Skip to main content

Nigeria In Deep Trouble! By Wumi Akintide

November 17, 2014

The prognosis of the Nigerian problem under Jonathan like they say in medical parlance is not good. You don’t need a prophet T. B. Joshua or any of the big names in the Nigerian evangelical movement who speak in tongues and daily communicate with the Holy Spirit to tell you before you know it “You don’t have to hear voices all the time” like Chris Young, the golden voice America country music star to hear it loud and clear that Nigeria is going nowhere but down unless we have the courage to use our vote wisely to change our government and leadership from one election circle to another if necessary as done in the ideal democracy we pray for in Nigeria.

The signs are compelling but many supporters of the President are just too blind and paranoid to acknowledge them.  All they want Nigerians and the opposition to talk about are his successes, but never his failures. That will be acceptable if Nigeria is a communist state or a dictatorship where the government is never wrong and where innovation and competition are not tolerated and where the rule of Law does not exist.

Image

The prognosis of the Nigerian problem under Jonathan like they say in medical parlance is not good. You don’t need a prophet T. B. Joshua or any of the big names in the Nigerian evangelical movement who speak in tongues and daily communicate with the Holy Spirit to tell you before you know it “You don’t have to hear voices all the time” like Chris Young, the golden voice America country music star to hear it loud and clear that Nigeria is going nowhere but down unless we have the courage to use our vote wisely to change our government and leadership from one election circle to another if necessary as done in the ideal democracy we pray for in Nigeria.

We wish for the kind of Democracy that empowers a young girl named Malala Yousafzai to become a celebrity and a Nobel Peace Laureate. The girl came to Nigeria to remind our president to recognize there might be another Malala among the 300 Chibok girls who have been in captivity against their will since April.

That dereliction alone apart from the siege mentality the country has endured for 4 years and more is enough reason in a democracy to take out the president or force him to resign or be impeached. The tragedy of the Nigerian situation is that the opposition too is yet to tell us what they plan to do to change the situation. Time is running out. The election is less than 4 months away and the opposition is yet to tell us their nominee.

In America or Great Britain if you don’t perform you lose the next election and give another candidate a chance to prove he or she is better than you. Nigeria will remain in big trouble until we Nigerians appreciate that God is not coming down to do our work for us. That is the big difference between the countries of the first and third world.

I don’t want to hear the lame excuses we give that Rome was not built in a day. If Singapore was of that mindset under Lee Kuan Yu, she would not qualify to be called one of the 4 tigers of the Pacific. The State of Israel created in 1948 would never have come this far in their development. America a former colony of Britain like Nigeria would never have become the only super power and the leader of the Free world.

Nigeria is in trouble because we have a president who does not understand that Heaven helps those who help themselves. It is not enough to just pray and believe that everything will fall in place even if you don’t do anything to actualize your dreams.

Once every year during the Ramadan season in Nigeria The President invites the Sultan of Sokoto and many prominent Muslim leaders in the federal territory and beyond to come join him for breakfast at Aso Rock. He does the same thing with Christian leaders around Easter time and he is a frequent visitor to the monthly Holy Ghost Night of the Redeem Christian Church of God on Ibadan/Lagos Expressway.

The President does that as a show of solidarity with every faith in Nigeria, which is a good thing. We have seen pictures of him kneeling down to receive blessings from General Overseer Enoch Adeboye who tells the President “it is well” like he tells everyone in his congregation.

Our President leaves the camp believing he does not have to worry about anything else because the man of God has spoken.  “It is well” as often used by Pastor Adeboye is often taken out of context by President Jonathan to mean that all is well with Nigeria. I am not Pastor Adeboye. I am not even spiritually strong enough to untie his shoes but I know that President Jonathan is naïve to take the words of the powerful cleric out of context.

Nigerian voters reserve the right to hold The President to a higher standard because the man promised us he was going to be different when some power brokers in the North wanted somebody else instead of him. We fought for him. We gave him that chance and elected him to another full term of 4 years. The man and his kith and kin in the South/South are now telling us he must re-elected to a second term whether we like it or not and regardless of whether or not he has performed to our satisfaction.

