Punch Editorial Board
Former President Goodluck
Jonathan, reflecting on his
electoral defeat two years ago,
shunned deep introspection and
remorse for his five-year reign of
impunity. What comes out from
him from excerpts of a new book
is a potpourri of falsehoods,
hypocrisy, lame excuses and
blame for everyone but himself.
But before Nigerians fall once
more for his favourite tactic of
playing the victim, they would do
well to remember the
devastating impact of his bad
government.
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Words attributed to him in a
book, Against the Run of Play, by
Olusegun Adeniyi, a well-known
journalist, and billed for public
presentation in Lagos on Friday,
were vintage Jonathan. Posing
yet again as the perpetual victim,
he blamed former world leaders
− Barack Obama of the United
States, Britain’s David Cameron,
and French president, Francois
Hollande − for desperately
wanting a change of government
in Nigeria. He blamed Attahiru
Jega, the former Chairman of the
Independent National Electoral
Commission, for allegedly
working with the Americans by
insisting on the initial February
2015 date set for the presidential
election; he blamed his own
former party chairman, Adamu
Mu’azu, whom he accused of
working against him, and he
carpeted the press and civil
society for highlighting the
pervasive corruption that
flourished on his watch.


the context: As he left a
limping economy and widescale
corruption behind, Jonathan’s
five years at the helm were an
unmitigated disaster for Nigeria,
the effects of which 170 million
Nigerians are experiencing today.
He ran the economy aground,
failing like his predecessors to
diversify effectively and
entrenching what The Economist
of London labelled “a rentier
state.” His government despoiled
all fiscal buffers − foreign
reserves hardly rose despite
persistently high oil prices until
August 2014. In its defence, his
finance minister claimed that it
was $43.13 billion that was
inherited, yet, despite oil prices
averaging $90-$103 per barrel up
till mid-2014, reserves moved
barely perceptively, while the
Excess Crude Account had
crashed from $22 billion to only $
2.2 billion when Muhammadu
Buhari took over by mid-2015.
Jonathan left no major new
signature infrastructure project;
only inflated repair projects
which are mired in controversy.
Arguably his greatest disservice
that ought to have been his major
triumph was the badly managed
privatisation of power assets that
transferred most of the
generation and distribution
companies to untested,
incompetent domestic consortia
that have saddled Nigeria with a
legal quagmire. But it is in the
areas of corruption and security
that Nigerians were mostly badly
done in by that terrible
government. Jonathan’s denial
that he dismissed corruption
allegations as “mere stealing” is
false. He declared this on local
and international TV. Corruption
ran riot on his watch, as attested
to by the latest scandals involving
his wife, the suspended spy chief
who stashed away $43 million in
a Lagos apartment, the missing
oil receipts being probed in
parliament, as well as the $2.1
billion arms purchase fund that
ended up in private hands.
While he is whining that Obama
and other world leaders, civil
society, the media and the
opposition alleged corruption
“without proof,” the world is still
aghast at a sprawling corruption
scandal centred on the abuse of
N2.53 trillion petrol subsidy in
2011 when only N248 billion was
approved in the budget. His
government also signed away
N603 billion in less than a year for
dubious import duty waivers,
exemptions and concessions,
according to Customs. The fraud
associated with oil swap
agreements is still unfolding.
Hypocritically, he claimed to have
dropped Stella Oduah as Aviation
minister when evidence
emerged, but said he retained
Diezani Alison-Madueke as oil
minister “because there was no
foolproof evidence.” This same
ex-minister is alleged to have
withdrawn millions of dollars to
finance his re-election bid for
which she and many others,
including electoral officials, are
being tried. He disingenuously
discredited the Nuhu Ribadu
panel report on the grounds of
disagreement among some
members, but failed to say that
he had appointed Steve Oronsaye
and Bernard Otti to the board of
the Nigerian National Petroleum
Corporation in an obvious move
of brinksmanship.
It is not too late for Jonathan to
grow up. He may think Nigerians
have forgotten and that it is time
to move on. This is fantasy. All the
colossal scandals that defined his
time in government will live on in
the minds of the people who bear
the burdens of his misrule.
Former president Olusegun
Obasanjo, who broke all party
rules to make him deputy to the
late President Umaru Yar’Adua, is
quoted in the same book as
admitting that from his first days
in office, “…he showed that he
was too small for the office.” He
demonstrated this in his
mishandling of the Boko Haram
terrorist insurgency. Boko Haram
has killed over 25,000 people,
displaced over two million and
once held 27 local government
areas as its “caliphate.” Rather
than take full charge, he allowed
his generals to turn it into a gold
mine for corrupt enrichment, an
ATM, according to Obasanjo, for
taking money from the treasury.
The influential The Economist
once declared that Jonathan ran
the most corrupt, most clueless
government in Nigeria’s history.
We can’t agree more. Indeed, we
hold him and his corrupt
generals responsible for the
failure to rescue the 276 Chibok
girls in 2014. His false narrative
that he did try to rescue them
contradicts reports that he failed
to act when initially informed,
continuing to view terrorism as a
personal conspiracy against him.
Surprisingly, Jonathan has not
changed, falsely asserting and
boorishly claiming that Boko
Haram is being defeated because
Buhari is a Muslim, not viewed as
an “infidel’’ like he was. But
salafist militants view all existing
governments as infidels to be
violently overthrown. They target
the Muslim leaders of Saudi
Arabia, Iraq, Egypt, Tunisia,
Jordan, Afghanistan, Yemen,
Libya, Somalia, Chechnya, Algeria
and Bahrain. Boko Haram has
killed emirs and has vowed to kill
Buhari, the Emir of Kano and the
Sultan of Sokoto, the nominal
head of Nigerian Muslims.
Jonathan incorrigibly blamed the
media for his electoral defeat. We
insist he lost the election because
he was a total failure. He cites
high figures of votes for Buhari in
Kano, but was silent on equally
suspicious figures for him from
the South-South states, from
Rivers or from Akwa Ibom and
Delta states where votes recorded
for him doubled the number of
accredited voters.
But we hold President
Muhammadu Buhari and the
Nigerian people culpable for
providing the leeway for
Jonathan to trample on our
collective memory. While the
Buhari government has
demonstrated lack of courage to
bring Jonathan to justice, many
Nigerians celebrate, instead of
rising against corruption. Across
the world, people of conscience
are marching in their thousands
to protest against corruption; in
broken, dysfunctional Nigeria,
hundreds are, for a few wads of
naira, marching, vandalising
property, and preaching hate in
defence of the corrupt. The
officials on trial who have
claimed to have been obeying
Jonathan’s orders by collecting
and distributing public funds
provide enough grounds to put
him also on trial. The anti-
corruption war cannot go far
unless Jonathan is confronted in
court with his misdeeds. Past
rulers who break the law are put
in the dock. South Korea,
Guatemala, Brazil, Peru, Zambia,
Italy, France are ready examples.
No one should be above the law.
Buhari should save his reputation
by pulling out all the stops in the
war on graft. Far too many ex-
Presidents have demonstrated
this belief that they are above the
law. Jonathan failed to bring
corrupt past leaders to justice,
but Buhari must bust the myth.
Nigerians should realise that
corruption has ruined their
present and rendered the future
gloomy for their children and rise
up against corrupt leaders − past
and present. As for Jonathan, he
should be reminded that the
history of his administration is
already being written and it is
neither flattering nor can he
remodel it with falsehood and
whining hypocrisy.
Copyright PUNCH.
http://punchng.com/jonathans-pathetic-apologetics/