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Evidence Demands A Verdict: Why I Will Not Be Voting For Jonathan Again By Nosa James-Igbinadolor
I had over the last couple of days engaged in a deep introspective analysis of my heart and mind fall out with President Goodluck Jonathan. Since November last year, I had made up my mind neither to vote for him, nor campaign for him amongst friends and foes alike, nor indeed even dignify the beatified commentaries of his ever decreasing circle of true supporters with any form of confutation.
I am not alone, as I am sure that millions of young men and women who campaigned fast and furious for a Jonathan victory in 2011 have been left so utterly bewildered and angry at how pyrrhic and debilitating the outcome of their “victory” has turned out to be.
It shocks me to my marrow how a man who swept into office in 2011 with the support of perhaps the biggest and best organised coalition of the variegated strata of the Nigerian society can in less than four years so mismanage that platform, mismanage the unprecedented sympathy of Nigerians and indeed mismanage the unity of purpose that helped him into office. Above all, he has by his actions and inactions, written a bestselling template for aspiring politicians on HOW NOT TO WIN AN ELECTION!
The truth of the matter is that Nigerians do not deserve another four years of Jonathan; another four years of distress and blood-letting. Despite his promises to change a new leaf and act more like a man and a President, I have learnt bitterly not to trust this President, for his word is certainly not his bond.
I had looked forward to St. Valentine’s Day to cast my vote against the PDP, but I’ll be patient and wait, after all, they say good things come to those who wait. I cannot wait for President Jonathan to go back to where he came from and allow this country I love so much to forward to its manifest destiny.
For those my friends who have vowed to remain with Jonathan despite his overwhelming failures and who cannot understand why I who once sang with them from the same hymn sheet would begin to commit socio-political treachery, this is my testament to their long standing demand for answers. I hope that after reading this they would like me say NO TO ANOTHER FOUR YEARS! After all, Evidence Demands a Verdict.
Two things bother me about Jonathan; his deliberate failure to tackle the security challenges in the North and his refusal to frontally and decisively deal with the blighting evil called corruption.
I will not vote for a President that in four years deliberately refused to own the Boko Haram insurgency and deal decisively with it. I will not vote for a President who saw the Boko Haram conflict from the malevolent perspective of “It is northerners killings themselves”’ and therefore not worthy of national intervention. I will not vote for Jonathan, because he had the power and capacity to curtail this crisis between 2010 and 2013 but deliberately refused to do so until Boko Haram and Abubakar Shekau brought the conflict home to him in Abuja.
I am angry at the extraordinary incompetence and the blatant denseness that this government has shown in managing the national haemorrhage called national security. Under this government, the social contract between government and WE the People has been so breached that it is almost logically fallacious to expect it to meet its own side of the contract of protecting lives and ensuring the physical security of WE the People. While WE the People meet our side of the contract by being laboured and heavily laden with the unjustifiable burden of income tax, VAT, education tax and a plethora of other oppressive levies and financial strains, the government of Jonathan has persistently repudiated the social contract by which any sane society is governed.
Since 2010 when Jonathan assumed office, thousands of innocent men, women and children in the Plateau state have been massacred by blood thirsty Fulani gunmen in their homes, yet not one person has been brought to justice. The genocide on the Plateau continues. Across the middle-belt region of Adamawa, Benue, Kaduna, Nasarawa and Taraba, tens of thousands of innocents have lost their lives to well armed, murderous herdsmen who continue with unabashed impunity to unleash a potpourri of sorrow, tears and pain on the people of this region. In all these the Jonathan administration behaves and pretends as if nothing serious is happening.
For a man who loves to appear in well-epauletted military uniforms, our Commander-in-Chief has found it difficult to lead from the front in the war on terror. Under his watch scores of teenage boys at the Federal Government College Buni Yadi were massacred in cold blood by Boko Haram and all we got from him were the usual platitudes and shibboleths of “catching the criminals and bringing them to book”. Our President did not deem it fit to visit Buni Yadi or even speak on phone to the parents of these boys”! He assaulted our sensibilities and insulted the memories of these boys by going to campaign in Kano the next day. WE MUST NEVER FORGET!
