Goodluck Jonathan On Trial: Some Weighted Opinion From North America

Cliff I. Edogun, Ph.D.

North America Coordinator

NIGERIA RALLY MOVEMENT

This is an endorsed official document of the Nigeria Rally Movement (NRM)

I would try not to dwell much or resurrect the bundle of shame and the odious embarrassment that the Yar’Adua’s secret medical adventure brought upon us all who live here in North America. What a relief that the curtain of that sore drama has finally closed. Many here are still quipping gleefully that, at least, Goodluck Jonathan is not another northern Sunni Muslim political ideologue who prefers to confuse a call to national service with an abrasive pursuit of primitive religious solidarity. After more than forty years of political independence, a civil war and a couple of northern dominated military coups in a country of multiple diversity, the northern Muslim political class has still not been able to separate state from mosque or church from state. The pitiable conspiracy to hold on to presidential power “for the north” at all cost by these fringe elements, even when they had no clue what Yar’Adua’s medical condition was, will remain a classic history research paradigm for years to come.

However, it was refreshing to hear many nationalist northern political literati coming out to admit and confess in public that the north has become Nigeria’s number one problem. We have always believed so. But before I bring on Goodluck Jonathan, there is this further clarification of the current Nigerian politics. The Yar’Adua episode paints an unambiguous picture of the operating agenda of the ruling northern Muslim political class: a tenacious group of recycled religious zealots who parade as politicians, are resolved to head or dominate every national government agency, qualified or not, by subjecting the rest of the surprisingly gullible Nigerian population to an endless bout of pathological cynicism. They answer secretly only to themselves and to their emirate power patrons and they would hatefully loathe any southern or other northern non-Muslim politician who dares to defy their existential motif. That would have been good political strategy if the harvests from these long years of northern Muslim domination were visible in glass and concrete, just like Sunni Muslim Dubai, if you care for an example.

With all the massive transfer of disproportionate national oil wealth to the Muslim north since 1970, including president this, director that, chairman this and general that, the north still remains one of the most distressingly poor regions in the world. By any global standard, northern Nigeria has the highest blind population per capita on this planet. Water blindness that can easily be contained through essential hygiene and modern medicine is no priority in their agenda. Imagine this: they had to rely on Jimmy Carter, the former American president, to initiate a water blindness eradication program some years back. Destitute beggars of Muslim northern origin spread across Nigeria’s major cities on a daily basis while polio, a degenerative disease that was eradicated from the rest of the world since the 1950s, is still shamefully prevalent in the Muslim north. In fact, since the 1970s, the northern-induced federal character public policy effectively stymied competition and implicitly compelled other smart and ambitious Nigerians to wait for the Muslim north to catch up. They seem to be still catching up. Yet, drowned neck-deep with such capricious tales of human greed and indignity, is the undeniable fact that the north has produced some of the finest intellectual minds of this generation. My political science students at Ahmadu Bello University in the late 1970s still remain the most intellectually precocious in all of my teaching experience, but these have virtually been locked out of the political leadership trail. They probably did not pass the loyalty test that may be required to be in the loop. Today, the young and nationalist among them, those whose vision fires far beyond the private domain of religious and regional bigotry, have been marginalized, falsely accused, branded as traitors and reduced to the status of treasonable felons.

Enter Goodluck Jonathan

We all felt the cold shrill, indeed, and were saddened beyond measure, to learn how Goodluck Jonathan, the nation’s vice-president and a politically relevant fellow Nigerian, was shamelessly treated by these hideous Grecians within the so-called Yar’Adua’s kitchen cabinet. I mean, how arrogant and how insulting could it possibly get? Now, in no way am I or any other fellow cohorts in the struggle agreeing with any of the pinto and patronizing policies of the PDP or, for that matter, Goodluck Jonathan’s association with them. But there is this unwritten natural code of conduct, regardless of religion, region, tribe or party, which would apply reason to decode the infectious bearish virus common in all mankind.