His supporters were more or less telling us that Americans were wrong to have denied Jimmy Carter or George Bush Senior a second term because the American Constitution has mandated a maximum of two terms for every President. Their argument is that Nigeria is not America. Nigeria does not need to insist that our President must perform. We must just go on supporting the President even if the man has become an embarrassment.

We say to them “no” The man has to go and the way to do it is to reject him at the polls like is done in every civilized country.

Nigeria is in deep trouble and American pundits have predicted a possible rupture in Nigeria in 2015 if we keep doing what we have been doing moving round in circles or one step forward and two steps backward...

We do not have to become experts in probability theory to appreciate why the pundits are making those predictions. Those of us who can clearly read between the lines have to know that all is not well with Nigeria with the level of corruption the country has had to endure under President Jonathan as articulated in my last article. Some of our Igbo friends are telling Nigerians not to worry because Nigeria was worse off under Sani Abacha and Ibrahim Babangida. I put it to them that Jonathan was far more corrupt than Babangida and Sani Abacha or Olusegun Obasanjo and Abdulsalam Abubakar.

We currently have a ruling party in Nigeria which has completely lost its moral compass and direction to rule Nigeria beyond the year 2015. The PDP Government has failed the nation but they think they are the best. They quite often boast that they are going to rule Nigeria for the next 100 years forgetting that the country might no longer exist by that time if we continue to glorify the one party dictatorship we currently have in the ideal democracy many of us wish for Nigeria, no party however good and benevolent is allowed to monopolize and dominate power for as long as the PDP has done in Nigeria.

I don’t care what kind of grass root support they currently have. They must give the other party a chance to prove their own mettle. We would never know until we try them. If they fail to measure up to our expectation, we reserve the right to vote them out at the next election like American voters have just done in the mid-term elections. That the Republicans have won in 2014 is no guarantee they are going to win again in 2016. That is the beauty of American democracy that Nigeria ought to emulate.

Ghana is already doing it. The State of Israel does it all the time and so is Great Britain, Canada and Australia, South Africa and other European countries like Germany France and Italy. Gambia is in trouble right now because the dictator called Jammeh would not let the Gambian people freely choose their own leader. Robert Mugabe, at more than 80 years old and more than 30 years in office, has turned Zimbabwe into a one party dictatorship.

His plan is to handover to his wife. Nigeria must not be allowed to deteriorate to that level. We made sure that Obasanjo was denied a third term because of that. We must do the same thing to Jonathan who does not deserve 4 more years because he has left Nigeria in a far worse shape than he met her.

It is a different ballgame, however, in Nigeria if you consider the credentials of some of our leaders running for office and the way they go about it. We are selecting the leader of the most populated country in Africa and we are giving them less than 3 months to make their case. The military-imposed Constitution of 1999 was designed in a way to short-change our electoral process.

While the process may be good for the party in power, it is a trap for the Opposition. The APC should have known that going forward. I am disappointed with all the wrangling and drift currently going on in the APC. They don’t appear ready to do the heavy lifting that is needed to take out the PDP.

Our current President who has kept the country guessing for 4 years finally declared on November 11 his intention to run again in 2015 barely three months to the election date in 2015. The opposition party, which is planning to replace Jonathan in 3 months, is yet to make up her mind on which candidate to pick. They look totally confused right now as whoever emerges as their candidate may have little time to really confront the PDP.

The young and inexperienced Speaker of the House, Mallam Tanbuwal, who has just decamped from the PDP to join the APC, could not make up his mind as to what he really wants to do. He has two choices to either run for Governor of Sokoto State or run for President. That ambivalence is enough to doom his candidacy in a more civilized country.  Atiku Abubakar once did something very similar to what Tambuwal is doing now. 

