₦airaland Forum

Why President Jonathan Will Win In 2015
By Sonala Olumhense

With less than six months to Nigeria’s 2015 presidential contest, I predict that one Goodluck Ebele Jonathan will win it. He already holds the job, and many cite the power of incumbency to back up that belief.

They are wrong; in a normal democracy, incumbency would be a serious handicap because the candidate can be handcuffed to his record. Not in Nigeria, and there are really two reasons Mr. Jonathan stands poised to take his third oath of presidential office next May.

The first is that he is a man of great understanding. Mr. Jonathan understands that Nigeria is an abandoned project, literally and figuratively. Nigerians do not care. They do not care about themselves. And they care still less about Nigeria.

Nigerians are curiously insulted if you say something “negative” about someone of their ethnicity, but they do not react the same way if you insult Nigeria. Nigerians are more offended if you insult their government than they are if you insult their country. The same Nigerians are not offended when their government makes their country look like a bad joke.

The second reason Mr. Jonathan holds the aces as we approach February 2015 is that Nigerians are very forgetful, and hate to question. A Nigerian reads the most scandalous story about Nigeria, and just shrugs. A Nigerian journalist leaves home for his journalism job, but gets there and becomes a civil servant.

Since his ascendancy to the top of the ladder in 2007, Mr. Jonathan has reached this understanding. He has found Nigeria a boring and easy game anyone can do in their sleep, not the challenge he was hearing about on television.

Most of all, the Nigeria ruler knows Nigerians are happy to keep Nigeria that way. This is why he is poised to win in 2015.

A few weeks ago, “Mr. Fix-It” Tony Anenih, who chairs the Board of Trustees of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) disclosed that Mr. Jonathan will run for office next year, a decision known only in the inner circles, and one the president ought to announce by himself.

That fact confirmed the power relations within the presidency, and the nature of Anenih’s presence in it. “Mr. Fix-It,” by the way, doubles as the chairman of the board of the Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA). The NPA and the Ministry of Petroleum Resources are reported to form a formidable power couple when it comes to financial backing for the president’s electoral ambitions. The Ministry, remember, has become the personal fiefdom of Diezani Alison-Madueke, the ethics of whom are routinely questioned by many Nigerians. But she is a pretty lady, and Mr. Jonathan does not argue with great beauty.

Mr. Jonathan is poised to win in 2015 because the Nigerian people understand that he is their Master, in office to serve his own will. As a result, he is not answerable to the very people who put him in office.

Those people include the Boko-Haram abducted children of Chibok, in Borno State, who have become a byword for historic government irresponsibility. They and their suffering families are an abandoned project that would have embarrassed a military dictatorship.

It is difficult to accept that the States of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe are under a state of emergency, given the success that the militants are enjoying there, treating Nigerian soldiers like amateurs. The military now appear lost…or abandoned.

Last week, as official denials came to an end and the insurgents assumed firm control of Bama, soldiers were reported to be removing their families from Maiduguri, as Boko Haram distributed fliers announcing it intends to seize the city.

That is a good sign for Mr. Jonathan’s re-election. No, he did not create Boko Haram, but he has promised to deal with them. Earlier in August, he promised to “lead Nigerians” to defeat the militants. Those who were paying attention would have recognized the joke: In March 2012, in South Korea, he told the Yonhap News Agency he would end the Boko Haram challenge within three months, stressing that Nigeria’s security forces would take “total control” of the areas in contest. The August 2014 renewal of the joke is a punch in the nose for those who say Mr. Jonathan in military fatigues looks like a Nollywood actor.

But he is deathly serious, reminding Nigerians that the problem with asking him to rescue the Chibok girls is that he is caught between using force and endangering their lives, or undermining the sovereignty of Nigeria by succumbing to the terms of the terrorists. He does not accept responsibility for letting the militants get away with 276 girls in the first place.

In other words, despite all the promises published so far, the abducted girls had better plan their own escape as some of them have done, or they are on their own. There is a presidential election to win.

Enthusiastic Nigerian voters will recall that in January 2011, the Presidential Advisory Committee, submitting its report, drew attention to ongoing and severe depletion of the country’s Excess Crude Account, from $20b in 2007 to under $400m in September 2010. The Theophilus Danjuma-led group criticized the alarming cost of running the government, citing “an army of special advisers and assistants.”

Mr. Jonathan promised to implement the committee’s recommendations, but just week after receiving its report, he appointed three new advisers.

The signs of re-election come from as far back as the last election. As recorded by the International Press Centre in collaboration with the Institute for War and Peace, here are Mr. Jonathan’s 91 electoral promises from 2011. One week before his inauguration, in May 2011, I also documented “A Mountain Of Promises.” Next February, Nigerians will vote for Mr. Jonathan overwhelmingly, in exchange for a longer list of promises.

