MY PRESIDENT!

Colourful posters, billboards, radio and TV jingles and newspaper adverts sponsored by the Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria (TAN) to support President Goodluck Jonathan’s re-election in 2015 are all we hear and see these days. Despite not being the subject of this article, it is difficult not to talk about TAN when talking about Jonathan. Long before Jonathan shut down Abuja to state the obvious, “After seeking the face of God, in quiet reflection with my family and having listened to the call of our people nationwide...” TAN had commenced a full-fletched campaign for the president by securing signatures across the country “begging” him to run for 2015. Okada riders, whose activities are illegal in the Federal Capital, were said to have contributed for the president to purchase his nomination form. Widows, market women and youth groups were not left out of the financial assistance to Mr President!

So, one either turns on the radio to listen to how President Jonathan has achieved the unachievable on the economy, or switch on the TV and watch a “moving” comparison of Jonathan with the worlds greats, dead and alive. Colourful billboards capturing sector-by-sector pictographs of Jonathan’s achievements overwhelm us in Abuja. No doubt, a lot of energy was put into TAN and its media campaign. If a quarter of this effort were expended on the real business of governance, the president wouldn’t have required the services of TAN in the first place.

Now that the president has declared and the rented crowds which stormed Abuja to beseech him have been dispatched, we should ask ourselves: Has our president done enough to deserve re-election? On the economy, the president echoed the same figures and indices used by the finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, each time she tries hard to portray the economy as growing. But in reality, we know that the economy is only growing on paper. Our petrodollar-dependent economy has shown its vulnerability more than ever, now that consumer countries are seeking alternative sources of energy. We also know that Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDA), as well as states and local governments, have constantly been under-allocated from the federation account. This can’t be the mark of a buoyant economy.

     

Security is a no-go area. The president’s spin doctors have been tactical in handling government’s inability to tackle insecurity in the land by propounding various conspiracy theories.  Three times now government fighters have “killed” Shekau, the leader of the terrorist group Boko Haram, yet the man has risen three times from the dead to perpetrate even greater evil against the Nigerian people. Our army has been routed in the North East and the Boko Haram flag hoisted in Mubi, yet when Mr President took over power, Boko Haram was a small group of fundamentalist insurgents on the outskirts of Maiduguri, Borno State. Today, the group lays claim to 17 local government areas across Borno, Adamawa and Yobe. It has also intensified its spread by attacking Bauchi and Gombe, Abuja, Kaduna, Kogi, Kano and Niger. We have Nigerian refugees in all the neighbouring states and our children are killed now on a daily basis.

The president said millions of youths have been employed in various schemes. But Abba Moro, his interior minister, is a living witness to that farce. Under his watch, thousands of unemployed Nigeria’s were defrauded, hundreds were wounded and many died trying to secure employment. SURE-P, which promised to re-invest proceeds from the subsidy removal into massive infrastructural development and job creation, is almost a forgotten entity. What we know of SURE-P is its red buses running the Nyanya-Berger route. What of the rest of Nigeria? No subsidy thief has been brought to justice as promised. We cannot even start talking about what has not been achieved in terms of corruption. Rather than improve, power supply has dropped because those power generating and distributing companies which PHCN was sold to lack the capacity to turn-around the power sector and rolling out the gas infrastructure is simply too slow.

Our health sector is still in shambles. Issues that led to the doctors’ strike shortly before the Ebola outbreak are still unresolved. We still have the second highest infant and maternal mortality rates in the world and after the God-given success in containing Ebola, the health union is just about to go on strike again as the government has not honoured its commitments. What then are the yardsticks for measuring government’s achievements in this sector?

The government has decided to create new federal universities while existing ones wallow in poor funding and decayed infrastructure. There has been a steady decline in WAEC pass rates since 2011, so who will occupy these new universities and where are the jobs?

What we need is Fresh Air so, along with you, INEC willing, we shall conquer.