President Goodluck Jonathan Administration is
a labyrinth of confusion. Nigerians’ aspiration
that he would someday put himself in the right
column of history has been dashed, once
more. He ought to be the fate of Nigeria and
the fate could not be sustained. Now, a
thousand years will pass and the guilt of his
government will not be erased.
From day one, there have been air of
bewildering complicities or vague intricacies
bordering on his choice of policies and the
direction of his (mis)government. His earlier
stance to stave off Boko Haram militia has
been contradicted by the recent failed cease
fire deal. It is this lack of direction that
clouded Mr President’s supposed ideal of
governance; which presupposes that a nation
with a more benign democratic system has the
moral right to rout a savage group which
trains its minds, emotions and biases on
butchery, theft, pillage, rapine and death.
At the core of the fight against Boko Haram
insurgents is a great delusion: the vibrancy or
buoyancy of the military apparatus is at stake.
The fight against the nihilist group is a
shambles, and a totem for every Nigerian who
hates government without purpose. Just as bad
and awful, the Boko Haram current haggle
with the Federal Government over the release
of the already traumatised Chibok girls once
again exposes Mr Jonathan Administration as a
government in perpetual denial. This
administration is not only in denial mentally,
there is a measure of gloating; an air of
helplessness for itself, sheer hopelessness for
the masses of the people and total abdication
of his constitutional responsibilities.
By this cease fire deal, Mr Jonathan has
practically exaggerated the malevolent power
of Boko Haram in an effort to legitimise his
bankrupt rule. His governance tactics suggest
he is a leader in search of enemies. Mr
President has been more stark at blaming
opposition political party for instigating the
terrorist sect, even though every Nigerian is a
victim of the deadly group violent campaign,
opposition party’s faithful alike.
Pitifully, he has openly disembowelled his
government on two fronts: it shows disdain for
the armed forces for which he is a
commander-in-chief, and he also thrives in
composite corruption. Less than 24 hours into
the immediate cease fire deal, a band of
insurgents rammed over two communities in
Borno State, killing at least 15 persons.
Mr President is not fully aware that the North-
East has become a condominium of war. But
what President Godluck Jonathan said is not
what he meant and what he had done goes
unspoken. For a president to jump into
maelstrom of a major policy somersault
without weighing its consequences is the
height of presidential folly.
In 2011, a Presidential Committee on Security
Challenges in the North-East Zone, set up after
bomb attacks by the Islamic sect, submitted its
final report, asking President Goodluck
Jonathan to consider granting amnesty to
members of the sect wishing to surrender their
arms to the Federal Government. The panel,
headed by Ambassador Usman Gaji Galtimari,
recommended that the Federal Government
should consider the option of dialogue and
negotiation which should be contingent upon
the renunciation of all forms of violence and
surrender of arms, to be followed by
rehabilitation. In November 2012, the sect
said it was willing to cease all hostilities and
attacks if the Federal Government should
arrest a former Borno State governor, Alli
Modu Sheriff and meet its other demands.
Sheriff has since become PDP financier.
Copiously, the sect demanded compensation to
all the families of their members that were
killed in the battle field from 2009, including
their leader, Mohammed Yusuf; the release of
all their members that were captured in battle
by the government as well as reconstructing
their place of worship (Markas Ibn Taimiyyah)
in Maiduguri. On January 7, 2013, the
insurgents for the second time within a space
of time restated its commitment to ceasefire in
order to pave the way for dialogue. One Sheikh
Abu Mohammad Abdulazeez Ibn Idris, who
claimed to be a top member of the major
faction of the group led by Sheikh Abubakar
Shekau, spoke on behalf of the group.
“We, on our own, in the top hierarchy of our
movement under the leadership of Imam
Abubakar Shekau, as well as some of our
notable followers, agreed that our brethren in
Islam, both women and children, are suffering
unnecessarily. “Hence, we resolved that we
should bring this crisis to an end. We therefore
call on all those that identify themselves with
us and our course to from today lay down
their arms.” Few weeks after, Abubakar Shekau
denied any such agreement between the group
and the Federal Government. He publicly
denied the claim and was quoted to have said:
“We are stating it categorically that we are not
in any dialogue or ceasefire agreement with
anyone. And we have never asked anybody in
the name Abdulazeez to represent me,
Abubakar Shekau, the leader of this movement.
“I want the world to know that we have no
dialogue with government. I have on several
occasions attempted to pass this message
across via the Internet and Youtube and we
later realised that some agents of government
kept removing our messages from the net and
preventing its online publication so that our
messages will not be heard. “They know that if
the world hears our position on this fake
dialogue, their efforts of deceit would be
exposed.” Thereafter the sect expanded its
coast of terror on innocent citizens, slightly
unhindered. In April 2013, the Federal
Government set up another committee to
consider the feasibility or otherwise of
granting pardon to the sect and to collate
clamours arising from different interest groups
who wanted the presidency to administer
clemency on members of the barbaric group.