On July 14, 2011, six weeks after he assumed office, Mr. Jonathan said he was starting an anti-corruption “war,” beginning with a comprehensive audit of the financial transactions of all Federal Government ministries, departments and agencies and with effect from 2007. Abandoned.

Beginning on January 8, 2011, the Abuja-based Leadership Newspaper ran a series it called, “Nigeria: The Country's White Elephant Projects,” demonstrating just how pervasive uncompleted projects were at all levels of government.

In a follow-up, two months later, Mr. Jonathan set up a Presidential Projects Assessment Committee to look into the issue of uncompleted federal projects. The group reported at least 11,886, with many more unidentified! Mr. Jonathan took the report, made suitable promises, and then abandoned the report.

I could carry on, for hours. The point was to demonstrate that Mr. Jonathan has all the credentials to be re-elected, easily, in 2015. It is an abandoned country, and the only thing Nigerians are prepared to do about it is abuse anyone who says they should do something about it.
Let us pray.

sonala.olumhense@gmail.com

Superstar007: You go fear concotion na.
All because of ebola, next thing them go say make we tie plantain leaf around our waist with
red cloth on our head. Dance around a
banana tree 7 times shout.....
''Ebolalala ebelebe ebelebe''

Naija discovering cure to various diseases since 1882 without any test or experiment!

Lol. But how do you know she didn't do any tests or experiment?

Hell to the No.

But tell the opposition they can't take my vote for granted because Jonathan gets my vote if they field Buhari or some other ethnic yesterday man. Or the uninspiring Sule Lamido or any other born to rule power monger like Kwankwaso. The opposition has to get it right or I take my chance with Jonathan and hope that even after the unprecedented looting of the country he has inaugurated, the corruption-friendly president still manages to build a rail line from Lagos to Calabar and end rice importation.

emmatok: Ok let's get this right.
Devis is wrong For mentioning Ihejirika, but he is right for calling SA Sherif and SL Sanusi.
I sense Hypocrisy here .

Actually, I think Davis is wrong on all counts. Boko Haram sold him disinformation.

akpanoka: Intelligence organizations d world over don't have frequent change in leadership. In that same SSS, nigerians have seen northerners who spent morethan 8yrs, Saharareporters didn't publish any pooh. Its only here that we sacrifice efficiency at d altar of religion and ethnicity. Let's look at US for instance, d FBI, directors spend years, while some willingly resign.
1. Robert S. Mueller, III, 2001-2013
2. Louis J. Freeh, 1993-2001
3. William S. Sessions, 1987-1993
4. William H. Webster, 1978-1987
5. Clarence M. Kelley, 1973-1978
6. J. Edgar Hoover, 1924-1972
7. Alexander B. Bielaski, 1912-1919 and so on

This isn't d time for politics. Let's support those that r truly working. Ita deserves it

That the FBI has long-serving directors is beside the point. In a serious country Ekpenyong would be long gone. When serious security agencies lose an officer they turn out enmasse until the killer is caught. But Ekpenyong lost 10 men at a go and I was shocked to read that he was leaving it for God! The main suspect hasn't even been questioned long after. Under Ekpenyong the SSS has degenerated into a banana agency people use to collect private debts. We are not serious abeg.

Ishilove: That is beside the point

Thank you.

kelsoft: Can you explain why?

Explain what to you - that Boko Haram has been running roughshod over the country since General Minimah got his new job?

eph12: Iherijika that you're praising is being accused of sponsoring terrorism.

It doesn't sound like a credible allegation to me. I don't believe it.

kelsoft: Minimah the problem now? Please...

He has failed in his job. How isn't that a problem?

Youths earnestly ask for Goodluck Jonathan
By Abimbola Adelakun

In a repeat of Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha’s failed civilian transfigurations, President Goodluck Jonathan is being endorsed by vainglorious organisations.

The 1990s birthed the rent-a-crowd presidential endorsement movements. First, Arthur Nzeribe, Abimbola Davies and Jerry Okoro had sought an extension for Babangida’s military junta via the auspices of the Association for Better Nigeria; their activities contributed to what would later culminate into the June 12 crisis. Not to miss the military gravy train, after the “step aside” of the self-styled Evil Genius” and a palace coup ushered in the Abacha administration, a similar organisation, the Youth Earnestly Ask for Abacha, founded by the trio of Daniel Kanu, Johnbull Adebanjo and Emmanuel Okereke took over the farce.