The PDP often prides itself as Africa’s largest political party. Yet, in the last ten years, this party and its leadership have presided over the whole-sale auction of our physical, natural and environmental resources to the sullen highest bidders from India, China, Spain and all these other lawless monkey countries which specialize adeptly in corrupt business practices around the globe. Somehow, ours has been a long history of missed opportunities in creative resource allocation and use. First, we had middle school teachers as heads of government or president; then came a flurry of military-schooled generals, who, to be factually honest, were simply no match for these savvy international players. Specifically, they failed to harness the array of homegrown talents and experts in the various occupational fields. Instead, they engineered lucrative but unsavory junior partnerships with bedeviled foreign companies to launder our scarce financial resources offshore. Then, these associated enemies of Nigeria’s progress invaded the national economy and carved out spheres of financial havens in the oil, mining, infrastructure, trade, shipping, energy, communications and environmental industries for privatization and plunder.

Within the thick of this unparalleled economic disarticulation appeared one former military general who had obtained an HND-tendered engineering diploma and who proceeded, without caution, to ride roughshod over any one who failed to affix the title of “Engineer” before his name. Thus began the unique Nigerian invention of calling someone “Engineer” Obasanjo, or “Architect” Mohammed or “Carpenter” Ogbulafor, etc. Just immediately, and in quick succession, the Nigerian landscape became littered with negotiated honorary doctorate degrees proffered upon the least academically capable but obviously upon the most financially potent. At that time, and as it is still, you wouldn’t dare call on these folks without affixing the “doctor” title to their names, a practice that came to signify some debased name-calling conquest for title-hungry Nigerians. The HND, an acronym for “Higher National Diploma,” was one cruel national government policy designed to demonize higher university education and give HND holders the false psychological attachment to university standards. While the ultimate objective of HND policy was to produce middle-level work force for government and industry, no such development ever occurred.

For years, General Obasanjo was widely commended by foreign observers as an astute democrat during his tenure, but Nigerians know better. His eight-year rule represented a crafted melodrama of plots and counter-plots, party dictatorship instead of national supremacy, military style intimidation of opponents, incomplete project financing, proliferation of front corporations for the well connected, massive youth unemployment, across the board education decline, energy infrastructure decay and the eventual perfection of the insulting PDP madness with office rotation. In 2007, when Yar’Adua eventually became Nigeria’s first university graduate president (this for a country that has produced some of the most brilliant students from the best universities in the world since Azikiwe’s time), we hedged our bets, hoping cautiously that the discipline and rational culture associated with university education might be brought to bear on the nation’s decision making process. But has it? Now, with the real Ph.D. that Goodluck Jonathan is bringing to the table, what should we expect? Fellow patriots, your guess is probably as good as mine, but he sure should be given the benefit of the doubt in the short term. However, will Nigeria continue to wallow in abject political lunacy and economic incompetence in a world of 21^st century technology advances? Should cutthroat party butchery be allowed to continually trump national interest? Should we continue to tolerate the increasingly bizarre electoral loopholes that the party in power has imposed on us all with impunity? What about the unchecked profligacy of members of the ruling PDP and the National Assembly? Must a nation that is looked upon to be the all-round African powerhouse continue to send abroad ill-prepared and intellectually lazy emissaries without counting the costs? Just come visit some of our foreign missions and see what I mean. It’s some doghouse, man!

The year was 2007. A friend had requested that I accompany him to our New York City consulate to apply for a visa as part of a research group planning to visit several West African states, including Nigeria. There was the usual Nigerian small talk-talk and loud sour jokes among the many waiting at the visa reception room. You would take a number as you arrived and then wait to be called according to the numbering sequence. But the sequence was not followed as stipulated and many began to complain about the chaos and obvious favoritism, but to no avail. Then some frustrated customer mouthed a rude comment and, suddenly, the young consular official charged with processing the applications flew out of his sitting stool in indignant rage, leaped across the window in front of his desk and pounced on this exhausted customer, hitting him with some very heavy blows to the head. A frightening duel ensued between these two while everyone else in that reception room scrambled for cover. Well, so much for diplomacy and protocol folks! A higher officer later came around to take statements from witnesses but we all knew nothing will ever come of it. After two hours of waiting, word finally came for my friend to come back in another two weeks. As we walked out of the consulate building unto the street below, my American friend’s first reaction to the assault we just witnessed was, “Cliff, was that bullish officer sufficiently trained back in your country on how to handle such sensitive consular business?” Well, all I did was simply pretend not to have heard him. As for the home front core issues, the over-worked Nigerian press has written enough to warrant any further mention here.

