IN an article last week, President
Goodluck Jonathan’s Special Adviser
on Media & Publicity, Dr. Reuben Abati,
went after his boss’ critics. By his definition, they included “all the
cynics, the pestle-wielding critics, the
unrelenting, self-appointed activists,
the idle and idling, twittering, collective
children of anger, the distracted crowd
of Facebook addicts, the BBM-pinging soap opera gossips of Nigeria,”
formerly known as Dr. Jonathan’s
friends on the Internet. He called them a diverse “army of
sponsored and self-appointed
anarchists,” who are “in competition
among themselves to pull down” the
President. As a man who evidently considers
himself an authority on public affairs,
he said: “The clear danger to public
affairs commentary is that we have a
lot of unintelligent people repeating
stupid clichés and too many intelligent persons wasting their talents lending
relevance to thoughtless conclusions.” The simple truth is that Mr. Abati has
reduced to shame many people that
used to respect him. Every Nigerian
staring at the bumbling, stumbling and
fumbling at Aso Rock knows that,
having been pushed to the thing edge of irrelevance by Mrs. Patience
Jonathan, the former columnist is only
fighting to remain presidential
spokesman. Otherwise, it might have occurred to
him that labeling critics “liars” and
trying to plunge a knife deep into the
very heart of Mr. Jonathan’s political
support in the past two years is an
amateurish gamble. But desperation makes a mockery of
clear vision, and in the end, Abati’s
“The Jonathan They Don’t Know”
emerged as “The Abati They Did Not
Know.” Is Mr. Jonathan a nice, simple man, as
his spokesman laboured to establish
of a man who has spent five years in
the presidency? Surprisingly, Mr. Abati does now know
how irrelevant this point is. The issue
is not about being a nice man; it is
about being the leader to uplift
Nigeria; about being the
“transformational” figure he claimed he would be. As a “pestle-wielding” dissenter
myself, let me now restate some of the
grounds on which I have criticized Mr.
Jonathan as President, beginning from
March 2010 when he became Acting
President, and invite Mr. Abati to say how these constitute “lies” against a
simple man. One: corruption. I have criticised Mr. Jonathan as being
the latest in a line of rulers who deploy
only words against the monster. If he
takes himself and his country
seriously, he must not only declare his
assets publicly, he must fire such top officials as Ministers as the Secretary to
the Government of the Federation, Mr.
Anyim Pius Anyim, and Ministers
Diezani Alison-Madueke and Mohamed
Bello Adoke, all of whom have been
stained by allegations of corruption. Regrettably, along with refusing to
sack them, Mr. Jonathan has ignored a
mountain of top-level corruption
reports that sit on his desk, including
Halliburton, Okiro, Siemens, Wilbros,
the Petroleum Ministry, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. But there have been words. Among
them in July last year, at an event at
which he identified corruption as “the
monster that we need to confront and
defeat,” and pledged that the “war”
will start at the centre, he asked two “anti-corruption agencies to probe all
federal ministries, departments and
agencies, starting from 2007.” As
usual, it was the last time anyone
heard about that initiative. Second: Mr. Jonathan’s 2011 political
promises, upon which he has
completely turned his back, as though
they never were made. Third, the insecurity in Nigeria. Since
Mr. Jonathan took office, billions of
dollars have been thrown at the
problem, alongside denial and
amateurish mismanagement. Four: Jobs. I have documented Mr.
Jonathan’s vows on jobs. What I have
not been able to document, is a
serious, structured approach to
redeeming those vows, or a full-
frontal assault upon those issues that are keeping jobs away from us. Five: the “pretend governance” culture
in which the President sets up
committee after committee to look into
serious problems, only to throw their
reports aside. His haul includes the
Justice Belgore Panel on electoral reform; the Okigbo Committee on
Halliburton; the Theophilus Danjuma
Presidential Advisory Committee, and
the Presidential Projects Assessment
Committee. Six: Jonathan’s Transformation
Agenda: During his election campaign,
the President successfully sold a
transformation concept, but with
almost one and a half years gone, he
has not published the transformation plan, if any. On July 2, 2011, one
month after Mr. Jonathan was sworn
in, Mr. Anyim told the American
ambassador that when Jonathan
unveils the “transformation agenda,”
there would be major institutional changes aimed at plugging loopholes
and opportunities for corruption. The point was confirmed in October
2011 when the Minister of National
Planning, Mr. Shamsudeen Usman, said
the transformation agenda, when
published, would emphasise the rule
of law, judicial system and the policing system. Seven: electoral reform. The
intervention Mr. Jonathan promised
was reform on the basis of the Justice
Belgore report rather than the
cosmetic changes that we have seen.
Without the wholesome philosophical and functional changes promised by
the Belgore plan, true electoral reform
cannot be institutionalised. Eight: arbitrary promises: In Minna in
July 2010, Mr. Jonathan warned that
unless Nigeria retraced its steps from
corruption, illegal acquisition of
wealth, absence of productivity,
dependence on oil, and evasion of taxes, “very soon the system will
collapse.” Similarly, in his New Year
message in January 2012, he
lamented that Nigeria needed to move
much faster, but “that is where the
devil comes in and puts road blocks.” But it is not the devil that has failed to
provide proper example by declaring
his assets. It is not the devil that does
not “give a damn.” It is not the devil
that flip-flops over dialogue with Boko
Haram, or who promised earlier in the year he would defeat the militants by
June. These are some of the substantive
issues, and they relate to Mr.
Jonathan’s sincerity as a man, and his
abilities as a leader. What Nigerians are
criticising is the relationship between
what Mr. Jonathan says and what he does; and between what he promises
and what he delivers, as the quality of
life plummets for the ordinary man
and woman. They are about whether Mr. Jonathan
means well or not, which is what Abati
misunderstands when he writes, “I
have even heard that the President
spends billions on feeding.” Actually, yes, the presidency did
budget nearly N1 billion for food. And
no, it does not matter whether it was
for pepper-soup or roast turkey; or
whether the president actually eats the
food or uses it in food fights. What Nigerians are saying is that the
same President who had no shoes
ordered three new executive jets as
soon as was officially possible; offers
bribes in hard currency to State House
visitors, and made his first advocacy in office the subject of a six-year
presidential term. In other words, what Abati ought to
be defending is why the Jonathan
presidency is deeply resented as a
government that has failed its people.
Instead, he says, with embarrassing
shortsightedness, that the President’s critics “just cannot accept that
someone with his simplicity can be
their President.” And then, elevating sycophancy into
philosophy, he tried to smuggle Mr.
Jonathan into the same farmyard as
Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi,
Martin Luther King, and Kwame
Nkrumah, “men who have shaped the world that we live in by simplifying
what others have complicated.” At a time that Jonathan is pronouncing
himself the most criticised President on
earth, and asserting his government
will now clap for itself if the press will
not do it, Mr. Abati ought to have
realised that, sometimes, you are at your most eloquent when you are
silent. If Mr. Jonathan wants to enter the
same city with those four men, to him
falls the challenge of not trying to
complicate what they simplified
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