President Jonathan-More Pains Than Transformation By Dr. Wumi Akintide

Because President Jonathan wants to build Rome in one day in the name of transformation, a comparative analysis of his agenda and “modus operandi” with that of Murtala Mohammed the only transformational President Nigeria has ever had is inevitable. Some might argue that the comparison is far-fetched and unfair because Murtala was a military Head of State while Jonathan is an elected one.

I fully appreciate that. The similarity for me is because Jonathan’s party completely dominates and controls the three tiers of Government namely the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary and both federal, state and local Government levels, and should therefore in a position to get things done in pretty much the same way like a military man despite the clear separation of powers, if he has the leadership qualities to do so.

   I am doing the analysis not just because I have read Amagada’s book on Murtala Mohammed titled “200 Days to Eternity” but because I had the rare privilege of working closely with Murtala at the Defense Headquarters in Lagos before himself or anyone close to him has had any inkling at all he could be a Head of State at some point in his career  The one thing I knew about him was that he was an action man, always in a hurry to get things done as if he knew he was not going to be around for too long. He was the chairman of the committee on recruitment of senior army officers and I was the civilian secretary to that committee as Assistant Secretary (Army) way back in 1968 roughly 7 years before he was catapulted to Head of State following the success of the Nigerian third coup in 1975.

   I learnt, first hand, from him that he was in line to become Head of State after the 1966 second coup that finally settled on Yakubu Gowon as a compromise choice to appease the predominantly Christian South who were just about ready to call it with the predominantly Muslim North because they thought they have had enough. Murtala gave me the impression in a Freudian slip, I might add, that he voluntarily turned down the offer to succeed Ironsi because he thought the environment was too charged and volatile to permit a Muslim officer taking over from Aguiyi Ironsi. So for the third time in less than 6 years after Independence the leadership of Nigeria was offered again as always to the weakest link in the chain due to ethnic and religious expediency or bigotry. Becoming Nigerian Head of State or Prime Minister always have little to do with ability and competence per se because Nigeria is always looking for a safe pick who will not rock the boat or tinker with the status quo.

   Is there any wonder therefore that the country in spite of her potential and limitless resources in human and material capital has been overtaken by South Africa and pushed to the second or third place on a ranking scale of African countries? Ghanaians who used to seek refuge in Nigeria in tough times no longer have a reason to come. It is Nigerians that are now falling over one another in a rush to make investments or send their children to school or University in Ghana. Nigerian only know when their children get enrolled to school, they cannot tell when they finish due to endless strikes and general instability.

   Tafawa Balewa, a Grade II teacher from Bauchi had become Prime Minister on October 1, 1960 while Nnamdi Azikiwe who should have been the obvious choice for Prime Minister ended up becoming a ceremonial President whose main function was attending funerals of other Heads of State while Balewa pretty much had to learn on the job as compared to Dr. Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana to cite one clear example. Can you imagine Tafawa Balewa engaging Nkrumah in a debate about Government at that point as the Prime Minister of Nigeria? That explains why many foreigners used to ask at the time if Nigeria was a province in Ghana because the Osagyefo totally eclipsed Tafawa Balewa reducing him to nothing as I recall.

     The tail was wagging the dog and that was the beginning of the endless problems of Nigeria as the big-for-nothing giant of Africa fumbled from one crisis to another. Even though the black gold had been discovered in commercial quantity in our country but our leaders lacked the vision to capitalize on that to move the country forward. Many of us are amazed that close to 50 years after oil discovery in Nigeria that Nigeria still had only three Refineries with one in Eleme Alesa near Port Harcourt, one in Warri and another in Kaduna. Can you believe that? One or two should normally have been built in other places that are known to have oil like the Ilaje Ese Odo Creeks around Obejedo in Ondo State, Ijebu/Epe waterside and the Badagry Creeks in Lagos, but our blind and reactionary Federal Government would never think of that because that would amount to giving the South West, otherwise known as Awolowo country an undeserved advantage.

