A Farewell To Sense And Sensibility

By

Nosa James-Igbinadolor

nosa.igbinadolor@gmail.com

 

Who is a Columnist? A Columnist is that guy who after a particularly bloody battle, comes down the hill to the battle field. He surveys the aftermath of the horrific scene of combat with anguish and distress, shakes his head in revulsion at the futility of war, then picks up a gun and shoots all the wounded in the back!

 

Perhaps, this description aptly defines the mentality and personality of the scribbling and chattering classes that are daily thrown at our faces by the political junta who control the Newspapers and T.V stations in the country and deplore these appendages to confront those that are politically, ethnically and attitudinally different from them.

 

I have often found myself cross-examine the concept of hate especially against the background of a highly divisive social and political environment like Nigeria characterised by the ascendancy of dubious columnists, pseudo-analysts, pseudo-writers, ersatz intellectuals and lily-livered editors with access to the columns and the front and back pages which they have used to advance untruths, fallacies, discontent, anarchy and outright lies. In a country where the ownership of the media is mostly in the hands of economic buccaneers with disconcerting links and linkages with an ethically debased political system dominated by morally deficient politicians, the end product has over time been a media that has been used to settle political scores, dehumanise personal and political opponents and criminalise those who have little or no access to the media.
 

The sordid incivility and loss of courtesy that currently pervades the nation’s political landscape not only raises serious questions about the place and role of the opposition in the democratic process but also calls for an intensive interrogation of the quality of media in the country, many of which can only validate their existence and sustenance by churning out affronts, slurs and libels coated in columns and back pages against the government of the day.

 

I watched the President a few days ago while declaring open the Nigerian Bar Association conference lament that he was probably the most criticised leader in the world. The President might have lightly made that specific assertion, but there is no doubting the fact that the President felt that many of these criticisms and insults were unjustified if not malevolent.

 

I am, and no doubt most Nigerians are, advocates of quantitatively unbridled but qualitatively restrained criticism of institutions and leadership of the time. Rigorous analysis of policies, programmes, actions and inactions of those our votes put in different offices is essential in promoting best values and practices that hitherto would be absent where we in an environment characterised by hero worship and a cult of personality a la North Korea.

 

President Goodluck Jonathan’s government is not a totalitarian Stalinist dictatorship with an elaborate cult of leadership around the President or his family, nor is the President a benevolent guide for the nation without whom, the transformation to a better future cannot occur. On the contrary, the President has displayed at all times meekness and a contriteness of spirit in his dealings with Nigerians and non-Nigerians.

 

Yet the opposition and the haters never fail to paint his humility and modesty as dangerous weakness and precarious flaws that makes him unworthy lead. When the President takes bold decisions such as the removal of subsidy on petroleum products, the haters gather with a brawny sense of iniquitous purpose and label him hard-hearted, mean and unresponsive to the public mood, never minding the fact that this “public mood” had been engendered by a devious use of the media at their control.

 

Never before has it been so bad for a country’s leader and the reason is obvious. The haters abhor President Jonathan’s chutzpah especially after he had the ‘audacity’ to contest and win the 2011 election. After all, he was not supposed to do that. They supported him, rallied for him and put their grip of their newspapers and T.V stations at his disposal so that he could assume office in 2010 at the height of the Yar’Adua imbroglio. The powers expected him to understand and not even think of 2011! Sadly he did not understand their body language and since then, the axis of hate; whom I have often defined as a coalition of latter-day democrats, petty thieves who as Governors stole their states blind, Gani Fawehinmi wannabes, perennial but failed Presidential candidates, losers in the ever dynamic power games and columnists, in the media, have coalesced together in a pact of steel to put “the drunken fisherman” in his place.

 

The strategy is simple but has been proved to be effective; when the President makes a mistake, criticise him as incompetent. When he takes bullish and effectual policy decisions, ignore them and call him incompetent. When he takes his time to ruminate over the varied options before him, dye him as slow and incompetent, when he responds quickly to any national or global demand, label him hasty and incompetent. After sometime, the label of incompetence sticks, the President is scarred for life and his legacies and achievements are de-historicised from the chronicles of the country.

 

In their estimation, everything and anything Jonathan is fair game in their strategic plan to take back ‘their power’ which they believe was usurped from them by a pretender to the throne. The President, his wife, his Ministers, his policies, his actions, his inactions, his gait, his ethnicity, his religion, his office, his personal staff; they are all fair game in this season of malevolent assault on the institution and person of the President.

 

Has the President’s leadership of the country been so bad and deficient of any form of credible dividends? The obvious answer is No! The Jonathan administration has driven the successful design and implementation of the Petroleum Industry Bill, a bill of momentous impact that would revolutionise the oil and gas industry once passed by the National Assembly. The Jonathan administration continues to drive the expansion of the power sector infrastructure started by the Obasanjo government with credible dividends in terms of electricity output and with a strategic plan for unparalleled electricity output by 2015. The putting into place of the strategic framework for the implementation of the SURE programme with its attendant creation of 360,000 semi skilled and unskilled jobs, the empanelling of the management of the Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority to manage the excess crude funds hitherto a slush fund for ever demanding state governors are clear outcomes that cannot be wished away by the President’s opponents.

 

What about the agricultural revolution going on in the country supervised by Dr. Akinwunmi Adeshina, the Minister of Agriculture; nothing excites me as much as the drive and vision of the Minister. Never before has so much emphasis been placed on reviving the agricultural potentials of the country. It is no longer about buying and selling fertilisers; it is now all about turning agriculture into a business. Of course, the haters do not like this to be known. The success story must not be told or their mission will get derailed.