One thing that cannot be recycled is wasted time. Lost time is never found again. Goodluck Jonathan realized this too late and it caused him a fortune. He once attempted to buy time by succeeding in pushing through the postponement of the elections by six weeks, until it suddenly dawned on him that by labour, it is easier to find food and water, but all of his labour will never ‘win’ for him another hour. And today, the thought that he made history as the first democratically elected president of Nigeria to be defeated at the polls strikes as perfect for an explosion, and has served as fodder for jokes at the bars where Nigerians gather to relish pepper soups and quaff away sorrows.
But to every unpleasant happenings, there is always a deontology (ask Patrick Obahiagbon). When Arthur Ashe, the legendary Wimbledon player was dying of AIDS which he got due to infected blood he received during a heart surgery in 1983, he received ‘deontologies’ from his fans, one of which conveyed “Why did God have to select you for such a bad disease?” To this Arthur replied: 50 children started playing tennis, 5 million learnt to play tennis, 500, 000 learnt professional tennis, 50, 000 came to circuit, 5, 000 reached Grand slam, 50 reached Wimbledon, 4 reached the semi-finale, 2 reached the finals and when I was holding the cup in my hand, I never asked God “Why me?”
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So no matter how many ‘deontologies’ people might prop up for Goodluck Jonathan’s failures, courtesy also demands that we pat him on the back and wish him well especially for accepting defeat honourably. After all, of about 170 million Nigerians of his time, he was the only man from his region that has joined the league of the only 5 persons who were democratically elected as presidents, and the only Ph.D holder that has reached that coveted height. On this premise, he is an achiever on his own right. But we need to be clear on our own premise too irrespective of scale and metaphorical hue, because misunderstood premise might precipitate to misconstrued precedence.
From the aforementioned, one of the major reasons why Goodluck Jonathan failed in his political pursuit was because he thought he had time but he never knew life went by so quickly. He mistook a tenure to be 8 years instead of 4, and he forgot so soon that one year is just a mere 365 days and a day, a paltry of 24 hours.
He thought he would always have a tomorrow in office and hence paid abysmal response to the more than 91 electoral promises he made to the masses in 2011. He thought he had all the time in the world: to revive the rail system into world class standard; to complete the second River Niger bridge; to deliver stable constant supply of electricity; to diversify the economy; to create jobs; to enhance access to education; and to fight corruption and terrorism among others. He was a facsimile of Emperor Nero; he slept while Nigeria fizzled. And before he could wake up, it was already time!
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He thought he had all the time and then refused to border as PDP crumbled under his watch. As a result, PDP lost control of some key states and some key political figures, like Olusegun Obasanjo, before the elections which summed together to pose a threat to what would have become their electoral success. Goodluck Jonathan slept with his two eyes closed until insecurity succeeded in terminating the lives of some 20,000 Nigerians, kidnapped some, and rendered some 3 million others refugees in their homeland. Under his nose, corruption persisted and corrupt individuals were not chastised opening wide the suicide iron bars of looting. Under his watch, public debts and exchange rate ratio accentuated, external reserves more or less, depreciated; and poverty incidence and unemployment levels simultaneously reached an all time high.
As he slept, Nigeria lost her soul and Nigerians became susceptible to ethnocentrism and prone to xenophobic attacks. At home, ethnicities turn others of different ethnic groups into objects of mockery, while thousands of Nigerians most of whom sneaked into other countries in an attempt to enjoy opportunities which their country refused to provide for them, were most times denigrated and given a kiss of death by their hosts.
To avoid going the way of GEJ, General Muhammadu Buhari, despite all surmountable foreseeable challenges, should like water from a busted dam arrive with plans that can make Nigeria to refuse to be an infuriating address even at the tamest of times. The pace with which he does these will determine his appreciation of time. As Late Prof. Chinua Achebe puts it, “a man who means to buy palm wine does not hang about at home until the entire palm wine in the market is sold”.
Metaphorically speaking therefore, it is clear that GMB will be bequeathed a Nigeria that has for so long enjoyed an exponential and monumental growth in decadence and inertia; a country with a history of un-rebuked underachievement, iced by public officers who have imbibed into their bone marrows the attitude of extravagance and conspicuous consumption in a sea of poverty.
To sum it all up, there is much to be done and if GMB is determined to maximize time, he can accomplish a lot. Of course, no sane person will expect him to build a perfect Nigeria in 4 years even if he has got a magic wand – no government has ever done that in the world. Even in the United States, the leading democracy, the April 2013 jobs data shows that approximately 23 million Americans are unemployed. That is almost the entire population of Ghana which a 2012 head count put at 24.9 million. But just as Obama had a tough time with re-election in 2012 because U.S unemployment rate reached 8%, GMB might even have a tougher time in 2019 or even go the way of GEJ if present statistics did not improve.
Statistics must show that our today (GMB’s administration) is better than our yesterday (GEJ’s administration) if he must have a head way. It is a familiar knowledge that during GEJ’s era which will expire soon, the United Nations once rated Nigeria as the 8th most violent country on the face of the earth; UNESCO once ranked the country as the 8th most illiterate country in the world; and the CPI once placed Nigeria in the 135th position out of 176 countries surveyed for corruption. In this same era, average life span was once pegged at 52 years; the gap between the rich and the poor sometime increased from 0.39 to 0.42; and in 2013, reports made it clear that Nigeria was the worst place for a baby to enter the world. In this GEJ’s era also, statistics once pinned the total expenditures on education to about 3.5% of GDP, while the Nigeria Bureau of statistics (NBS) says that unemployment is at 24% and growing at 16% annually; etc.
Thanks to information technology. Concomitantly, Nigerians will continue to keep tabs on how much these statistics improve before 2019; how much their lives improve; and how much GMB fulfils his own electoral promises among which include: making the naira equal to the dollar; establishing a welfare system that will pay between N5, 000 and N10, 000 per month to the poorest 25 million Nigerians; free primary education plus free meal; and providing millions of public housing etc. Unlike his out-going predecessor propounded if he had won, GMB doesn’t need to spend much on public relations as most Nigerians now have the whole world on their finger tips. From the comfort of their bedrooms, they can even monitor how he lives his life in Aso Rock.
This is Africa! Every morning a gazelle wakes up, it knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up, it knows it must out run the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. Figuratively, it doesn’t matter whether GMB is a gazelle or a lion. The most important thing now is that the sun is up, he better start running. The less than 15 million Nigerians that voted for him and the more than 155 million others that stood afar off wish him well. Till 2019 by the grace of God.
Orji Iheanyi is a public affairs analyst, and a consultant agronomist and can be reached at [email protected]
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