   As the pioneer Director of Rural Development in Ondo State, I can tell you that the  Federal Government has always turned a blind eye and would not allow Ondo State to be recognized as an oil producing state until the PDP actually took over the state by subterfuge in 2003. The Federal Government would also not allow Ondo State under the UPN and Pa Ajasin to seek foreign partners to develop the largest world deposit of Bitumen around Agbabu area in Ondo State up till now for the same reason. The Bitumen deposit was so much that it started oozing out on its own but the Federal Government would not touch it with a 10 foot pole because they thought Ondo State with its intellectual power base in Nigeria could be the highest beneficiary and they would not allow that. It would have been a different story if that Bitumen had been found in Gwagwalada, Azare or Funtua. The same Federal Government dominated by the Northerners were ready to not just spend millions of our petrol Dollar on frantically looking for oil and other minerals in the North or wanting to dredge the River Niger regardless of the cost to link their land-locked homeland to the Sea. This will tell you about the stupid mind set of the Federal Government that has been ruling the country for 50 years because the same Mafia that has continued to rig and win elections from one election circle to another in Nigeria even if no one came out to vote. That has always been the pattern in Nigeria.

   Many of our leaders ought to have seen all of this observation as a red signal for Nigeria but they did not, because all that mattered to them was just keeping Nigeria one under the permanent domination of the North as clearly summarized by Yakubu Gowon when he suddenly realized that his last name, “GOWON” (Go on with one Nigeria) could well be a fitting acronym for Nigeria. He followed that awareness with a statement that became the clarion call against the Biafran secession attempt when Gowon crafted the statement “To keep Nigeria one is a task that must be done” as if keeping Nigeria one is ever going to bring the bacon to the table or free Nigeria from our mental torture and enslavement as a people.

   President Jonathan in a recent press interview is expressing pretty much the same sentiments 50 years later when he was asked to name one good thing his Government has done for Nigeria. His short answer was keeping Nigeria one as if doing that was all the country needed. Now that the southerners no longer feel safe in the North and are being asked to leave, and the northerners are trooping out of the South for fear of being attacked, I guess that Jonathan’s next most important achievement is oil subsidy because he claimed the oils subsidy has become the “fons et origo” of corruption in Nigeria and that removing it would all of a sudden offer a permanent solution to the Cancer of Corruption in Nigeria. If you believe that crap, I have an island to sell you in the Pacific because the dividends on subsidy removal are never going to be used for the purpose they have stated. Much, if not all of it is going to end up in a few private pockets as usual. I can assure you of that. There is money in Nigeria to run the country and still leave a surplus. The problem is the point I have just underscored and the culture of corruption at all levels of Government. I know it because I have been there. I checked out of Nigeria because corruption was very pervasive and the quality of life was nothing to write home about and because I knew I had an alternative. The state Governors who are pushing for subsidy removal today and backing Jonathan are the most guilty of corruption as Governor Ibori’s track record in Delta has clearly shown everybody.

    If you don’t believe me, then you have to tell me where all the money realized when the Gulf war shot up the price of crude oil from roughly 28.00 Dollars per barrel to above 100.00 Dollars a barrel leaving so much money for Nigeria to play around with. The fund was reportedly managed by the Petroleum Task Force (PTF) that General Buhari once presided over. The Federal Budget was based on the assumption that a barrel of crude was going to be selling for less than 30 Dollars but it rose to triple or quadruple that amount with nothing to show for it. One would have expected the excess to be diverted to building needed infrastructures like Refineries, Highways, Rail Roads across the country and stable electricity and what have you. Did that ever happen? Hell no. That is exactly what is going to happen to the oil subsidy surplus if it ever saw the light of day.

