story of how these girls were kidnapped say the terrorists that took them seem to have had all the time in the world to carry out their dastardly act. They conveyed the girls in trucks into the Sambisa forest, a journey that took hours to complete. It is believed that if the Nigerian government had not been in denial, and had taken active measures to recover those girls, they would never have made it into the dungeon of the terrorist. Today, it is close to a year since the Chibok girls have been taken. The Chibok girls' kidnap has since become a worldwide phenomenon, with prominent world figures calling for Jonathan to "Bring Back our Girls". The Nigerian public was yet to recover from the shock of the Chibok girls kidnap when we began to learn of BH taking over town after town in Borno State, turning them into Islamic Caliphates. All of these along with hundreds of Nigerians killed who did not renounce their Christian faith. Then BH entered Adamawa State and ransacked Mubi, the second largest town in the state. Up till this moment, no one knows how the exact number of people that have been lost to the works of these evil animals. In both Maiduguri and Yola, refugee camps have been set up to take care of thousands of people displaced from their homes. The list is simply endless.

When the Jonathan government was requested to explain why these things were happening right under its watch, the government threw out the poser that some people were trying to make the nation ungovernable for Mr. President. Rueben Abati even took the matter further by blaming Gen. Buhari for this when he wrote in an article stating that Buhari had made the comments in the light of his loss to Jonathan in the 2011 elections. When Buhari took Abati to court on the matter, he and the Jonathan government had to settle out of court by writing an apology statement published by the Guardian Newspapers. While the government of Jonathan traded blames rather than take responsibility and carry out measures to stay the rapid intrusion of BH on the nation, BH reign of terror continued as they shifted base from Borno to Yobe, Kano, Bauchi and Adamawa States. The Nigerian armed forces too was beginning to feel the weight of the ineptitude of the government, as many soldiers refused to fight the insurgents, claiming they were ill equipped. The result was the court marshalling of a number of soldiers and officers and their being sentenced to death. As these matters went on, many soldiers were reporting through private social media accounts the gory matters going on at the war fronts. We heard stories of how funds that were meant to be used to equip the soldiers were being diverted into private pockets. Soldiers were sent to face their deaths in the hundreds as many could not refuse the orders of their superiors, despite being ill equipped. When the National Assembly instituted actions to investigate how the trillions of naira budgeted for the military to fight these insurgents seem to be going down the drain, the matter was frustrated and the investigations never took place.

Some people have suggested that a state like Borno State which has a large voters' population was not a priority for the government of Goodluck Jonathan since they had always voted en masse for Buhari, and were likely to vote for his again in 2015. They argue that allowing such a state to be plunged into a state of war might add to Jonathan's fortune at the coming poles. Some others felt that the Jonathan government just did not take the insecurity situation in North East Nigeria serious enough. They said that it did not occupy a priority for them. In all of these, nothing lends more credence to these positions than what had happened some five weeks ago since the elections were suddenly postponed. The excuse given then was that there was a need to improve on the security situation in the country before elections could proceed. Suddenly, what the Goodluck Jonathan government could not do in six years, it began to do in six weeks. We began to hear of the efforts of the Nigerian military as they recovered town after town from the BH insurgents. Many people could not but conclude that it took the fear of Jonathan loosing the coming elections for him to do what he was supposed to have done all this while. Unfortunately, the gains that the military have made in this short period of time have not improved Jonathan's rating at the poles. The President's negligence has cost the nation too much in terms of amount of lives lost; it is simply too late.

The stern truth is that Goodluck Jonathan has failed to secure this country. Too many lives have been lost for him to yet be entrusted with another four years in office. Some could even say that the blood of the dead is dripping from his hands. Whatever people say, one cannot but conclude that Jonathan singular sin was the insecurity his government failed at curtailing. The over 15,000 lives lost to the violence of BH under his watch cannot be blamed on anyone else but him. We must at this point thank him for the little he has done and show him the way home through the ballot boxes.