The committee was also charged with the task
of recommending modalities for the granting
of the pardon, should such step become the
logical one to take under the prevailing
circumstance.
The president followed this up in May with a
promise to release a number of Boko Haram
members, including all women in prison
custody. Few months after, July to be specific,
Nigerians happily looked forward to the end of
the insurgency when the Federal Government
said it had signed a ceasefire agreement with
the militant group. Minister of Special Duties
and Chairman of the Peace and Dialogue
Committee in the North, Alhaji Tanimu Turaki,
announced the ceasefire agreement on the
Hausa service of Radio France International.
Then, Turaki assured that the ceasefire was not
something that was done for a specific period
of time. He asserted that it was something that
would be forever. He confidently said it was
sure there would be any basis for anybody to
renege on the agreement. Unfortunately,
people’s hopes were smashed once again as
the sect leader, Abubakar Shekau, in a video
message denied Kabiru Turaki’s claim. ”Let me
assure you that we will not enter into any truce
with these infidels. We will not enter into any
truce with the Nigerian government,” Shekau
reportedly said.
Since then, there is no cessation to violent
hostility. In May this year, Minister of Youth
Development, Boni Haruna, told the country
that President Goodluck Jonathan had granted
conditional amnesty to the terrorists group
with a view to putting permanent halt to
insurgency in the North-East. He added that
series of integration programmes had been
lined up for the members of the sect who
would surrender their arms and embrace
peace Shortly after he made the statement, the
Presidency swiftly debunked the statement.
Special Adviser to the President on Media and
Publicity, Dr. Reuben Abati, said Jonathan did
not mention the word amnesty in his
Democracy Day broadcast that Boni Haruna
relied on to make the statement.
From the outset, Mr President proudly
ventilated his skittishness, say he wouldn’t
dialogue with faceless butchers, yet
bloodletting has lingers on to date. The
questions have been, is it really difficult to put
the Boko Haram rabble to rout? Is it just that
President Jonathan Administration is profiting
politically from the warfare? Nigerians are in
the known that hundreds of billion of Naira is
yearly budgeted for armaments and welfare of
the armed forces. We are also in the known
that they are still complaining lack of weapons
and non-payment of their allowances, which
partly led to mutiny and subsequent Court-
Marshall of numerous soldiers, recently.
Now, the conundrum are mixed – tweaking the
army in too many ways – making more victims
of them and exposing them to ridicules. It’s
doubtful to believe that the Nigeria military is
equipped enough to step up to the Boko
haram’s plague. That is why the purported
ceasefire reached between the militia sect and
the Federal Government didn’t come as a
surprise, if at all there was one. President
Goodluck Jonathan has been treating the
Chibok girls with contempt like every other
issue bordering on the nation’s survival.
Ever since, the madness unleashed by the
terrorist sect has left the entire nation
scampering and traumatised. The terrorist
group has pushed the North-Eastern part of
the country to the brink of social and
economic collapse, thereby rendering the
governors of the states incapacitated and the
possibility of steering them on the right
economic path has dissipated. It is all part of
the grand design to squander a chance to
upgrade and equalise the virtually backward
states with the rest of the nation. Still the
states in the region have lost their franchise to
vote in the coming 2015 general elections. It is
more so because the State’s are controlled by
the opposition political party, the APC. Who is
profiting?
Boko Haram has proven itself to be a
bloodcurdling terrorist movement, adroitly
hiding under the garbs of Islam as its melting
port. Nigerians living in the North-Eastern part
of the country are now faced with stark
choice: they are living in the most desolate
fringe of the earth in war and in destitution!
Those who managed to slug it through the
barren Cameroon or Niger boarders are at the
mercies of Marabouts who butcher victims on
the dunes in propitiation to the claim of piety.
You can now understand why Nigerians have
been hankering for a strongman; a political
leader who would stamp out insecurity,
corruption, reverse growing inequalities and
make the country tall abroad amongst the
comity of nations. The international
communities are waiting for a Nigerian
President who would have the ball to smash
insecurity, overhaul the armed forces, stamp
out stinging corruption and end years of
dithering over economic growth. It is only a
president with common touch and toughness
who can snare the sacred cows that have fed
fat from the common till.
Political and economic reforms would fail
without thoroughly stamping out corruption.
Such leader must be conscious of the present
condition of things: that hospitals are mere
consulting clinics; roads are buffeted with
deep craters, schools are run-down, power
generation has decayed because of mindless
graft.
We need a leader who will appreciate that this
can only be achieved by reforming the existing
anti-corruption institutions and make them
completely less beholden of the appointing
authority. The cost of achieving this will be
rocky and brawling but it will no doubt take
the nation to actual its manifest destiny and
bring her to political and economic
maturation. That is what we need now.

Mr. President has not failed, it's just that he's a BLIND LEADER without VISION

GEJ has never failed, only an ingrate will ever say he/she has not felt his positive impacts in one way or the other.