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Jonathan And Acquired Integrity Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS)

According to a former President of America, Abraham Lincoln, “nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”

According to a former President of America, Abraham Lincoln, “nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”


Nothing better illustrates the truism of this remark than the tragicomedy currently playing out in Nigeria today. Most Nigerians had massively invested their electoral mandate and reposed their abiding confidence in the incumbent President of the country, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, unmindful of the possibility that he might have approached them with “the voice of Jacob and the hands of Esau.” I had particularly noticed the President’s propensity for dishonour and craftiness when, at the peak of his electoral campaign, the Current Minister of Petroleum, Diezani Allision-Madueke, mounted the campaign podium (under the full glare of the President and other party enthusiasts) and announced glibly that “Mr. President had directed me to flood Nigeria with kerosene and that the price of the product is on its way down to its official price,” Her Nigerian audience cheered and applauded the announcement neurotically without the discernment to understand that her statement was actually meant to achieve the opposite!

Ever since, the regime’s performance credentials have been nothing but a lengthy catalogue of ill-conceived promises/assurances with hardly any record of demonstrable fulfillment. A friend, Chidi Ifenkwem, had aptly summarized these breached promises as follows: “Election campaign promised to build three new refineries if elected to power; N18,000 minimum wage agreement with Nigerian  workers which is still unpaid; agreement with lecturers who are currently on strike; Promise to bring down the price of cement to at least N1,000; agreement that subsidies would be removed from April 1st, 2012; the list is endless.

In precise terms, it is this manifest incapacity of Mr. President to demonstrate honour, integrity, sincerity, and statesmanship by matching action with words that has partly rendered the current subsidy removal debate a highly controversial ones. Nigerians are generally disillusioned  and terribly convulsed almost to a point of incoherence by the fact that a sanctimonious President who rose to power on the creed of “fresh air” has suddenly pushed the generality of the citizenry into a vegetative state in which they are now gasping for breath with hardly any prospect of a life support system.

In the midst of the prevailing socioeconomic depression orchestrated by the exponential hike in the pump price of petrol, the apologists of this latest “economic hara-kiri” by President Jonathan have arisen in his defence by cultivating the inclination for appeal to a certain fallacy. In concrete terms, it is a fallacy which lampoons (indeed, condemns) ordinary Nigerians as being too reluctant to make necessary sacrifices and to prefer the lazy convenience and comfort of enjoying freebies. It argues that Nigerians should faithfully submit themselves to the ongoing “baptism of fire” from President Jonathan so that their tomorrow will translate into a blissful, glorious paradise. What an arrant balderdash!

One of the biggest demerits of this Jonathanian concept of sacrifice is that it is utterly blind to its own sociology and tragically directed at the wrong target. At the very least, Nigeria’s 51 years of embryonic nationhood can best be described as an unbroken experience of harrowing sacrifices borne essentially by the ordinary citizens of the country who have had to endure decades of unmitigated misgovernance, perilous economic underdevelopment, unbridled corruption, pervasive insecurity, infrastructural wretchedness and untold hardships, all made possible by the ineptitude of a visionless and morally  bankrupt political elite.

While Nigerians are being stampeded into forging an accommodation and tolerance towards the injurious economic dislocations arising from the astronomical hike in petroleum prices (at least, as a mark of patriotic sacrifice), there is nothing in the horizon to suggest that President Jonathan and his fellow choreographers are willing and prepared to step out of the morass of prodigality and obscene ostentation by way of putting to practice what they are preaching. According to the budget proposal submitted by the President to the National Assembly, Nigerians will be spending N1 billion of public funds to feed the first and second families; the sum of N1.3 billion of public funds will be used to fund generators in the presidency; the amount of  N1.7 billion will be used to fuel official cars of federal government functionaries; out of this amount, the sum of N156 will be used to fuel the official cars of the President and Vice President in the year 2012.

Does anybody need any further prove to be convinced that a government which commits this kind of horrendous economic thievery cannot pretend to be endowed with the moral legitimacy and authority to be sermonizing on the need and virtues of sacrifice, especially when such a sacrifice is only targeted at the already pauperized and emasculated masses of the country? I honestly agree with the proponents of subsidy-induced sacrifice that, indeed, Nigeria is in dire need of painful sacrifice. But the desirability of such a sacrifice should be pointedly located at the doorsteps of those for whom it rightly belongs – the Presidency, the National Assembly, State Governors, Ministers, Local Government Chairmen and other overpaid, public functionaries.

The President should begin by rehabilitating his diminishing capacity for upholding his integrity by ensuring that his word is his bond and that he stays committed to his social contract with Nigerians. He should, as a matter of emergency, slash drastically the stupendous quantum of public funds being frittered away by his office and those of other political office holders. He should go beyond the rhetorical gyrations of fighting corruption to actually prosecuting those malignant cabals who have bled the country to a point of chronic anaemia and subjected it to wanton economic parasitism.

The President should, indeed, pay heed to the thoughts of the great thinker, Bernard Shaw, who once posited that: “those who minister to poverty and disease are accomplices in the two worst of all crimes.” With this in mind, there should be no argument about the need for sacrifice and who it is that needs to do the sacrificing.

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