Atiku in no time ran back to the PDP because he could not afford to be out of power for too long. Ribadu was once selected the flag bearer of CAN in similar circumstance. The same Ribadu is back in the PDP after losing very badly to Obasanjo. Now Tanbuwal is playing the same game. When are the opposition leaders going to learn their lessons? 

The job of Speaker does not necessarily prepare any candidate to be President or Prime Minister as we have seen in the US and Great Britain. Hardly do you find anyone moving from the Speaker‘s job to become President in the US or Prime Minister in Britain. Tambuwal has been Speaker for less than 4 years in a Lower House that is notorious for making Nigerian legislators the highest paid in the world for doing nothing. T

he House under his leadership has colluded with the Executive to retain the provision in the Nigerian Constitution that grant immunity to the Speaker, to the President and to the Senate President and state Governors. If Tanbuwal is a promising presidential material, he would have persuaded his Caucus and his party to drop the silly provision.

I don’t see anything that has made him a good material for president beyond his age and state of origin. Whoever is encouraging him to throw his hat to the ring this late in the game cannot be helping their party to win in 2015. The APC cannot claim to know him long enough to make him their flag bearer if the party knows what it is doing. His entering the race this late in the game can only further divide the party and cause more confusion to their rank and file.

Buhari to me is about the only candidate that currently has the credentials and the experience to defeat Jonathan. It is true The General does not have a Ph.D from Port Harcourt but he surely has integrity and experience as a former Head of State. I am surprised that John Oyegun a retired Federal Permanent Secretary and the new Chairman of APC would allow Tinubu and Tambuwal to double-cross the party like that at a time the party ought to be speaking with one voice to impress Nigerian voters they truly mean business.

It looks to me like the PDP has put “Tabatiada” on the APC leadership to start pursuing shadow instead of putting out a credible plan that would clearly show the voters they are not just a carbon copy of the PDP. They need sufficient time to do that and they are currently running out of time for more Nigerians to get to know their candidate and where he stands on all of the issues that should determine the outcome of the presidential election in 2015. 

The hope of the common man lies with the Judiciary and a responsible opposition which is considered as the Government-in-waiting in every stable country. The Judiciary has shown some independence in some of the election tribunals it has adjudicated. I will be the first to admit that. I must also point out that the Judiciary often waist too much time in dispensing justice forgetting that justice delayed is justice denied. 

Late Governor Agagu was retained in office for 46 out of 48 months before the Appeal Court restored the stolen mandate of Governor Mimiko. Those are the kinds of problems President Jonathan should have tackled with the PDP majority in the Senate and the House of Representatives in his more than 5 years in office.

The transformational President who promised the Moon on coming to office has done nothing to show that he is drastically different from all of his predecessors or that he truly understands the problems of Nigeria. Atiku in a recent press interview has come across as being far more articulate and knowledgeable about the problems of Nigeria than President Jonathan and General Buhari.

The General would need a lot of catching up to do to displace Atiku who appears more confident he could defeat Buhari in the primaries because he is a more articulate grass root politician who knows what to do to reach out to party delegates from all of the 36 states.

General Buhari must learn some useful lessons from what happened to late Uncle Bola Ige who was expecting to easily beat Olu Falae as the SDP nominee. He was so confident he travelled out of the country only to come back to hear that Olu Falae has won. He was stunned. The same thing could happen to Buhari. If Atiku becomes the APC nominee all bets are off, the APC will lose to the PDP again. Their best bet is Buhari.

President Jonathan clandestinely encouraged Governor Mimiko of Ondo State to decamp to the PDP while using the Labor Party as a launching pad. That is not the kind of leadership Nigeria has a right to expect from a transformational President who wants to lead Nigeria to the Promised Land. President Jonathan did not order the Inspector General to withdraw the security details of Governor Mimiko on his crossing carpet to the PDP but the man wasted no time to withdraw the security details of the Speaker within 2 days of his resignation from the PDP. The President has refused to restore the Speaker’s privileges despite a Court order.  Is that the kind of a leader Nigerians want to re-elect in 2015?  Nigerians should be careful about what they wish for because they just might get it. Jonathan is not a transformational President he wants the whole world to believe.

