The following story appeared in The Economist on October 24, 2011: “At political gatherings people often spend much of their time talking about other events they have attended. At a conference (organised by The Economist) in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, on October 20th a high-level participant related the following story. President Goodluck Jonathan recently invited a group of top entrepreneurs to a cattle ranch to discuss how to generate economic growth. At one point he handed each attendee an unmarked brown envelope. Eyebrows raised around the room. Mr Jonathan frequently speaks out against corruption. He motioned for the tycoons to open the envelopes. Inside they found not cash but blank pieces of paper, on which he asked them to each write the names of three rent-seeking officials who were hurting their business, promising to investigate.”
The following story appeared in The Economist on October 24, 2011: “At political gatherings people often spend much of their time talking about other events they have attended. At a conference (organised by The Economist) in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, on October 20th a high-level participant related the following story. President Goodluck Jonathan recently invited a group of top entrepreneurs to a cattle ranch to discuss how to generate economic growth. At one point he handed each attendee an unmarked brown envelope. Eyebrows raised around the room. Mr Jonathan frequently speaks out against corruption. He motioned for the tycoons to open the envelopes. Inside they found not cash but blank pieces of paper, on which he asked them to each write the names of three rent-seeking officials who were hurting their business, promising to investigate.”
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That was one week after Shamsudeen Usman, the Minister of National Planning, declared that Mr. Jonathan was getting ready to announce his transformation agenda. And his government is almost eight months old.
When the President first began to speak about a “transformational” agenda during the election campaign, he announced the following plans he would pursue if he won:
• February 9, Ibadan: A new road construction scheme to be structured on five-year plans, instead of annual budgetary allocations;
• February 17, Oturkpo: A five-year plan to revolutionize agriculture and establish industries in the country;
• February 22, Bida: A five-year strategic plan for road projects (as opposed to the Ibadan plan);
• February 25, Asaba; A five-year development plan to accelerate development in the country;
• March 2, Akure: Roads and other basic infrastructure to be developed in four years;
• March 7, Calabar: A four-year development plan that would open up the South-South geo-political zone; to include a blueprint for coastal roads and railways;
• March 12, Ile-Ife: A holistic review of the nation’s our education policy
At his inauguration, he stated: “Over the next four years, attention will be focused on rebuilding our infrastructure. We will create greater access to quality education and improved health care delivery. We will pay special attention to the agricultural sector, to enable it play its role of ensuring food security and massive job creation for our people.” But Jonathan is now down to less than three and a half years on his tenure he is even more porous on the goodwill with which he began.
On April 12, 2010, while visiting the United States, Mr. Jonathan told Council on Foreign Relations in Washington DC his focus would be on “electoral reform, delivering peace dividends to the Niger Delta and the rest of the country, and standing strong on our resolve against corruption.”
Making sure he said all the right things, Jonathan declared he had “set up the machinery to make sure that we continue to reduce [corruption]…and that …will continue.” At the White House, President Barack Obama encouraged him to use his tenure, ending in May 2011, to make “historic and tangible” progress in strengthening the Nigerian government’s commitment to follow through on countering corruption.
Jonathan returned to Nigeria, and decided to capture the presidency. At his inauguration last May, he said: “The bane of corruption shall be met by the overwhelming force of our collective determination, to rid our nation of this scourge. The fight against corruption is a war in which we must all enlist, so that the limited resources of this nation will be used for the growth of our commonwealth.”
Assuming he has enlisted, we can draw special attention to a few anti-corruption reports on his desk, the first two of them being on the Halliburton scandal. The first, the foreign report, dates from February 2008, and shows that several several former Nigerian rulers and their wives, most of them still alive, and about 80 people in all, collected Halliburton bribes.
The domestic Halliburton Report, otherwise known as the Okiro Report, was widely published in the Nigerian media in April 2010, when Mr. Jonathan was Acting President. Mr. Umaru Yar’Adua had received it the previous year. It confirms the foreign report, and lists many more Nigerians who took the money.
And then there is an entire armada of petitions and complaints about Ministers, Ministries, agencies, budgets, allocations, and projects.
Speaking of projects, in March 2010, Mr. Jonathan set up the Presidential Projects Assessment Committee to examine cases of abandoned federal projects. Originally scheduled to complete its assignment in May 2010, Mr. Jonathan later extended its mandate. Its May 2011 report identified an astounding 11,886 projects.
The committee lamented that the inventory was actually incomplete, and that the correct figure could be up to 20 per cent higher. It gave the example of the 30-year old multi-billion dollar Ajaokuta Steel Company project, on which, it observed, $4.5 billion has been squandered. “We take no joy in confirming that there is indeed evidence of large scale, widespread institutional mediocrity, deficiency of vision, and a lack of direction in project management, which result in poor conceptualisation, poor design and faulty execution,” its chairman, Mr. Ibrahim Bunu, said. "Needless to add that this has resulted in avoidable loses of billions of Naira to the government."
Mr. Jonathan pledged action, but since then, there has only been silence, of the “transformational” variety.
There is also the seminal Justice Uwais Report on Electoral Reform, on which, upon assumption of office, Mr. Jonathan vowed action. On March 10, 2010, the Secretary to the Government, Mahmud Yayale Ahmed, told demonstrators in Abuja that Mr. Jonathan, the Acting President, had sent the report, unedited, to the National Assembly. That meant that the doctoring of the report that his predecessor had embarked on had been abandoned and that Nigeria could expect a new law that would not make the electoral commission a tool of the executive.
All of that was before Mr. Jonathan decided he would run for office. Since then, he has said nothing about report, by which he had sworn to reform Nigeria’s elections.
On January 20, 2011, the Theophilu Danjuma-led Presidential Advisory Council (PAC) submitted its report to Mr. Jonathan in which it recommended, among others, reduction of the cost of governance by either merging or cutting down number of Ministries, Departments and Agencies.
Mr. Jonathan agreed…until the elections were over, and then it did not matter. But now, we are back to all of the same issues: absence of transparency: a bloated government, lack of monitoring, lack of action, corrosive corruption.
The truth is that we are where we are because Mr. Jonathan is insincere and ineffective. It is a condition some of us identified before he took power.
For things to change, he must accept that his government is unwieldy, unrealistic and unmanageable. It suffers from poor vision, and it lacks commitment and character, and the responsibility for it is his.
When the government says it will create jobs, this must not be understood in terms of a multiplication of Ministers, Special Advisers, and aides of aides. It is shameful, for instance, that some Ministries have two or three Ministers. Little wonder one jobless Minister from Foreign Affairs was traveling around the United States last week on a rebranding jamboree.
Our problem is not the absence of law, but our willingness to implement the law and be governed by it. Our problem is not the absence of resources, but the absence of the determination to use them to serve the common good.
That is why I am proud to be a part of Occupy Nigeria. If you are tired of being shamed by people who have no shame, you should be too; it is a patriotic duty. To quote James Brown, I would rather die on my feet than keep living on my knees.
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