    Nigerians should therefore not be fooled. The country has enough funds to do what she needs to do if our resources and revenues are wisely and properly managed. President Jonathan is earning ten times the salary of the US President for doing little. So is David Mark, the Senate President and the Speaker of the National Assembly and their Deputies. If you slash those salaries and allowances by half for every one of them there would still be enough to spend to develop the country and to spare. Few in Government will tell you because they are full of it.

      I listened to Mr. Olisa Agbakoba the former President of the Nigerian Bar Association tell the Symposium on the Oil Subsidy that he was more than 50 years old and that Nigeria has done nothing for him. Everybody laughed but the man was right. But I could tell from the 2 most powerful women, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and Dezeani Madueke who spoke for the Government after him. They quietly reminded Agbakoba that he made a mistake to say that. They both argued that Mr. Agbakoba has benefited  from oils subsidy without knowing it for as many years as he has owned a car in Nigeria because the price he has been paying at the pump for a litre of petrol has always been heavily subsidized by the federal Government. Tell me about it. Both of them argued that what the Federal Government was trying to do was level the playing field so that market women and peasants and Almajeris and beggars who don’t own cars or generators can also have their own slice of the pie when Government can now use the funds to develop basic infrastructures that would touch everybody’s life. I say “Foul over the bar” The Government still has enough surplus to do all of that without removing subsidy.

   I will argue there is a stronger incentive to keep the subsidy in place because it is about the only way that those of us not serving in Government can say we gaining anything  from the Government. If we all pay 65.00 Naira at the pump for a liter of oil costing N141, it means the Government has been paying the remaining N76.00. Why should anybody not welcome the retention of that subsidy because it is the only way to benefit from a Government that we all know is very corrupt and inept and would never admit to having any surplus. It means the oil that is used to run the Government cars assigned to National Assembly members, Senate Members, Ministers and advisers all benefit from the same subsidy retention because the Government in Nigeria at the Federal State and Local Government levels own no less than 50% of the cars on most Nigerian roads. So the subsidy retention is also befitting the Government in a big way if you buy this logic.

     Agbakoba like the rest of the 150 million Nigerians have never been told by the Federal Government that we have all been getting a subsidy on the oil we use to run our vehicles and our private generators and machines all over the country until President Jonathan made his move. Every time I feel up my car in Nigeria I have never felt the Government was doing me a special favor. As a matter of fact I thought they were ripping me off because they only sell unleaded gas which is probably less than  87 Octane to fuel a brand new Fuel injection Mercedez 500 that is supposed to run on a 93 Octane gas. They have ruined so many expensive cars because most petrol stations sell only one grade of oil for the same price regardless of any brand of car you drive in Nigeria. So if the analogy is correct it means that many of our filthy rich Nigerians and multi-millionaires who own fleet of cars SUVs and jets and planes have been getting higher subsidies than the rest of us who own just an Okada motorcycle or just one vehicle. If President Jonathan therefore woke up on January 1, to say he was removing the subsidy once and for all without sensitizing the people or educating them on how the Federal Government has been helping us, he must take responsibility for the apocalyptic eruption that follow in the wake of his reckless decision because he did not consult far and wide like he was supposed to do as a civilian President. He carried out his order in pretty much the same way like a military leader saying the subsidy would be removed in April but springing a surprise on the people by January 1st like he was laying ambush for them. He got the response that he deserved.

   If Nigeria was as broke as they all want us to believe, how does Jonathan explain his having no less than 7 aircrafts in his presidential fleet the last time I checked? How does the President and his PDP explain the payment of millions of Naira as salaries and allowances to himself, his VP and the Senate and the National Assembly? If the nation is as broke as they claim and if the payment of subsidy is unsustainable and going to bankrupt the nation as speculated by the President and his supporters, how come the Federal Government has tolerated the cancer for that long with all the corruption going on at all levels of Government? These are legitimate questions that make the Jonathan Government and his PDP Government and the Governors rooting for subsidy removal look like blood suckers who should never be allowed near the corridors of power. Just imagine what the one week of strike must have cost the country already. The whole development is not only regrettable but penny-wise and pound-foolish.     