General Buhari and Atiku Abubakar knocking heads in their epic battle for the nomination is going to irredeemably damage the APC  as many of its members sensing defeat  in 2015 may start to bail out and running back to the PDP for lack of nowhere else to go.

Nigerian politicians are bread and butter politicians who have no abiding faith in any principle or loyalty.  For all you know, Buhari could predictably lose to Atiku in a primary selection based on secret ballot because Atiku would have no qualms bribing the state delegates to support him and dump Buhari who is not prepared and probably does not have the money to bribe anybody to get the nomination.

Nigerian politicians of both parties are all “Awodi  jeun Epe san ra” or what Awolowo once described as “Ojelu” meaning the corrupt and greedy politicians as opposed to “Oselu”  who seek public office to leave a worthy legacy and to help the nation grow and prosper to enjoy the full dividends of Democracy. Many Igbos and many Yorubas and Hausa and Fulanis are rooting for Jonathan today not because they believe he is a good President but because he is an incumbent with the key to the Nigerian treasury in his hands.

The quest to see Nigeria survives as an egalitarian society is not their goal. They are happy as long as they are allowed to have their slice of the pie. If the APC think more Nigerians would vote for them or hop into their sinking ship, they just don’t know Nigerians.

Most Nigerians and African politicians would rather die in office than leave while the ovation was the loudest. Nigeria is in deep trouble because of that kind of mindset. Majority of us are guilty of that malfeasance myself included.

I say Nigeria is in deep trouble because most of our Clerics, our Bishops and our Chief Imams are equally as corrupt as our political leaders.

Their policy is “hear no evil and see no evil.” Some of them pray for armed robbers not to get caught. How about that? The few among them like Cardinal Olubunmi Okogie, Bishop Bolanle Gbonigi, General Overseer Adeboye and Pastor Tunde Bakare and a few others who occasionally speak the truth to power have been called names and branded as radicals who want to destabilize Nigeria.

You could say the same thing of many of our traditional rulers who run around at night time as contractors looking for big contracts they would not perform, but want to be paid for. They have undermined their leverage to speak the truth to power because they are busy looking for favors from the political class by asking them for official Limousines and police orderly that their Local Governments could not afford to give them.

Governor Fayose once seized one of such cars from a traditional ruler in Ekiti who would not dance to his tune as Governor The few exceptions I know are the Awujale of Ijebu Ode, the Sultan of Sokoto, the Emir of Kano, The Alaafin of Oyo, the Olowo of Owo, The Osemawe of Ondo, the Obi of Onitsha and Omo N’Oba N’Edo Uku Akpolokpolo.

Some of these traditional ruler as royal fathers ought to be able to tell some of those politicians the truth just like Oba Erediauwa did when he stood up for Governor Oshiomhole. He told President Jonathan the Governor has performed creditably and that he could not, in good conscience, support the PDP in Benin. Some of our leaders would not change until we have the courage to tell them the truth or call their bluff.

The PDP is not going to change as long as there are Nigerians willing to cheer them up for doing nothing like they did in the their disgraceful circus at the Eagle Square in Abuja on November 11 while half the country was being held captive by Boko Haram. Our clueless President was lying in Abuja telling Nigerians what he thinks they want to hear.

Nigeria currently has 2 Commanders-in-Chief.  Jonathan rules half the country from Abuja while the other one terrorizes the rest of the country from Mubi, Chibok and Potiskum and we are all supposed to roll out the drums and shout “Aibelemam “meaning “I love you“in Buguma dialect to Jonathan whose troops have been known to desert the battle field leaving their more sophisticated weapons, armored cars, AK 47 and military vehicles to the rag tag army of Boko Haram.  The President is asking us to vote for him again in 2015. He should go tell that to the Mountains. Only the fools and the praise singers among us would vote for him.