The new kid on the block is the Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria that seeks to sell the Goodluck Jonathan candidature to Nigerians. While TAN is relatively new – or a reincarnation of the previous Neighbour-to-Neighbour organisation that campaigned for Jonathan’s election in 2011 – its tactics are reminiscent of the Abacha and Babangida inglorious years. Like the ABN which claimed 25 million members and YEAA that boasted it organised a Two-Million Man March, TAN is creatively accounting for its gravy. One day, its promoters announced that 8,000 support groups were asking for Jonathan to contest; the next day they gleefully announced they had collected 1.8 million signatures in the South-West; 1.6 million in the South-East and 4.15 million in the South-South. In a country where we can barely collate census figures, TAN’s spin is that it is very efficient in collecting data.

The point is not that Jonathan cannot or should not have a team to manage his campaign. The issue is these organisations’ consistent presumption of the slow-wittedness of the average Nigerian to see through all the put-ons that precede their campaigns. My unsolicited advice to TAN: Since these methods are so painfully overused, why not skip the pantomime show and move on to the serious business of engaging Nigerians on the Goodluck Jonathan Presidency?

The irony of all these beg-the-President-to-contest movements is that like all fly-by-night ideas, none has outlived its promoted presidential candidate.

Except, of course, the National Association of Nigerian Students – the supposed civil society body that has given itself the job of endorsing one president after the other. Lately, it announced it had thrown its weight behind Jonathan’s re-election. When and how it became the duty of a student association to endorse incumbent presidents’ continuation in office remains foggy to discerning minds.

Here is the conclusion of the whole matter: TAN and its allied outfits will eventually peter out but NANS will not. And, that, is a huge disappointment.

Given the steady decline of NANS into an “anything goes” outfit over the years, its endorsement of Jonathan is not out of sync with its previous sophistry. NANS supported President Olusegun Obasanjo’s infamous Third Term agenda and hoorayed him with a shambolic “Defender of Democracy” award. This same group lost three members to a road accident some years back while on a similar errand to bestow a “Governor of the Year” award on Olusegun Mimiko of Ondo State. A couple of years ago, it was going to confer a high profile Kirikiri returnee with the Kwame Nkrumah award in the name of the All Africa Students Union. The latter organisation disowned it calling the promoters a band of frauds but they still did not back off from that pursuit. Last week, they eventually slapped the Nelson Mandela icon award on the same George. Over the years, NANS has been involved in a lot of amoral activities that one wonders if members of its body have a say in its affair or they have surrendered all their political judgment to their “leaders.”

The president of the association, Yinka Gbadebo, was quoted as saying he would mandate all students to cast their votes for Jonathan. How he proposes to “mandate” his colleagues into voting a candidate of his choice is not as worrisome as the blatant manner he makes these declarations without any scruples about being embarrassed if contradicted by his constituency. Are the members of the student body so politically apathetic that someone can make these claims on their behalf and they just keep shut? So, what do folk learn in universities these days if not to speak up for themselves?

NANS, obviously, is a band of opportunists looking to eat and for whom no perfidy, no level of ignominy, would be too low to wallow so long as it guarantees supply of “stomach infrastructure”. Their desperation to be included in the routine sharing of the national cake perhaps explains why you never see these professional students ever associated with anything academic.

These same students that hail Jonathan’s “transformation’ in the education sector are the same ones whose schools were shut for extended periods losing a year or more. Can they not see that they are victims of the structural deficiencies and rot that set the Nigerian educational system backward by decades before running their mouths about Jonathan’s student-friendly posture? Are they blind or they are just dumb? And even more poignant, as they labouriously transit into Nigeria’s ever-widening labour market in a matter of months or years, would these students not be casualties of the perennial problem of unemployment in the country? Where were these student leaders’ months ago when fellow youths, graduates and job seekers, were trampled to death in a badly managed employment exercise? Did it ever occur to them that the fate of those job seekers was intertwined with theirs? What efforts have they put up for the abducted Chibok girls? If they cannot engage the government productively on key issues that affect Nigerian students, why can’t they just limit their activities to their various campuses instead of meddling in national politics?

Why this feels like a major let-down on the part of NANS is that when their present activities are viewed against the backdrop of association’s history – the times in the past when students had combined the intellect, youthful drive and genuine activism as drivers of change in the society- what emerges is a picture of how the mighty has fallen.

That these so-called leaders can reconcile the all too many contradictions in their mind and still go ahead to launder the President with empty words only shows that they do not know much of what ails Nigeria. And, this, sincerely, saddens the most!

http://www.punchng.com/opinion/viewpoint/youths-earnestly-ask-for-goodluck-jonathan/

This is what NANS has been reduced to - Youths Earnestly Ask for Jonathan! Sad.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-29075013

The president should have sacked that guy already. At least, Ihejirika drove Boko Haram from our cities and towns into the bushes. (It appears he rested on his oars after that, allowing Shekau and his boys to restrategise, but he did accomplish something.)