Some Hopeful Beginning

Dr. Goodluck Jonathan’s first official moves after the National Assembly resolution were widely applauded here by thousands of Nigerian patriots in North America, who had grown weary over the years with heads of state pretending to please everyone. First, by not consulting the dreaded PDP party hierarchy before demoting the opaque minded Attorney General, (we read about how the so-called “Prince” Ogbulafor, the PDP Chairman, ranted and shed much crocodile tears for not being consulted over the Attorney-General’s demotion), by belittling the culture of congratulatory messages from those gullible fat-feeding Nigerians, and by limiting or canceling those devilish, pathetic and time wasting courtesy calls from those scrambling to renew their preposterous contracts, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan gave us all a very welcoming preview as to how an executive president should take charge and minimize the impact of queer party customs in elective governance. It also gladdened the hearts of many who saw his bold moves as typical of how hard-earned Ph.D. recipients would display purposeful independence and exude confidence in their analytic world. The rumors here are also rife that his next move might seek to scrutinize oil well allocations which have allegedly gone to undeserving Nigerian petit-bourgeois suckers, traditional rulers, retired military generals and a host of other political nihilists who conveniently hide behind foreign front companies to market our oil for private gain.

There is probably no better president to scrutinize such oil industry allocations than Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, and a vast majority of Nigerians in the Diaspora would enthusiastically welcome any such auditing. After all, he hails from the Niger Delta, that very territory that God has blessed mightily with the oil resource, but which has seen very little of the harvest. He has also lived long enough to witness the plundering of this precious black gold by political and religious strangers and interlopers whose natural habitats are hundreds and hundreds of miles from the Niger Delta. In fact, the prevailing convention here is that the ill-fated Niger Delta amnesty that was recently negotiated by Yar’Adua was purely self-serving. Yes, a section of the militants agreed to lay down their guns for some ill-defined government rehabilitation program, but the government never followed through because the immediate objective was not really to invest any appreciable capital to transform that woefully underdeveloped Niger Delta region or pay restitution for its gross neglect over the years, but rather, as always, to get the oil flowing again in full stream so the idle ruling oligarchs residing somewhere far, far from the scene can continue their accumulation agenda. Let’s face it, if peace was the real dividend that the Yar’Adua government was seeking to achieve in the Niger Delta and in Nigeria in general, how come the recurrent Moslem-Christian murderous conflicts in the North are not given the same amount of attention they deserve? Year in, year out, hundreds of precious Nigerian lives are lost in these terrorist murders and not once have anxious and sorrowful Nigerians seen any evidence that any of the perpetrators of these religious-related crimes are prosecuted, convicted, jailed or executed. Have you heard any more about the recent Jos religious riots or who the perpetrators are? Have you seen any list of suspects in the Jos case that is under police custody or has been brought before any court of law? So, you can imagine the sleeplessness, the anxiety and the frustration of these gangsters when Dr. Gooddluck Jonathan came on the scene.

The Eminent Elders Group: Setting the Priorities

It was commendable to note how some of our former presidents, former heads of state and other elders of state (whose vision, wisdom and spirituality have set them apart from the religious-driven Nigerian politicians) demonstrated the shining examples of our traditions and customs by intervening with a concrete set of proposals on how to go forward. Their priorities were narrowed to free, fair and credible elections; energy and power; infrastructure; peace & security. While these may sound urgent and inevitable, Nigeria will continue to proceed blindfolded if we do not tackle our constitutional imperatives. The world has just witnessed how our chief legal practitioners and justice officials bungled the interpretation of how an incapacitated president ought to be replaced. It certainly did not require any rocket science to interpret and carry out the relevant clause in the 1999 Nigerian Constitution; but the tribal, regional, religious and political partisans insisted on reading that document upside down. Even among the elected parliamentarians who should be in the know, you could hear many of them speaking from different corners of their mouths.