Nigeria is in trouble because in times like this Nigeria would be justified to start begging the Military to come bail us out. We cannot do it because we now know that the Nigerian Military is not the one we used to know. The Chukwuma Nzeogwus of this world, and the Emmanuel Ifeajunas, the Banjos, the Theophillus Danjumas, the Joseph Garbas and  other brave soldiers Nigeria used to know, are now history.  Local hunters and vigilantes now display more bravery than many of our men and women in uniform.

Nigerians should be ashamed of the Nigerian Military to say the least. They have nothing to show for the millions of Dollars spent on their training and procurement of arms and weapons for them. I put the lion share of the blame on our Commander-in-Chief and all his Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Army, the Navy and the Air Force. Gone were the days  when valiant soldiers  like Brigadier Benjamin Adekunle, Col. Adekunle Fajuyi , Col. Shittu Alao of the Air Force, Odumegwu Ojukwu, Col Achuzia, Brigadier Maimalari, General Dongo Yaro , General Agbazikah Innih,  General David Mark, General Joseph Garba  and so many of them used to wear the uniform.

American Government is reluctant to sell sophisticated weapons to Nigeria today because they cannot guarantee that those weapons would not end up in the hands of Boko Haram who could then pass them on to their collaborators in Syria and Iraq who are doing the same thing with American arms and weapons seized from Iraqi and Kurdish Army.

Nigeria is in deep trouble because the Nigerian Military has caught the bug from the Nigerian Police with their notoriety for corruption in Nigeria. I respect the institution of The Presidency but not the present occupant of Aso Rock. The guy as the first Ph.D holder on merit to be elected President has disappointed Nigerians. I thought he was going to perform wonders with his education and the kind of support and reservoir of good will he got when some northerners were determined to stop him from taking over following the death of Yar Adua. We did everything we know to support him because we thought he was going to be different.

The man should have turned down the offer by the Bayelsa Governor to promote his wife a Permanent Secretary in absentia. The President should have told the Governor he did not appreciate that kind of favor. That should have sent a powerful message to the other Governors and even to his wife that he was a different man as President.  He allowed his first lady to be promoted Permanent Secretary and to be eligible for all the salaries and benefits attached to that office while the woman was still living in Abuja and functioning as first lady.

What kind of leadership by example is The President teaching all of his ministers and top aides like Reuben Abati who was a fire eater of a journalist before he joined  Jonathan’s kitchen cabinet?

The same president did not see anything wrong in some of his ministers and Federal contractors donating cars as gifts to their adopted daughter when she got married. The President did not reportedly raise any objection to some of his Ministers and and state governors donating millions of Naira to the first lady in a “quid pro quo” fashion when the first lady buried her mother at Okrika. What corruption can be worse than that?

The military who could have intervened to stop the hemorrhage is in no position to do so now for two reasons. They lacked the patriotism and the discipline to do it and they know that the international community will not welcome or co-operate with them if they strike. 

Much of the world has now embraced Democracy, which is nurtured by free and fair election which is very elusive in Nigeria because Professor Jega would not do what is expected of him and damn the consequence.

Nigeria is in deep trouble because the Nigeria Federation is sitting on a Pandora box with the situation in the Northeast, which is gradually spreading to the other parts of Nigeria including the South as we speak. No country on Earth has ever survived two civil wars like the ones Nigeria is currently facing. I cannot help but look upon President Jonathan as another Emperor Nero who kept fiddling while Rome continued to burn.

I am sure that many of you reading this will now ask who I would recommend to rule Nigeria since I seem opposed to both the PDP and the APC. It is a legitimate question to ask. All I am saying is that if the choice were to come down to Buhari and Jonathan, Buhari would be a better choice because he is the lesser of two evils and because the man has the clout, the leverage, the integrity and the discipline to lead Nigeria right now given the level of Corruption and insecurity in Nigeria. He has done it before. I believe He can do it again if we support him. Need I say more?

I rest my case.

The writer of this opinion editorial is Dr. Wumi Akintide.