NIGERIANS who vote for Goodluck Jonathan in next month’s presidential election now know their future. It is “fore-done” (as in “foretold) by Jonathan himself.
NIGERIANS who vote for Goodluck Jonathan in next month’s presidential election now know their future. It is “fore-done” (as in “foretold) by Jonathan himself.
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Of course you have to believe that action speaks louder than words. If you believe only in words, chances are that you missed the message.
Jonathan sent out the message last week as a character known as Bode George graduated from Kirikiri Prisons after two years, a nudge in the ribs he suffered at the hands of a fearless Lagos judge.
Do you believe in words? If you do, then on that same day, you would have heard Jonathan talking all over the place about what an achieving leader he is going to be. You would have seen advertisements praising him for being fair, honest, and transparent. You would have heard extensive tales about how he will guarantee electricity and jobs. You would have seen Jonathan on television swearing to “provide effective leadership based on the wishes and aspirations of Nigerians.” You would have heard Jonathan proclaiming that if he can “make it,” any Nigerian can, too.
Just then, the doors of the famous prison in Apapa opened to freedom for Bode George. It was a historic opportunity for Jonathan to translate his claims of leadership and change into practice. The trouble is that he was at the head of George’s receiving line.
George is a criminal. The court confirmed that. He is a thief and a conman. He was convicted on multiple charges of corruption arising from his tenure as Chairman of the Nigeria Ports Authority. He embezzled public funds, inflated contracts and awarded them to friends and cronies. That made George richer and more powerful.
What does this mean? It means he robbed the ordinary Nigerian of the funds that would have been used to improve lives and develop this country. It means he is a traitor, a man who betrayed the people for his selfish ends, including, it is safe to assume, his political party.
George’s life has been one imperious scandal. As Governor of Ondo State, he superintended a contract-awarding bazaar that made the state look as though it had lost a war to an invading enemy. Contemptuous of each and every rule of procedure, he supervised historic scandals that include the sale of huge publicly-owned companies to his friends. He would then famously help those friends to obtain bank loans to support those businesses as well as their lavish lifestyles.
His conviction in Lagos in 2008 was never expected to happen. If Obasanjo were still in power, it would certainly never have. The reaction of Jonathan and his political tribe to George’s release last week is proof of how much they all resent the rule of law.
But they cannot change history. George’s conviction was the indictment of the apparatus of which he was a chieftain and a political machine which he maintained through betrayal of the public trust. Anywhere else in the world, that would have been enough to isolate the convict, at least publicly. Anywhere else in the world, half-decent politicians would have kept their distance, at least publicly.
Instead, in Jonathan’s Nigeria, the common criminal was shamelessly received as a celebrity. Jonathan sent a Minister of the Federal Republic to welcome the hero and, in effect, apologize that they were not on hand to manipulate the judiciary as Umaru Yar’Adua did to keep James Ibori out of jail.
Jonathan’s extremely telling role in this event is a potent reminder of the true character and mission of his party and government. In any other country of the world, that event alone would have sealed his fate as a presidential hopeful, but Jonathan is carrying on as though it does not matter and as though all he has to do is talk loud and long enough. He is probably right.
Will he win next month’s presidential election in Nigeria? Possibly, but what he really accomplished last week was to warn Nigerians they would be wise to vote for any of his opponents.
“You would be blind, deaf and stupid to vote for me,” he implied, “because if you do, you know exactly what you are going to get: corruption and the enthronement and celebration of the corrupt and the mediocre.”
That is how we got to where we are: Obasanjo talked about fighting corruption and providing good governance, but the records show he was as much of the looting and the cynicism as anyone else. Yar’Adua claimed he was fighting corruption, but he spent his time in good health enriching and protecting the nation’s most perfidious criminals.
And here we are, confronted by an office-seeker who ought to be humble and honest, but whose only ability is to claim humility and honesty. Here we are, confronted by a man who says he will be a man, but who, by “transformation,” is talking about himself.
Bode George’s celebration by Jonathan follows on the heels of Jonathan’s refusal to let his powerful friends who have been indicted by probe panels to be prosecuted. He is the same Jonathan who gave a fifty thousand dollar bribe to a visiting pressure group three months ago. Jonathan is the one who cobbled together a list of some of the nation’s most vile and objectionable characters and called it our National Honours List. And now he says a convict who should be hiding his face in his mother’s bedroom is worthy of national adoration and honour.
It all hangs together: last week, a report by Transparency International (TI) and Revenue Watch Institute (RWI) disclosed that of 44 national and international energy companies in a survey, our NNPC has the poorest transparency record. The corporation scored zero on organisational information disclosure. It is all very straightforward: if the NNPC were to be less secretive about what is going on, many Nigerian thieves would go to jail. That would not go down well in the Jonathan scheme of things, would it?
The TI and RWI assessment came the same week as Mrs. Diezani Allison-Madueke, our Minister for Petroleum Resources, was dismissing the corporation as “corrupt, lacking in transparency and inefficient in all its dealings”.
But of course: It is the same NNPC that Obasanjo administered from his bedroom, claiming he could find no Nigeria worthy to man the position. Nothing has changed. The NNPCs and Bode Georges remain top of Nigeria scheme of things, kept moving and in place by politicians who are careful about what they say, but who insult Nigerians with every spineless and unpatriotic thing they do. Little wonder the Obasanjos and Iboris pray that Jonathan wins. He is the newcomer who can be relied upon to protect the boys.
Jonathan will deny this portrayal. But his actions, not his words, tell us everything we need to know about him. Strip away that black hat and the pompous PDP campaign costumes, and he is as PDP as the best of them.
His true message is therefore very simple: “I am Bode George. Take me as I am.”
Give him your vote, and that is your future foretold.
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