by Roger Boyes

After Syria, Iraq and Libya, trouble for the West could be brewing in corrupt Nigeria too Goodluck Jonathan is a Bad News president.
Three months after the abduction of more than 200 schoolgirls there is still no sign of them. Slowly, too slowly for the teenagers who made the perhaps fatal mistake of wanting to sit their exams, it is becoming clear that the president is largely indifferent to their fate. As he is no longer in the Western spotlight, President BadNews Jonathan has lost any sense of urgency. One day he will wake up to find he has lost his country too.

It’s not just our flickering attention span that now makes the West complicit in this crime, or its tardy solution. It is part of a broader betrayal, a sense of hopelessness that makes us too quick to wash our hands off problems too difficult to solve. You could call it PontiusPilatePolitik.
Remember how we demanded that Bashar Assad step down as Syrian leader? We don’t do that any more; apparently we may need him to defeat Islamist terror. Apparently we may need Iran too. As for the Western hard line on Vladimir Putin’s encroachment on Ukraine, you may notice we don’t mention Crimea much any more.

And so it is with President Jonathan. Forget the dizzying desertion of his responsibilities to his citizens — they are after all his citizens, not ours. Let’s move on, cry the apologists. Look where gun-toting sheriffing of the world got us in the past decade. Syria, Iran, Russia: they are not measures of our retreat from the world but just a recognition of the limits of our power, a new realism. One day soon an EU or State Department official will let it be known — strictly off the record, mind — that the West needs President Jonathan in a rebranded war against terror.
Tell that though to the girls wrenched from their boarding school in Chibok. The social media campaign ‪#‎bringbackourgirls‬ picked up momentum because the education of girls was such an obviously universal cause; its denial by force so obviously a crime that affected more than the northern Nigerian province of Borno. A state worthy of its name had a duty to shield them. Its continuing failure to do so is not comparable to the president’s other failings: his patchy record on bringing electric power to the country, the terrible roads. That is up to Nigerian voters to decide in next year’s election. When a government abandons its children though, it is time to step in. The locals are calling for an intervention by the United Nations. It is easy to understand their plea.

The novelist Ben Okri warns of a crisis “that if not contained could trigger something terrible in our country”. It has gone, he says, “beyond anything the government is equipped to deal with”. He’s right. Inaction, the washing of hands, is the worst possible response to what is going on in Nigeria. At the Berlin Conference, in 1885, Bismarck steered the European partition of Africa. Today the European Union, poised to integrate more closely, and reluctant to engage elsewhere in the world, has become a numbed spectator to a new era of partition — in Syria, Iraq, Libya and, if the centre collapses, in Nigeria too.

The malevolent power of Boko Haram may be exaggerated by President Jonathan in an effort to legitimise his rule; he is a leader in search of enemies. It thrives, though, on popular disdain for the corruption of the Jonathan government, and for the army of which he is commander in chief. Last February the president suspended the head of the central bank of Nigeria, Lamido Sanusi, who had pointed out that $20 billion was missing from the national oil accounts. Earlier he made enemies by sacking bankers, demanding the dismissal of thousands of civil servants and accusing a minister of leasing her own private planes to the government. Sanusi, now the emir of the northern fiefdom of Kano, is a man to whom we should be talking.

We napped in the years ahead of the Arab Spring, getting into bed with dictators who served our commercial interests and missing the rumble on the street. Now, as we flee any knotty international problem, we risk being on the wrong side of a brewing African Spring.

The corruption of African states has to be our concern in shaping aid and foreign policy. Crooked officialdom worries the new middle class of the continent’s fast-growing countries because it is beginning to destabilise governments rather than consolidate tribal loyalties; it must, therefore, become part of our calculations too. Nigeria could have been as rich and as self-confident as Indonesia. Instead it is teetering on the edge of chaos, its poverty of ambition exposed by the fate of 200 girls held, and perhaps brutalised, by fanatical Islamist hoodlums somewhere in the northern forests.



thetimes.co.uk

This is just too sad.

Those innocent girls only made the mistake of taking WAEC 2 weeks after results for WAEC were posted region wide in a dark room at night with no generator or supervision. Had they took the test 1 week after or even during the WAEC testing season we would still
Have our girls Goodluck has nothing to offer. We need more Islam in this country and a Fulani president. At least in the past they have delivered!

Ikengawo:

Goodluck has nothing to offer.

Pretty much..

Ikengawo: Those innocent girls only made the mistake of taking WAEC 2 weeks after results for WAEC were posted region wide in a dark room at night with no generator or supervision. Had they took taken the test 1 week after or even during the WAEC testing season we would still
Have our girls Goodluck has nothing to offer. We need more Islam in this country and a Fulani president. At least in the past they have delivered!

Sir your attempt at satire failed woefully. It only revealed your insensitivity and your need to take the same WAEC you talked about. Please see the coloured annotation above.

Just because say goodluck carry millions of dollars give another newspaper company for a lucrative publicity deal , the times come dey para like dis......mehn corruption dey every where

Onlinebizexpert: Just because say goodluck carry millions of dollars give another newspaper company for a lucrative publicity deal , the times come dey para like dis......mehn corruption dey every where

And the same newspaper he gave your money to abused, insulted and ridiculed him just days later.

The joke is on you and Jona..

When everybody begin to say the same thing about you,maybe it's time to start thinking that something might indeed be wrong with you .
Think?
I forgot ,them folks do not have the power of thoughts.

nduchucks:

Sir your attempt at satire failed woefully. It only revealed your insensitivity and your need to take the same WAEC you talked spoke about. Please see the coloured annotation above.

