By Chris Okotie

There’s a brief historical parallel between
the 36th President of the United States,
Lyndon B. Johnson (1963 – 69), who
succeeded President John F. Kennedy
when the latter was assassinated, and
President Goodluck E. Jonathan, who took
office after the death of President
Umaru Musa Yar’Adua.
Both Johnson and Jonathan were vice
presidents who succeeded their late
bosses when they died in office, and went
on to get elected in their own rights. Both
presided over their nations in times of
great political turbulence; in Johnson’s
case, during the Vietnam War, in
Jonathan’s, the Boko Haram insurgency
and sundry woes. That’s where their
similarities end.

President Johnson shocked the world in
the heat of the nomination process
leading to the 1968 Presidential elections
when he suddenly withdrew from the
race because of the turmoil generated by
his poor handling of the Vietnam War and
widespread race riots at home. He was,
nevertheless applauded because of the
nobility of his action which effectively
sealed his place in the pantheon of
American statesmen. He chose his
country’s peace over self aggrandizement
and the allure of office.

President Jonathan faces a similar
situation; he is presiding over a deeply
divided country, torn apart by religious
bigotry, unprecedented official corruption
and a badly managed insurgency. While
this poor record ought, naturally to
deflate his presidential ambition like
Johnson’s, Dr. Jonathan unabashedly
schemed his nomination, unopposed, for
the 2015 presidential elections. He and
his PDP cohorts fail to realize that, if you
cannot solve a problem, you invariably
become part of it. That was why President
Johnson didn’t seek re-election. The U.S
leader knew the bounds between honour
and dishonor, and he chose the
honourable path.
Nobody says President Jonathan does not
have the constitutional right to seek re-
election. However, legal right, when it
loses strength against moral ethos,
becomes burdensome to the beneficiary of
that right. When a Commander- in-
Chief is presiding over an army that is so
war-weary that, its soldiers are
deserting the war front in droves because
of superior fire-power of a rag-tag,
buccaneering force like Boko Haram, he
loses the respect of not just his own
armed forces, but that of the people he
leads.

As if the shame of the agonizing plight of
the Chibok Girls is not enough, our
Defense authority seem to be more
anxious for a ceasefire with their Boko
Haram captors, than the insurgents
themselves, signaling war- weariness on
the part of our army. Boko Haram has
graduated from a hit and run terrorist
group, into an army who now occupies
territories they have conquered in the
north-eastern part of the country.

The PDP administration of President
Jonathan is more concerned with plotting
how he’d coast home to victory in the
2015 Presidential elections, than how to
defeat the insurgency and other violent
crimes which threaten the nation’s
stability. This places his current quest for
renewed mandate on a moral quick sand.
The ding-dong of proclamation of
ceasefire by our government and
frequent denials by Boko Haram is too
embarrassing to be allowed to continue.
For God’s sake, President Jonathan
should save this nation the disgrace of
seeing poorly armed Nigerian troops
fleeing into Cameroon in the face of Boko
Haram onslaught. He must exercise
leadership and bring this insurgency to
an end.

In other civilized climes, when a war is
handled in this shoddy manner, the
leadership of the armed forces would be
dishonourably discharged, while the
President and his government forced to
resign for bringing shame on the nation.
Instead, the Nigerian military is making a
scapegoat of poor soldiers who violently
protested bad service conditions, by
sentencing them to death for mutiny.
Though, never should disloyalty ever be
excused for whatever reason, the peculiar
case of the mutinous soldiers who were
recently condemned to death should be
treated with leniency, and their
sentences commuted to reasonable prison
terms because their operational conditions
were less than ideal as evidenced by the
continued desertions being recorded in
this terror war. So much for insurgency!


Now, let us look at the economic record of
a President who is seeking reelection. An
editorial in the PUNCH newspaper edition
of October 6, 2014 exposes Nigeria’s poor
governance index: “In the Corruption
Perception Index 2013 published by
Transparency International, Nigeria
plunged further from 137th out of 177
countries surveyed in 2012 to 144th. Our
score dropped to 25 per cent from 28 per
cent. Nor is our moving out of the world’s
most fragile states in the 2014 Fragile
States Index to 17th cause for cheer in
an economy with Africa’s largest Gross
Domestic Product. We escaped the
ignominy of remaining in the group of the
15 most fragile only because of the civil
wars in Syria and Iraq and the descent
of Guinea Bissau into an unstable narco
state.

“In its Ease of Doing Business Report
2014, the World Bank rated Nigeria 147th
out of 189 countries, a further
deterioration from its ranking of 137th in
2013. Despite all this; glaring poverty,
unemployment and terribly inadequate
infrastructure, Jonathan and his
ministers have created a narrative of
success, even as their failure and the
tell-tale signs of a failing state daily
confront Nigerians”.


Despite all these unflattering statistics,
one is amazed at the crude,
undemocratic manner President
Jonathan went about seeking a renewal of
his mandate in the forthcoming elections.
Long before the Independent National
Electoral Commission, INEC lifted the ban
on political campaigns; the PDP unleashed
a horde of pro- Jonathan political
organizations on the nation.
These disparate groups, the most
prominent of which is the heavily-
financed Transformational Ambassadors
of Nigeria, TAN, launched a blistering,
false, intimidating campaign which
promotes the candidacy of Jonathan
across the nation. These multi-million
naira campaigns are most noticeable on
the nation’s major television networks
and on billboards in Abuja. We have seen
TAN’s zonal rallies across the nation
where the President’s supporters begged
him to run for 2015 Presidential
elections, as if the whole thing was not
pre-determined.

Prof. Attahiru Jega’s INEC watched this
charade even as the President’s people
audaciously jumped the gun before his
electoral agency blew the whistle on
political campaigns. Armed with a huge
financial war-chest, we are set to witness
another multi-billion dollar presidential
campaign, which is likely to surpass the
N45 billion spent on the 2011 Presidential
polls.


More than any president, Dr. Jonathan
has used his incumbency to the greatest
advantage, deploying strong arm tactics,
and the nation’s resources whenever he
deemed necessary; whether in
dismantling the Governor’s Forum which
threatened his re-election bid, or sacking
errant Governors through instigated
impeachments. The President’s under
hand tactics serves one purpose: clear
the way for his re-election in 2015! If
this is what democracy is all about, we
are in serious trouble.·


Rev. Okotie, a Presidential Aspirant
wrote from Lagos

www.thisdaylive.com/articles/jonathan-and-a-whirlwind-of-crises/193776/