President Goodluck Jonathan is a colourful and charismatic President
May 15, 2012, 10:51





There is the wrong perception that President Goodluck Jonathan is colourless, clueless and slow to act on issues of national importance. The people who hold that opinion are simply wrong, they are insincere, they are mischievous and if you find out very well, you will find that the people are those who describe themselves as the opposition. This is not the impression of the ordinary Nigerians. People who are pushing this perception as you called it are persons who lost out in the last elections and who believe that they hold an abiding grudge against President Jonathan for beating them at the poll. I think that people must be able to separate partisanship from national interest. Even when they are politicians and they belong to the opposition they have a duty; they have a responsibility to place the national interest above their own personal interest. The Presidency belongs to all Nigerians. Once the election is over and someone has won that election and he is already president, he is president of all Nigerians and President Jonathan sees himself as the president of all Nigerians. He welcomes criticisms, no doubt about that and you will recall that he has always defended the right to free speech. This is a president who signed the Freedom of Information Bill (FoI) into law and has done everything to encourage people to take advantage of that law.

One thing that we have observed is that in the name of the opposition, people resort to name calling, they resort to labelling. Now, that is not a constructive way to respond to a sitting president. The objective of those persons is not to promote the truth or to really oppose the administration in a constructive manner but to malign the integrity of the President and that is why these persons are wrong and Nigerians need to be told that at bottom of these criticisms is absolute mischief and partisanship.
Now they say the president is not colourful, or how did you put it? if you look at the president, you cannot say that he is colourless person, this is a man who is charismatic, this is a man who has the common touch, this is a man who whenever he travels either at home or abroad he is a target of good will and affection. In fact, he is even regarded in many places as a fashion icon. With the kind of statement he makes with his unique dressing, that is not a colourless man. And he is a man also that the media like to put in their cover all the time both at home and abroad. It is not just because he occupies that office. It is because of the magnetism of his personality. This is a man who has an interesting story to tell, who is a symbol of hope for many young Nigerians. This is a man who represents the ultimate Nigerian dream that any individual at all can come from nothing to something; that greatness is not the preserve of a particular group of Nigerians; that every Nigerian child can aspire to get to the top. President Jonathan himself represents a very interesting story. There is a lot of colour and dynamism to his personality.

You said that the president is slow to act. Well, you see that perception I think is conditioned by the fact that a lot of Nigerians still have the military hangover even when they found themselves under democratic rule for a number of years. There is this military mind set in the minds of Nigerians. They want a president who will be behaving like he is wearing jack boot. A president that will trample upon the rights of Nigerians, a president who will not consult before who acts; an impulsive president who wields power as if is a whip. President Jonathan has made it very clear and he has consistently reminded Nigerians that yes, Nigerians wants good governance but this is also a democracy and under a democratic dispensation there are certain values and it was in this context that he made that his famous speech that he is not a goliath, that he is not a military officer who will trample on the rights of persons. It is in the nature of democracy that you have to build consensus that you have to be deliberate in whatever you do and what we have in President Jonathan is a man who is contemplative and who is also productive. It is a question of style and he cannot be accused of slowness. There have been occasions of course where he has had to take very prompt actions but within the bounds of reason.

I hear people say the president should wield the big stick. Nigerians don’t like somebody that is considerate. Nigerians want somebody who can punch them in the face. Nigerians want somebody who can abuse them. Well, they have a president who is a human being and who is very humane and I think that he deserves praise for that not all these derogatory adjectives that the opposition throw up.

The president is interested in infrastructure provision and all that, I recall that the president actually campaigned with the provision of basic infrastructure, growing the economy, and creating more job opportunities.
Take the power sector in terms of infrastructure. You will recall that during the campaign period, a lot of Nigerians were saying that if President Jonathan can just solve the problem of power supply, they will be happy. He himself appreciates the sense of urgency of that demand and he has said it again and again that you cannot have real development unless you are able to use the regular power supply to jump start the economy by creating activity, by strengthening the industrial sector. It is on record that since 1999, it is the Jonathan administration that has been able to move the level of power supply to 4,000 plus megawatts range. In January, Nigeria achieved about 4,400 megawatts, and that is about the highest since 1999 and a lot of Nigerians were jubilating. But then, there was problem with two power plants and that dropped to 2,000 plus. People were already beginning to enjoy improvement in power supply, people who had started praising government, again began to complain and that complaint is understandable because the main challenge required is one of sustainable power supply. The problem has since been corrected but even when there is improvement, Nigerians, because of that initial discomfort that they have experienced after some period of success, will continue to complain, but government is determined to achieve the objective of this power supply.