Under his watch, thousands of young girls in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states have been kidnapped by Boko Haram from their schools and homes and in the midst of all these, politics and the primitive quest for power dominates the private talking points of our President. The kidnap of nearly three hundred young girls in Chibok under the noses of thousands of Jonathan’s troops is utterly annoying. The criminal neglect of this felony characterised by the tried and tested Jonathanian formula of saying little and doing nothing in the face of these sickening crimes in my view is more than enough to get the President kicked out of the Villa on May 29.
A leader that does not empathise with his people, but prefers to release sufferable press statements through media advisers anytime these felonies occur is not fit to sit in the villa and call himself our President. This is a President that refuses to identify with Nigerians but quick to send a sycophantic letter of sympathy to the French people when 12 people were killed in Paris recently. The respected Economist Magazine put it succinctly when it noted that Jonathan has “shown little enthusiasm for tackling it (Boko Haram), and even less competence. Quick to offer condolences to France after the attack on Charlie Hedbo, Mr Jonathan waited almost two weeks before speaking up about a Boko Haram attack that killed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of his compatriots”. How callous!
The war against Boko Haram and indeed the war against terror have been so mismanaged by the Jonathan regime that it has come to haunt it. The Federal Government under Jonathan had for a long time refused to claim ownership of this war as if Borno state and North-East Nigeria are some piece of real estate outside Nigeria. Everything for this government is trumped by politics especially the quest for re-election. This is a war that should have been won a long time ago using a strategy of good intelligence, overwhelming force, economic empowerment and reconstruction of the region, infiltration and breaking of the ranks of the leadership of Boko Haram as well as getting Chad, Niger Republic and Cameroun to cooperate in defeating the terrorists. That this administration did not even conceive of a concordance with neighbouring countries until last year makes their ineptitude shine like bright celestial stars. I am ANGRY.
As for corruption, no other regime trumps this government in the bestial level of self-aggrandisement that has become their hallmark. It is a government that is soiled in corruption, reeks of corruption and depicts corruption. It was Adam Smith in his The Wealth of Nations, who asserted that “Capitals are increased by parsimony and diminished by prodigality and misconduct. Whenever a person saves from his revenue, he adds to his capital” As a political-economist and indeed a Nigerian, it is inconceivable and extremely painful that under this regime, three years of extremely high oil prices has neither translated to increased foreign reserves nor expanded infrastructures on the ground. On the contrary, they have spent like drunken sailors on sumptuousness and engaged in an unprecedented and unmitigated heist of the national patrimony at a scale and magnitude that will certainly come to light when they leave office in May.
I will not vote as President a candidate who doesn’t see stealing as corruption but is quick to fire whistle-blowing public servants from their jobs. If he could sack Sanusi Lamido Sanusi from his position as Central Bank Governor who knows what he would do to lesser mortals if we are dull enough to give him a second term? I’d rather not wait to know.
It tends to be first hilarious then irritating when the President constantly claims at varied fora that he doesn’t believe that trying and jailing people for corruption will help end corruption. I beg to differ, Sir! The problem we have in this country is the refusal to throw the book of justice and judgement at errants and delinquents. The fear of the law is so near-completely absent that most people feel they can get away with constantly perpetuating crimes against the Nigerian state. The President rhapsodises about strengthening institutions as the only veritable means of fighting corruption, yet five years after assuming office, no single institution of state can be said to have been deliberately strengthened to do just that by his government, on the contrary, institutions such as the EFCC, ICPC and the Police have their operational and administrative capacity to fight corruption deliberately diminished.
I have agonised over whether to vote for Buhari or just stay home and hope anyone but Jonathan gets elected. I am not a fan of Muhammadu Buhari; after all he has in the past been a very polarising figure too. The truth is, in this contest for power, the choices before us are extremely meagre intellectually but sitting on the fence isn’t the right thing to do. I will vote on March 28 and I will vote for Buhari. I will vote for Buhari not because he is the best, but because he is perhaps the most honest that has been put forward by the political class. In voting for Buhari, I will be making a hard choice but certainly not a bad choice which Jonathan represents. Who will you vote for?
Nosa James-Igbinadolor is a political-economist |