In this sober reflection, we call for a constitutional review convention that defines who we are as a republic, the levels of government in that republic and the rules of the game that must determine the interactions between and among them; it must define the powers and limitations of the president, the governors, the vice-president, the legislatures and the judiciary, so that no one group of Nigerians can lay exclusive claims to any set of powers. Our recent study shows how the Yar’Adua government appointed, by design or by intent, northern Muslim politicians, mainly from Kano and Katsina, to head more than 95 percent of all federal government agencies, including the military service chiefs. Are we being told that there are no other qualified Nigerians to head these positions or is this the Achilles’ heel that is waiting to sink Nigeria as we know it? The constitutional convention we seek must have nothing to do with the proposed politicized review that the National Assembly plans to undertake. It is clear to all mortals by now that the National Assembly is part of Nigeria’s core problem. It does not represent the people and the people have said as much. Any review the National Assembly undertakes will simply entrench their already burgeoning private interests: electoral loopholes; huge salaries and bonuses that dwarf even those of U.S. Congress in dollar values; travel, house, car, food, clothing, vacation, house pet, house servant/maid, marriage and several other insidious allowances. The constitutional convention we have in mind must establish a citizen’s bill of rights that defines who the Nigerian citizen is, their rights to live and work anywhere they choose because of their citizenship and the rule of law they can appeal to if their rights to life, property and freedom of worship were threatened. We may feel and pretend that such rights already exist but they do not. The Nigerian Constitution must define the role of the Nigerian judiciary more implicitly to provide the basis for appeal when any rights are violated. A nation’s judicial system is the only bulwark a citizen has to defend against either the tyranny of the majority or of the minority. The constitutional convention must delineate the various levels of courts and their jurisdictions. If a state court, what types of cases must come before such courts? Should they be limited to crimes that contravene only state laws? Should a state supreme court limit its jurisdiction to cases dealing purely with state laws? Should certain crimes be defined purely as federal crimes and as such must be adjudicated only in federal courts instead of state courts? Must the state Supreme Court be the final arbiter of all cases dealing with state laws instead of dragging such cases to any federal jurisdiction? If cases from state courts can be appealed to the federal Supreme Court, under what circumstances must that be allowed to happen? Should the federal Supreme Court deal purely and solely with the constitutionality of any action, policy, etc, or should it also dabble into criminal cases that ought to be reserved for state or federal courts? What should be the proper role and jurisdiction of a federal appeals court? If a federal court, what’s its jurisdiction? If a sharia, what level of court system should handle an appeal from such lower courts?

It is often assumed that the nation’s federal supreme court is the final arbiter of all jurisdictions when all the court’s justices hear cases in a joint sitting, but we have seen how individual justices have taken extra-judicial actions to hear cases that should have been heard by all sitting justices. This matter of the role of the federal Supreme Court in our judicial system could be one area where a constitution review will be sorely tested. What kinds of cases should come before the Supreme Court? Should they be cases that violate our civil and natural rights by any level of government or should the federal Supreme Court also participate in criminal case trials? Should our judicial system introduce the use of juries in deciding cases instead of leaving the fate of defendants in the hands of individual judges? Under what legal circumstance should individual justices of the Supreme Court be allowed to hear a case and pronounce judgment? Should it not be the practice of judicial restraint to have all justices sit and listen to a case within their jurisdiction and then give final verdict by voting as other civilized legal systems operate? Finally, if cases come before any court’s jurisdiction, should it not be the court’s primary objective to hear the merit of the case rather than have lawyers confuse observers with incoherent British legal lingua and squabble over mundane and irrelevant legal technicalities that have no bearings on the cases in question? Such legal hoop-curves have set many otherwise guilty wealthy criminals free as their smart lawyers argue away their crimes only because the Nigerian judicial system has no verifiable jurisdictions for most cases. This is injustice of the worst order and only a nationally constituted constitutional convention can rectify such long-running national anomaly. Without a peoples’ Constitution to set down the law and its limitations, delineate the implicit rules of the game, ascertain the various levels of jurisdiction and account for the proper boundaries of citizenship, Nigeria will remain rudderless democratically.