Fashina is a Media Consultant. He resides in Lagos. He can be reached through electronic_mails_4me@yahoo.com

THE VERDICT OF HISTORY

THE VERDICT OF HISTORY 

by Fashina George

What will tomorrow say of our actions today? Could it be that some of us act today without thinking of what verdict history shall give of our actions? Some hide behind the fact that the verdict of history will usually be the product of what the writers' of history choose to say of it. But what such people forget quickly is that regardless of the point of view of the historian, and regardless of the bias used to record an

A Historical fact

historical event, there are usually only one verdict history gives of that event. That verdict could either be good or bad. Wise men ensure that the decisions they take today, the words they speak, and the actions they carry out shall place them on the right side of history. When history shall give its verdict, it would pronounce some people good, others bad and it will describe some as ugly. I will be describing in this essay some people history is likely to place in the three aforementioned grouping and my desire for writing this is that those who might find themselves in some ignoble position in history as a result of their words and actions today could retrace their steps so that history might speak better of them tomorrow. This essay is prompted by the position of many players in the political scene as Nigeria gears up to another presidential election that is coming down to a choice between two individuals: the incumbent president, Dr Goodluck Jonathan and his biggest opponent, General Muhammadu Buhari (rtd).

I begin this discuss with a look at the bad. For me, as a supporter of Buhari in the coming elections, "the bad" are people who know for certain that Goodluck Jonathan is not competent enough to be reelected but must support him because of some pecuniary gain they stand to get. As it stands, a loss for Jonathan at the polls will be a loss to some people's source of illegal funding and corrupt enrichment. These are the people who cannot afford for an anti-corruption crusader like Buhari to be president. And they are the ones at the root of the campaign of calumny against the good General's name in numerous documentaries airing in prominent media houses around the country. These men and women are the Daniel Kanu's of our day. Daniel Kanu was the infamous gentleman who was planning to raise a million man march to campaign for Sani Abacha to transition from a military ruler to becoming a civilian president. If death had not come at the right time, Abacha was gunning for a lifetime presidency and an evil man like Daniel Kanu would have been at the root of it all. The historical account of the mid nineties in our country clearly shows that a man like Daniel Kanu was a "bad" in all sense of the word. Unfortunately, we have latter day Daniel Kanu's who would have us believe that Jonathan is the savior of Nigeria. They want us to know that what their principal could not do in six years, he plans to do in the next four. They see no problem with the insecurity in the land; they cannot understand that the death of over 15,000 men and women in north-east Nigeria at the hands of festering insurgency should be blamed on an administration that is not competent enough and on a Commander-in-chief that cannot command. These men and women are bad people because they are clearly fostering an incompetent leadership on the Nigerian people all because of what they stand to gain from it all. History will certainly give the verdict that such people were evil.

Next, we take a look at the ugly. An ugly sight is one that is not fitting to behold. The ugly in the present Nigerian electoral scenario are people blinded by ethnicity and religion in their choice in the coming election. Nigeria has the Muslim and Christian religion as the predominant religions in our society. Unfortunately the leading candidates are from these religions: Buhari a Muslim and Jonathan a Christian. Some people are ugly electorates because their choice of candidates is solely based on the religion the candidate is professing and not competence. While supporters of both Buhari and Jonathan can be guilty of this, the supporters of Jonathan are guiltier. The reason is because the lie that Buhari is seeking to Islamize Nigeria is raging more among Christians while no Muslim has ever been told that Jonathan is seeking to Christianize Nigeria, despite the fact that he is known to attend prominent Christian worship centers around the country, canvassing for votes. General Buhari has made it abundantly clear that he is seeking to preside over a secular Nigeria and that every man's religion, under his administration, shall be private. Those who investigated the manner he handled the question of Nigeria joining the Organization of Islamic

Politics beyond creed or tribe

Countries (OIC) have shown that the Buhari government of 1984 jettisoned the idea of Nigeria joining the IOC. While very few people know that Goodluck Jonathan is the only serving Nigerian head of state that has ever attended an IOC meeting. Unfortunately, the ugly would not believe this. Their manner of thinking is incredibly hard to behold and even reason with, so that sometimes the best option is to avoid these people entirely. The unfortunate part of the present political quagmire is that most Christians who appear undecided as to who to vote for in the coming elections can be found in this group. These people are certain that Jonathan is not competent enough to run a second term in office, but they cannot bring themselves to voting for a Muslim.