LOOOL, and to think this fool thinks it's "Had they taken the test". Buhari/nduchucks 2015

Ikengawo:

LOOOL, and to think he thinks it's "Had they taken the test". Buhari/nduchucks 2015

Technically, you neither talked nor spoke about it. You attempted to write about it. olodo

nduchucks:

Technically, you neither talked nor spoke about it. You attempted to write about it. olodo

Both of you blundered

LOL so they're using Ipon Imo to teach you guys that took is not the past tense to take

How come the Yanks couldn't find the girls if indeed they are missing?


Anyway if the journalists at the Times had done their home work, we know who they'd be blaming. This is lazy journalism at its peak, a little research would have exposed buko hari's control of his political wing boko haram.

When it comes to violence and insurgency, the buck stops at Buko hari's table, blame Ayatollah Buhari, the leader of the supporters of APC.

Mogidi:

How come the Yanks couldn't find the girls if indeed they are missing?

Your president and his investigative committee agreed that the were kidnapped.

Your president and his military just few days ago claimed that they know where the girls are located.

So, who is lying? You, your president or his military?

Also, your president didn't ask the Americans to rescue the girls and the Americans didn't promise to rescue your girls. Your president invited them to provide tools and intelligence and just today, they gave your country Intel and communication trucks and troops protection equipment.

Their job is to provide intelligence and it's up to your weak and incompetent president to act on it and rescue the girls, but as expected, the lazy and clueless man refused to negotiate and his military refused to use force so in effect, both the military and the useless president are not on the same page at the expense of the missing girls, their parents and Nigerians.

Btw, going by your usual unintelligent logic, Buhari and his rag tag BH are more powerful than the president of Nigeria, the commander in chief and the $6 billion/year budget military? You mean your weak and incompetent president can not even protect and defend 3 out of 36 states?

Jona and his followers really do have a lot of sad and pathetic traits in common...

I need no pastor to tell me that GEJ is not the right Man for Nigeria of today

Ok.

aresa:

Your president and his investigative committee agreed that the were kidnapped.

Your president and his military just few days ago claimed that they know where the girls are located.

So, who is lying? You, your president or his military?

Also, your president didn't ask the Americans to resuce the girls an the Americans didn't not promise to rescue your girls. Your president invited them to provide tools and intelligence and just today, they gave your country Intel and communication trucks and troops protection equipment.

Their jobs to provide intelligence and it's up to your weak and incompetent president to act on it and rescue the girls, but as expected, the lazy and clueless man refused to negotiate and his military refused to use force so in effect, both the military and the useless president are not on the same page at the expense of the missing girls, their parents and Nigerians.

remain worthless and comatose, the girls

Btw, going by your usual unintelligent logic, Buhari and his rag tag BH are more powerful than the president of Nigeria, the commander in chief and the $6 billion/year budget military? You mean your weak and incompetent president can not even protect and defend 3 out of 36 states?

Jona and his followers really do have a lot of sad and pathetic traits in common...

Touché

Mr Jonathan should take some time off to review the activities, actions, policies and inactions of his government since 2010. Afterwards he should honestly decide himself whether he has been leading this con3 dutifully or otherwise.

"he is a leader in search of enemies."

Very apt

Gej as he is today is badnews all over the world. Is just unfortunate that Nigeria is having an incompetent clueless dummy as a president

aresa:


And the same newspaper he gave your money to abused, insulted and ridiculed him just days later.

The joke is on you and Jona..

Jona no be my papa I just dey took wetin happen

nduchucks:

Sir your attempt at satire failed woefully. It only revealed your insensitivity and your need to take the same WAEC you talked about. Please see the coloured annotation above.

see washing, he no go better for asslickers walahi

nduchucks:

Technically, you neither talked nor spoke about it. You attempted to write about it. olodo

hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha I don die, ha sorry survive......jumah mubarak my muslim brothers and sisters, we will get over this, I believe.

Mogidi: How come the Yanks couldn't find the girls if indeed they are missing?


Anyway if the journalists at the Times had done their home work, we know who they'd be blaming. This is lazy journalism at its peak, a little research would have exposed buko hari's control of his political wing boko haram.

When it comes to violence and insurgency, the buck stops at Buko hari's table, blame Ayatollah Buhari, the leader of the supporters of APC.

chai fear God ooooooo

Mogidi: How come the Yanks couldn't find the girls if indeed they are missing?


Anyway if the journalists at the Times had done their home work, we know who they'd be blaming. This is lazy journalism at its peak, a little research would have exposed buko hari's control of his political wing boko haram.

When it comes to violence and insurgency, the buck stops at Buko hari's table, blame Ayatollah Buhari, the leader of the supporters of APC.

we live in an era of epic intelligence and this one is still backward & stewpid!!!!
Bros when will you have common sense

I still wonder how the Jonadafts brainwashed you!

Jonad....aft is stupidity cum idiocy per excellence.

APC is badnews opposition rather!

.

Sams with Obama. .. Under Obama regime, we have had the highest number if insane spree shooting psychotic killers.

Kindly treat yourselves first.

Ikengawo: Those innocent girls only made the mistake of taking WAEC 2 weeks after results for WAEC were posted region wide in a dark room at night with no generator or supervision. Had they took the test 1 week after or even during the WAEC testing season we would still
Have our girls Goodluck has nothing to offer. We need more Islam in this country and a Fulani president. At least in the past they have delivered!

What did Fulani president delivered? Please tell us.

Also is chibok in the region of the fulani presidents who has delivered?

No man is an island of knowledge. Perhaps what some of you need to do, is suggest to the president, practical ways of tackling the problems( that's if you have any) rather than sit here repeating what we have heard over and over again. Talk, blames and accusations have never solved any problem any where; maybe this country will change if you start changing your mentality to things.


By the way, I dare anyone of you to point out one man that can do better than jonathan given the present circumstances