Yes, there are challenges. One of the challenges is the challenge of gas supply and action is to taken on that. The goal of the administration is to privatise the entire power sector and a lot of work is going on in that regard. Then, the other major challenge the government has to do with the challenge of what is called way leave in many of the states whereby there are community issues.

Another thing of course that the Jonathan administration has been doing is providing a robust support for the private sector because President Jonathan is convinced that it is when you have an enabling environment for the private sector that you will be able to create jobs.

Again, you will recall that one of the first things he did when he came in was a review of the foreign policy of Nigeria. There was a conference at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs where all the stakeholders came together and the emphasis was that the foreign policy process must be investment-driven and President Jonathan has been consistent on this call. And if you ask the Minister of Trade and Investment, trillions of investments have been attracted to this same economy within the last one year.

But the opposition does not give us credit for that. The opposition look for little things to play up and then say that is the job of the opposition. Well, the job of the opposition should not be to heat up the polity. The job of the opposition should be to respond to the administration when they think they want to on the basis of fact and truth.

In the last few weeks, the various ministers have been on television on a programme that has been organised ahead of the May 29 Democracy Day anniversary and if you have been following that, each minister has been going there to give an account and this is again one of the good thing about democracy, that people must give account and the Jonathan administration has been holding himself accountable and the Minister of Works has provided an outline on many of the projects on roads. Nigerians complain about roads.

There are many road projects that are ongoing that may not have been completed. They may not have been completed yet, but they are ongoing and in due course, Nigerians will see that the efforts they are seeing on those roads are meaningful efforts and very soon, those roads will be completed.

There are some Nigerians who believe that the president is not tough on corruption and this encourages public servants to continue to loot the public treasury. Those who hold that opinion should not forget that this administration is just less than one year. In a matter of weeks, it will be one year. One of the areas where this administration has been very strong and has been very consistent has been in the fight against corruption. Again, this is one area where President Jonathan is not being given due credit.

You know that one of the things the president did was to change the leadership of the EFCC to strengthen it because you will recall that we had gotten to a point where people were saying ‘oh, the EFCC had become toothless, the EFCC was not prosecuting cases, the EFCC was not doing enough.’ The gentleman who has even been in charge of operations was put in charge. One of the first things he did was to start cleaning up the EFCC itself and there were revelations about how certain persons within the EFCC needed to be sanctioned. I have not heard too many people saying that is a good thing. Even the guardian of the estate is guarding himself.

Two, the whole furore over the deregulation of the downstream sector (of the petroleum industry); when the president addressed the nation, one of the lines there is that the reason government was taking interest in this fuel subsidy issue was to check corruption, that the key target was to check corruption in the economy and to make the downstream sector of the petroleum economy more transparent.

In 2010, as acting president, the same President Jonathan had ordered a probe into the accounts of the NNPC. Many of these revelations that are arising out of the House of Representatives probe, ithe impetus came from the efforts made by the Jonathan administration, by President Jonathan as acting President and as President. Nobody is giving credit for that.

But we have a hyperactive and hypersensitive and hypertensive opposition that is very quick to put the blame in the wrong location.

The position of the President with regards to the campaign for 2015 is very clear in this regard and you recall that at the PDP national convention and also at the meeting of the National Executive Committee of the PDP, the 59th NEC meeting, the President made it clear that his ministers and members should focus on governance. He even threatened at the NEC meeting of the PDP that if any minister is found to be more interested in the politics of 2015, that minister will be better of excusing him because right now, at this moment, he considers the politics of 2015 as it is being played as a distraction. He has not even spent one year in office. It is, therefore, premature to begin to talk of 2015.

• Dr Reuben Abati is SA Media and Publicity to President Goodluck Jonathan


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