By Bayo Oluwasanmi
The Jonathan administration from all intents and purposes was conceived in corruption and birthed in corruption. May 29, the lucky Goodluck Jonathan was one year in office as president of Africa’s most populous country.
Some things bear repeating, and even then they don’t always sink in. The election of President Jonathan marked the beginning of an era where Nigeria is being run as asylum by inmates and the end of eight-year rule of Animal Farm headed by the unrepentant Ota farmer.
It’s been said that the good politician plans for the next election. But the good statesman plans for the next generation. Even before his one-year anniversary, President Jonathan is already repositioning himself for 2015.
There is nothing really to write home about in the first year of Jonathan’s administration. With the exception of his image makers, false-hearted, truth twisters, and other handsomely paid propagandists in the likes of Abatis, Okupes, and the PDP talking heads; the Nigerian people sees things differently.
Jonathan’s one year in office can be characterized as comic errors laced with the antics of humankind, the infinite folly of maladministration, the stupid and laughable mistakes, and the total highjack of Nigeria by corruption.
Aristotle long ago defined humankind as “laughing animal.” What we’ve witnessed so far in the last one year is the comedy of democracy: the fits, folly, and foibles in a bubbling political cauldron.
Given the litany of woes Nigerians have witnessed so far since Jonathan moved to Aso Rock, it’s not insensitive to suggest that we might find comedy in politics.
Primitive economic policies and non-existent social programs of Jonathan’s administration rendered Nigerians homeless, starving, diseased, and dying. Nigeria continues to slip in business index. Nigeria has slid further in the World Bank Global Doing Business Report 2012 as it ranked 133 out of 183 countries in the world.
The determined and unyielding Boko Haramists countless and endless butchery of our people pits religion against religion, faction against faction, tyrant against tyrant, and states against states.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. With gnawing uncertainty, Nigerians face the future with trepidation. The unflinching story of grueling, nomadic scenes of poverty and hardship portend a gloomy tomorrow for the helpless majority of our people.
The distancing of leadership by the Jonathan regime from what the administration should be doing, in a comical way, highlights the extent and the limits of intelligence, knowledge, and success of the president’s leadership.
Thus the carnivals of public policy create a public problem capitalized on by private interests as a surefire money maker! Rather than problems creating solutions, solutions create problems, which call for more solutions and so on, in an endless comic cycle.
The story of corruption in Nigeria is a story that keeps you awake long after the rest of the world has fallen asleep. Few months ago, I told my mentor that I’ll like to devote my writings exclusively to corruption in Nigeria.
The steady stream of stories on corruption coming from the Nigerian media left me in slack-jawed wonderment that fills me with fury and anger. No sooner I made the decision than I was exhausted and paralyzed by corruption stories coming from the insatiable appetites of our corrupt addicts otherwise known as representathieves.
The writings never saw the light of day. My mentor who had egged me on saying “Bayo, bring it on,” didn’t bother to ask me what became of the project. I guess he too was trying to ward off the stench that oozes out from corruption perpetrated by the ruling bastards in Nigeria.
For years and the last one year in particular, Nigerians have become miserable slaves held captives by their elected president and the reps.
A tiny bit of yeast affects an entire loaf of bread. In the same way, a blind leader affects the vision of a whole nation. In a hopelessly recycling of endless buffoonery, we continue to watch in numb despair the abuse and absurdity of power over the very people the government is supposed to protect.
It’s said that you’ll never live long enough to duplicate all the mistakes of others – nor do you have to. But oddly, even in the short 12-month life span of Jonathan’s presidency; Dr. Jonathan has successfully duplicated all the mistakes of his predecessors. He has brilliantly surpassed it.
By now, we’re too familiar with the catalog of failures of President Jonathan’s administration and his predecessors. It needs no rehashing.
Where law ends, tyranny begins. Under Jonathan, our legal system has been dismantled and uprooted like a lifeless fig tree. Justice has been twisted in legal matters by favoring the rich, the well connected, and the powerful. The judiciary has gone AWOL.
The signs that Nigeria is becoming a failed state are too painfully obvious to ignore or deny. The carnage on our roads, the permanent black out, the entrenched poverty, the decadent health care system, the sub standard schools, the blighted mushroom universities, the absence of rule of law, the torture and terror unleashed by criminals on defenseless Nigerians speak volume how far we’ve traveled into medieval times.
The Lugard relics called Nigerian Police Force (NPF), the 19th century transportation system, the neglect of the feeble and the aged, the forgotten Nigerian children, and the army of pulverized jobless graduates irrefutable facts that Nigeria is marching toward orphanage.
As President Jonathan continues his second year odyssey in office, my goodwill message to him is from Napoleon: “Never interfere when your enemy is in the process of destroying himself.”
Godspeed!