But Minimah . . .

argon500: She stated that it was “uncharitable for Nigerians to reward someone who laid down his life, to associate him with the sponsorship of the sect.”
Source: Punch.

This woman go school so?

Gboliwe: Women in Koma wear leaves but their men wear real clothes! What kind of injustice is this?

That is not good. But then, maybe those men shown are the kabyesis or rich men among them.

Laf wan tear my belle. Some people can write.

Well, my own wondering - why did God create something, only to realise his error and demand a surgery immediately the child is born to correct things?

drsolob2: He said he never saw Chinyere in Abia but noted that government was not leaving anything to chance as it had since stepped up public awareness and sensitisation on how to contain the Ebola virus.
www.punchng.com/news/abia-to-declare-manhunt-for-fleeing-suspects/

Lol. Guy sees everyone that sets foot on Abia soil!

Godmystrength: Are you saying all these thing should be done because we want to be ''marriable''

The actual classic flaw in ndidibabe's thinking is that life always obeys rules and formulae and so once you do these you're sure oF certain results. She even tells me she has two handsome male children - obviously she followed a formula for that too.

ndidibabe: Story story.... I am a 32 year old mother of two handsome boys. As you lay your bed, so you will lie on it. When most girls should be busy 'shaping' their life by having a good Education , building a career and getting closer to God, thereby making themselves 'marriable' , they were busy jumping from one Boy's room to another cooking, washing clothes and fuc...ng as in the case of idowuigbo and her friends on NL. How dem wan see correct Husband marry?

Ummm. Wish I had the energy to start with this. Anyway, like I said, when you grow up. . .

ndidibabe: 42 year old bride? What has she been doing with her life?? WTF!!!!

*carries her up gently and pecks her forehead, smiles and speakes slowly*
Life is not regular. It has no formular. People go through things for no fault of theirs. My dear girl, when you grow up you will understand.

Elantracey: I pity the woman



but what was she doing till 42

*takes her hand gently, smiles and speaks slowly*
Life is not regular. It has no formular. People go through things for no fault of theirs. My dear girl, when you grow up you will understand.

jassie: I've known about the Bermuda triangle mystery right from secondary school.

Take it or leave it, science is overhyped. Science couldn't even locate the missing Malaysian aircraft, talk less of bermuda triangle. All they said was some big big talk . . . bobo juice

Science, at least, tries to explain things. Besides if you read the explanations oF BT carefully you'll see they're not just big big talk. The Malaysian plane hasn't been found because the ocean is big and the earth is big.

lastpage: You dont ban or hike the import tariff on Rice or Vehicles until you are sure that your local production is ENOUGH to sustain demand, otherwise, you simply cause scarcity and price inflation

That's right.

Sincere9gerian: The so called terminal operators should wake up and smell the coffin. The ports are for imports AND exports and not just for imports. We also need to create JOBS for our people.

Few days ago, I bought well milled, stone free, full bag (50 kg) Abakiliki rice for only N7,200 at Ogbete market. I couldn't believe it when someone told me about it initially until I gave him money to buy it just to confirm.

Likewise, the Nigeria milled Ebony rice, Stallione rice and others are taking over the rice market in Enugu.

Smuggling is definitely a problem because of our mostly ineffective custom officials but as local capacity grows, smuggling will become increasingly less profitable and gradually disappear just like is happening with rice.

Good to read this. I hope they start selling the stuff here soonest. I've been looking for this stone-free local rice to buy around here. It makes me feel bad I'm still eating imported rice.

barcanista: SAS cannot be absolved for the activities because he created it. It is shameful though. But the continuous sustenance of BH I am not sure. Whats Up with Ali Ndume? why no one is talking about him?

Ndume's case is in court. But I doubt they have anything on him other than logs of calls he made to Boko Haram elements which prove nothing really.

Eldavido1: SAS may have used BH to win his reelection. But to say he is sponsoring BH activities just doesn't add up. BH have severally identify him as their number one enemy and always request for his arrest as a precondition for peace. With time more truth will unfold.

That's right. This man was certainly a boko person at the beginnings - they even had someone in his cabinet - long before they fell out. I believe Shakau and co set out to use Davis to feed us disinformation. It's unfortunate that all APC and PDP characters do in this country is try to milk any situation for its political value.

[quote author=dtito][/quote]Where is your source - or are you the person that made the discovery? Why is this on the front page without a source?

kunleee: Smiles now, almost cancel going to see MyBabe at ABU on saturday.

kd is safe.



Atleast for now.

He's not.

phreakabit: Damn poor kid that's even worse!

I tell you!