The other people that must be seen as ugly in my electoral grouping are those whose choice of candidature is purely based on ethnicity. Here some supporters of Buhari will appear to be guilty. But one must excuse the northerners for their tribal bias at this point. The first reason being that Goodluck Jonathan might have cheated the northerners out of their legitimate share to power. After the death of Yar'Adua in 2010, the right thing for Jonathan to have done was not to run for office. He had a wonderful opportunity to apply the recommendations of the Justice Uwais led Electoral Reform committee to changing the warped electoral process of Nigeria. He could have sat as an observer while at the same time overseeing an election that was certain to be free and fair, as an incumbent will not be running and the electoral reforms would have been adequately applied. Unfortunately, he did not. He however promised the northern people that he would be running a single term in office. This condition alone procured him support from many former head of state, prominent amongst them, Olusegun Obasanjo. Again, Jonathan reneged on this promise and is now running for a second term in office to the chagrin of his former supporter, Obasanjo, and the annoyance of the northern people. It is no surprise then that he has virtually zero support from the north, while Buhari, who already had a cult following from that region has, garnered their support. The insecurity in the north, which many believe Jonathan left to fester because he and some of his subordinates were benefitting illegally from it, has not helped him also. Quite naturally, the people of the South-south and the South-east have come to again support their own. What might differ this time in the political equation is that the All Progressive Congress(APC) has made inroads into the South-south, especially Rivers State, which has Gov' Amaech at its helm, a leading APC stalwart. There are also a number of people in the South-east who share the sentiments of the likes of Fr. Mbaka and are likely not to vote Jonathan in March 28th. And, finally, the South-south and South-east will not be able to ruse up astronomical figures for Jonathan as they successfully did in 2011 with a functional INEC card reader. In all of these we can still find an electorate that is ugly in sight because their choice of candidate is based solely on ethnic sentiments. One could excuse the northerners for their sentiments for Buhari but there is certainly no excuse for even a South-south or South-east person who votes for Jonathan; seeing that his six years in office has only recorded failures and to vote for him solely on ethnic grounds, is indeed an ugly sight to behold.

Finally, we take a look at the good. The good in this political situation are the opposite of the aforementioned in this article. Any man whose choice of candidate is not based upon what he would eat now but upon what his children's children will eat tomorrow is a good man. Any person whose choice of candidate is based on competence: on precedence; on record in public office; on the candidate's manifestos and plans for governance; is a good person. Any man or woman who chooses to vote in the coming election, not basing his choice on religion or tribe is a good person. History will speak well of these people because they are the ones who could judge the matters on ground rightly and make choices beyond primordial sentiments.

No person alive today wishes to be spoken of as an evil person in the days to come but this will be what will be said of the bad and the ugly this article has described so far. Nigeria occupies a momentous period today in her history and just as some good men and women are spoken of today as having helped deliver her from the grip of British colonial rule and years of military rule, so also will some men and women be recorded as having led the campaign to deliver her from the grip of neocolonialism - a colonial rule that has the rich and the wicked oppress the poor and the righteous. I am saying in effect that General Buhari represents the poor, suffering but righteous elements in Nigeria today and a support for him is a support for good. Those who will vote for Buhari would have transcended all these evil and ugly sentiments. These men and women shall have history declare that they were indeed good people.

Join the clamour for good in Nigeria. Vote Buhari/Osinbajo of the APC for president and vice president respectively on March 28th.

Vote for Change!

Fashina George is a media Consultant. He resides in Lagos, Nigeria.

SELMA and the Coming Elections

"You may ask ‘when will we be free of this darkness', I say to you today my brothers and sisters: despite the pain, despite the tears, our freedom will soon be upon us" - Martin Luther King (Jnr).

