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Our President Needs a Breather By Maikudi Abubakar Zukogi Recently, President Jonathan was all fire and all water in quick succession. It will appear to be paradoxical to be fire and water at the same time. Nonetheless, fire can become water and water fire. But only on rare occasions do we have water metamorphosing to become fire. Water is calm naturally but fire is not. Fire is always yelling and its tongue restless, stretching to consume anything within its reach. Fire is violent; water is not, except when provoked, when its course is unduly tampered with. Our President demonstrated this paradox succinctly when at one point he, like fire, tongue-lashed at his critics, especially politicians who trade the same wares as he, for their demonstrated impatience with the slow drive of his administration. At another point, he was as cool as sea water: calm, sober and revealingly helpless. The occasions for these demonstrations were the activities marking the compellingly low-keyed 51st independence celebrations in Abuja. First was the church service held at the national ecumenical centre, where in my candid estimation, the President easily passed for a reputed pastor with his speech heavily laden with religious registers? Here the President demonstrated how equally vulnerable his critics are. If his critics do not tower above Goliath, who in spite of his imposing hulk frame, was felled by a David, it follows that they can easily be flattened by an amateur sling shooter. Armed with a quote from Pastor Aritsejafor’s sermon, the President drew attention to the fact that every Goliath, including his critics, has an exposed fore- head for the stone of David. This speech by the President is coming against the background of a whirlpool of criticism of his government for its tardiness by opposition politicians and the commenting public. Hundred days may be too short a time to judge an administration but it is nonetheless enough time to clear the stench and begin to serve Nigerians with a bit, not whole, of fresh air. If I construe a breath of fresh air to mean a change in the way government is run, not the business as usual kind of government, then we will need a dozen hundred days to begin to see changes manifesting. Every other administration in Nigeria, especially the military always promise to clean the Augean stable but ends up being consumed by it. May be that must be the reason why the President said he needs not be an army general, a Pharoah, a lion or a Nebuchadnezzar to pilot the affairs of this country. He needs simply to be himself coasting in the current of prayers of good spirited Nigerians. And matter of fact, no nation is auto-piloted; not even America whose President acknowledged the modest strides of President Jonathan in piloting the affairs of this country. There was no doubt that the tone of the President in that friendly Sunday morning speech was harsh and unsparing for those who chose to see only with one eye. It was an opportunity for the President to let it out; and there can be no better place to do this than the vineyard of the lord. Here the President pulled the strings to their elastic point, prayed heavily and enjoined fellow country men and women to pray for him to be able to sustain the strings at their elastic point. But his prayers and those of fellow Nigerians could only sustain the strings for two days. It appears that for only two days the president was stretched to breaking point and had to let the strings fall back to their normal position. At the 51st independence lecture on Tuesday September 27, the President let the cat out of the bag. You cannot successfully pull the strings to any length, let alone to their elastic point, when those on whose behalf you are doing so are retrogressing by day at an alarming rate. Critical institutions of the state, which are supposed to be the drivers of a breath of fresh air which the President promised Nigerians, are almost in a comatose state. And so the President came down from the high pedestal which he climbed on Sunday to ground zero on Tuesday to tell Nigerians that all is not well with our system. We cannot get a balanced, healthy and deficit free budget nor stable power, quality education, clean drinking water, good motorable roads and functional hospitals because the institutions to provide these have, in the word of the president, collapsed. By implication, the President does not have confidence that these institutions will be able to provide the services needed to drive the vision 20.20.20 which is yet another magical target year for the country. This confession of collapse of our institution, especially from the highest office, is not in any way belated. It was timely and well said; hence the President needs to be appreciated for summoning the courage to confirm what concerned Nigerians have been saying these past years. How the President will salvage these institutions remains to be seen, especially as you cannot build strong institutions based on patronage. Politics and patronage have remained the stumbling blocks to our building a strong and virile institution. Will the President be able to dismantle the different manifestations of politics and patronage in his determined effort to revitalize our supposedly collapsed institutions? Truly, a number of issues have cropped up in the last hundred days that could be reduced to the barest minimum if and only if the principles of a breath of fresh is applied to the latter. The best materials to use in demonstrating the President’s commitment to supply of a breath of fresh air should have been the eighteen thousand national minimum wage, ASUU and the recruitment of well informed and good spirited Nigerians to man positions in some of these institutions, agencies and parastatals. It is still not late to begin to do this. For owning up to the fact that all is not well with the country and something needs urgently to be done, I strongly feel that our president needs a breather, to show Nigerians that he can deliver. |