       If Nigeria had spent half the investment she had wasted on peace keeping forces around the world and subsidizing other African countries like Mozambique, Zimbabwe and South Africa to mention a few, Nigeria would have been better off. If Nigeria has diverted money spent on Nigerians going on annual pilgrimage to Mecca or to Jerusalem and if our leadership has confronted the problem of corruption head on, there would have been no need at all for the oil subsidy removal conflagration which could predictably break up Nigeria.

   I was for a few years the Secretary to the Joint Economic Commissions of Nigeria with the rest of the world, with ECOWAS and the African Union and their affiliates in Africa.  I knew firsthand how much Nigeria has wasted on such white elephant projects like the Lake Chad Basin or a few joint ventures with Niger our next door neighbor . These are money that should have been spent developing Nigeria into an economic giant with the abundant mineral resources God has blessed us with. Our leaders have totally failed us and I can tell you that President Jonathan is playing the same game.

   Murtala Mohammed was the first truly transformational Head of State Nigeria has had because he totally changed Nigeria and the way we did business for the 200 days he was in power. Obasanjo who came after him had tried a little bit to be like Mohammed in his first 3 years because he had tried to implement Mohammed’s plan of action. His second coming, however, was decidedly a disaster for the country and yet if you put Obasanjo on a ranking scale, he is still one of the lesser evils among our leaders. Shagari was as weak as they come. Buhari and Idiagbon did try to do something constructive but then they derailed themselves because they were not consistent or totally free of bias in their actions.

    Babangida had the right ideas to move the country in a better direction and he did a few things that could have changed the country forever but he back-slide because of too much personal greed and lack of discipline. Sani Abacha was an unmitigated disaster for the country. Abdul Salam was nothing but a transitional President. So was Yar Adua who was too sick to govern or really make a difference. He should never have been selected but Obasanjo in his dictatorial streak, had forced him down the throat of Nigeria just like he had handpicked and paved the way for Jonathan to lead the country with no track record to run on other than his good luck of always being at the right place at the right time.

  I predicted more than a year ago in one of my articles that the country was going nowhere but down under Jonathan’s leadership. I have been proved right by what is happening in Nigeria right now. He himself has admitted for the first time that Boko Haram and the radicals have infiltrated his Government at all levels. What he has not added is that the power brokers in the Oil Industry like Chevron, Shell BP and Mike Adenuga and the Dangotes of this world have also infiltrated his Government. The Oil Industry in Nigeria which is controlled by foreign multinationals like Chevron have been known to pick the Chief Law Enforcement Officers of Nigeria under Yar Adua and Jonathan thereby making it impossible to curb corruption at the highest level of Government. Aondoakaa was hand-picked by them to become Attorney-General under Yar Adua and Mohammed Bello Adoke became Attorney-General because he was the candidate of the powers-that-be Oil Industry which generates 98% of the revenues of Nigeria.  If you don’t believe me, you just go and read the Wikileak reports on the Oil Industry and Corruption in Nigeria and see how Mr. Adoke and President Jonathan himself have become mere pawns in the Chess game of the power brokers of the Oil Industry.

   Some of you reading this might say that those reports are grossly exaggerated but I can tell you there is no smoke without fire. Nigeria is in a mess and Jonathan is a wimp with the mind set of a dictator who cannot do anything to clear the Augean stable of Nigerian malfeasance. The 2 most powerful ministers in his cabinet today are Okonjo-Iweala and Deziani Madueke. They are currently the 2 ministers making it impossible for the President to buckle under pressure he himself has created by putting the cart before the horse and taking foolhardiness for bravery. The sooner the President reaches agreement with the Unions the better for him because the country is going nowhere but down if the strike is not called off pretty soon.

  Need I say more? I rest my case.