When the movie SELMA, starring the Nigerian Hollywood actor, David Oyelowo, made the big screens, the producers of the movie and its star actor, Oyelowo, came to Nigeria to premier it. They made it clear that the lessons the movie taught should add to the political discussions as the elections draw near and possibly help focus it towards better outcomes. The story of SELMA tell of the activities of the great human and black rights activist, Dr. Martin Luther King (Jnr), in the town of Selma in the southern American State of Alabama in the year 1965, that spurred President Lyndon Johnson to move the United States Congress to pass a bill that struck out voting restriction in all elections in the United States. The price that was paid for this great

The Real 1965 Selma Protest

social reform to come to be, that of pain, deaths, sufferings, denials and betrayals, amongst the people of Selma, is what the movie is all about. One cannot but realize that as Nigeria faces the 2015 elections, which has the possibility of determining its future, there are similarities between the suffering black people of those days and the Nigerian masses; and thus an election year like this one can actually help us redeem ourselves from our oppressors like they did. The 1960s was the decade of social activism in the United States of America. The results are still far reaching, with a black man ruling that great nation today but the price paid was even greater. Confirming the words of the great English writer Mark Twain: "No people in the world ever did achieve their freedom by goody-goody talk and moral suasion; it being immutable law that all revolutions that will succeed must (begin) in blood, whatever may answer afterwards".

Buhari

Nigeria has also had it own fair share of social reforms that have come through blood stained activism. One of them is the democracy we practice today. What we however see today is that at every juncture in our present history, this democracy stands on the peril of being truncated. This is because our democracy does not have a sound foundation. A constitution inherited from the military combined with an echelon of corrupt and undisciplined politicians have continued to make our democratic walk wobbly through the years. We find, however, an opportunity to get things right via the presidential candidature of Gen. Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressive Congress. Buhari has been accused of truncating a democratically elected government of Shehu Shagarin in 1983. What his accusers never mention is that the government of Shagari was either going to truncate the future of Nigeria through brazen and galloping corruption, or it stood to be truncated. We are thankful to God that the latter happened. Buhari, either in or out of power, has succeeded in every public office assignment given to him. The consequence has always been that the General came out of each of such assignments even poorer than he went in. As chairman of the NNPC and someone who oversaw the construction of all existing refineries in the country today, Buhari never enriched himself illegally, neither does he own an oil block. His party, the APC, carried out a credible and transparent presidential primary in November 2014 that led to his emergence as the party presidential flag bearer. These are the revolution that the Nigerian political experiment has been witnessing in the past one year. The similarity with the story of SELMA is that the same way the black community stood oppressed by the whites in 1960 Americas, so also do the poor and ordinary Nigerian stand oppressed by a rich and corrupt political class. In Buhari, the ordinary Nigerian finds a representative because, although Buhari had had more than enough opportunity to enrich himself and join the corrupt political class, his high sense of integrity combined with his

Selma: The Movie

disciplined mien, has kept him from such. So that today, his leading credential is his integrity; a fact that his worst critic has not been able to dispute. Buhari represents the poor and oppressed Nigerian people, many of whom have decided to support him by purchasing the N100 "Buhari Support Organization" cards to lend their widow's mite for him. And in a dramatic sense, the biblical story of the widow played itself out in one of Buhari's campaign in Sokoto, when an eighty year old woman gave the General a million naira to support his campaign. It was a reluctant and tears filled Buhari that collected the money.

The 1965 Assault on Protesters

SELMA tells the story that non violence can overcome the most oppressive regime. Some have called for a revolution in this country. What they do not know is that most revolutions that turn violent usually have a beginning but no one can tell its end. In a democracy, the most effective revolution is a people coming out en-masse to vote out incompetent leadership. SELMA left a legacy of voting rights for all oppressed people around the world. Now that we can vote, we must come out and carry out our franchise in a manner that favors the ordinary man. Martin Luther King Jnr. Is the epitome of non violent protests for obtaining human rights and liberties. One of the protests that were carried out in those days, as depicted by the movie, went awry with local policemen beating and battering the protesters. In the process one Jimmy Lee Jackson was shot and killed. At the funeral of the young man, Dr. King said these words: "We will vote. We will put these men out of office. We will take their power. We will win what you were slaughtered for!" That is revolution. That is the power of what a voting public can do. If Nigerians are convinced that they could have a better deal, then they should heed the words of the late activists and come out and vote and take power from wicked men. If however they believe that this is the best life they could have and that Nigeria needs no change, they can continue with the status quo.

Oyelowo/King: Striking Resemblance

As for me and my house, we say "CHANGE!"

Pictures from Google.