Dr. Goodluck Jonathan: Evoking the “Will of Allah”

In good times, it is common practice among the typical politician to quickly evoke the “Will of Allah” or the “Mighty Hand of God” when she/he gets appointed chairman, director, head of service or even when elected governor or president. This “Will of Allah” or “Hand of God” is hardly ever mentioned during bad times. Fellow Nigerians, is it not also the “Will of Allah” or “Hand of God” that Umaru Yar’Adua is sick, incapacitated and therefore not fit to continue to be president? If that is so, will it not also be the “Will of Allah” and the “Hand of God” that Dr. Goodluck Jonathan is now acting president and commander-in-chief of the nation’s armed forces? Sometimes, it gets incredibly revolting when you observe how some Nigerian Christians and Moslems continually fight endless losing battles against the Holy God they profess to know. If we confess that God is the author and finisher of our faith, why do we still have difficulty accepting His Will for us?

Dr. Goodluck Jonathan is certainly going to be saddled with mountains of unfinished business that his party has largely manufactured, but in tackling the core economic and technology crises facing Nigeria, he would need the skill and vision far beyond any that his party and its past leaders have summoned. A nation’s executive president must be independent and resolute in executing the peoples’ business, and he must be free from all those tabulated strings that previous Nigerian presidents are known to have fallen prey to. We expect him to take charge as a Ph.D. should and not be required to fulfill any pet designs that those same corrupt groups or individuals have put forward in the past to hold our presidents hostage. The president must retain the privilege always to appoint advisers and department heads who share his vision of intellectual pragmatism and not rely on third party nominations that are largely going to do the bidding of their godfathers. A leap of faith may be needed at this moment of our national development crisis if Dr. Goodluck Jonathan could tap into the deep reservoir of Nigerian talents in all professional endeavors around the world. It is insulting and degrading to our national pride to keep hiring foreigners in positions of great responsibilities when our graduates are walking the streets jobless. Indeed, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan should look beyond party and appoint capable and efficient indigenous managers to get down to the serious business of pulling Nigerian out of its 19^th century economy.

Before long, we suggest Dr. Goodluck Jonathan take a purely working tour of the country and see first hand the scope of the task before him. We also suggest that he spend more time with the people rather than wasting precious time on courtesy calls to the so-called traditional rulers who are already well fed. So far, from what we know about him, his names appear to be the only scrabble we can figure out with some certainty. Godluck, to all Nigerians, is self-explanatory. Nigerians like to pray for good luck with anything they do. Ebere, from the Ibo and Ijaw linguistic groups, means mercy, the favor we call upon God to lay upon us daily: Lord, have mercy upon us and shower us with the latter rain. Jonathan, for Christians, symbolizes eternal friendship and humility that is devoid of inordinate ambition. Jonathan, by inheritance, would have been King after his father Saul, but he so embraced the mighty valor of David and his enduring loyalty to his father the King that he “stripped” himself of the robe of inheritance that was upon him and gave it to David. Later, when Jonathan knew of King Saul’s plan to kill David out of jealousy, he quickly alerted David, hid him safely and saved his life. Thus, here is a president whose names provide us with a narrative and some metaphor that may define his tenure.

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Just one more reminder about the Yar’Adua government: In December 2009, the federal government ordered its police force to stop the NIGERIA RALLY MOVEMENT’S first peaceful rally in Gboko. We were told the government felt “uncomfortable” with our views. Since then, they have refused to register our organization, thereby violating our constitutional rights to assemble.