Goodluck Jonathan and Fragments of a Dysfunctional State

These days and much expected of a Nigeria that is full of uncertainties, there are many ways now to pick up fights, and with Nigeria, unlike her counterparts in cyberspace which did change the way the world thinks and operates, its networking activism as seen the past few weeks to effect change and turn things around in the country is really hard to tell if the cybernation picketers or the normal weak and vulnerable working class populace on the ground have any hope since a federal Nigeria government had declared from its court ruling that the fuel subsidy strike is illegal and therefore the participants in the alleged protests are doing so at their own risk, engaging in what would cost them terribly.

Also, in a hopeless situation with the on the ground picketers, some not sure when the next meal will be available and, at the mercy of President Goodluck Jonathan himself who had nothing to do with all these if it had not been the barrels of the gun begun from IBB (Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida) to structurally adjust the nation’s programs, to OBJ (Olusegun Obasanjo) who spotted GEJ (Goodluck Ebele Jonathan), and dabbled him into nasty political tactics that certainly would consume the presidency if Jonathan comes short of taking the next step - meeting to what the people demands and settling his personal score with Boko Haram, the Islamic jihad bloodthirsty nihilists, whose big rolling funding machines are part of his cabinet he patently acknowledged while the media mounted a microscope on him.

Ironically, Jonathan is on the nation’s hot seat. Just that he may have had good intentions to lead the nation to the forefront as a honestly good man and not as a political money launderer or a traditional grassroots political player; he has been called many names in which fights had been picked among his admirers and haters. He has been called a “dumb-ass idiot,” “a dummy,” “a political fool shenanigans follower,” “a OBJ surrogate,” “a clueless Ijaw man whose presidency was not his own making,” “a college professor who should have been in the classroom rather than putting up a political trap that’s about to nail him,” “a figurehead who’s not smart enough to outplay his political foes and the ones that had set him up as a guinea pig in a nation sitting on a time bomb,” and a host of other name-calling slogans.

Jonathan did not know what befell him until the outcome of the strike began to take its toll - where his own police force he had sent out to enforce the law are fatally shooting peaceful demonstrators demanding what they had thought was fair, objecting to his removal of fuel subsidies among other complaints in a nation a do-nothing National Assembly legislators amass wealth on public funds and earns more than any government official on Earth. In a nation nothing had worked on normal settings from its franchise military juntas and dictatorships, to an abnormal, doctored democratic fabric. In a system where the chief engineer Obasanjo begun the Fourth Republic, rigging himself into reelection to the presidency, gathering his cronies to enrich them, to cover-up his own shady dealings amassing incredible wealth, and deliberately handing over power to a sick and incompetent successor with a puppet that lacked political guts as running mate to an ailing president, provides a clue about the way the system works. What Obasanjo had done in his political gimmick by handpicking deadbeats as successors and taking that as a credible succession formula being components of any political system and democratic fabric, and the way Obasanjo stage-managed his acts means Nigeria doesn’t have one - a credible and sound democracy.

Obasanjo had thought of what it would cost him giving up power entirely. He would have been in the dock - he couldn’t have taken it. He would have been made to testify under oath - that has not worked effectively in a state without structure and sound judiciary. He would have been made to face the question of how he legalized his funds and his friends’ ill-gotten funds and assets in the West where bags of cash full to the brim loots are dumped. And what Obasanjo had done in his picks of the political airheads to succeed him was not to bury the OBJ system, but to save it. It backfired. So far, it seems so.

The nation has been perilous on the first day of Obasanjo’s transition from around which Nigerians should have known clearly that in any democracy, no system, much less the deadbeats that he chose, can be stable if it depends on the well-being and survival of one man - Obasanjo - which is why the country is crumbling.

Nigeria is beginning to be the usual sickening joke we had thought was going to be a thing of the past when Jonathan got the peoples votes on his own very playgrounds and, had promised a new dawn, not knowing the onetime college professor who should have stayed where he belonged teaching, had no clue what he was doing in the presidency, and had relied on the misleading counsels of his kitchen cabinet who had taken him as a fool and for a long ride until his admission of the bloodlust Boko Haram being part of his dysfunctional regime that has practically nothing to offer the nation since he took the oath to defend the nation’s integrity other than anarchy.

One would presume Jonathan was telling a bunch of confused Nigerian audience in his thinking that perhaps the not consistent gullible press had not known about his pally with bedfellows who bankroll the Islamic group from public funds to terrorize the whole nation in the name of radical Islam.

What had been going on and especially what happened on Christmas Day, 201i, on that scheduled program to blow up institutions which the terrorists had forewarned, signaled Jonathan's fall. I had carried out a “swing poll” few days after the simultaneous bombings on whether Jonathan should resign on the basis of keeping a staff of traitors who cared less about the country’s well-being, and a staff that do not want his presidency to succeed which leaves him with the choices of quitting or getting rid of his cabinet that’s taking the country to hell.

In that “swing poll,” I had said that by Jonathan not doing much in critical and testing situations, that he is giving credence to the perpetrators of injustice. That his statements demonstrates his lack of sense of leadership and very apathetic about the suffering of his subjects - the Nigerian people. That he needs to show more responsibility to handle every situation protecting Nigerians. That if he cannot perform to secure his own people from his ineptitude, he must resign.

Thus Jonathan should either dissolve his present cabinet staff of cronies that was not his own making but that of special interests who had designed his administration to be a failure, and a staff out to discredit his South-South connections which links him with his protege, the source behind the origin of all the chaos. Jonathan should resign to save himself from further embarrassments. He has not done anything differently except for his willingness to negotiate with Boko Haram terrorists whose sponsors helped neutralize the president’s attempt to sought the cells of the terrorists with a tactical move for negotiations. Negotiate with terrorists for what?

That gesture energized and motivated the terrorists to keep up steadfastly with their quest for what they demand - an Islamic state. When the president isn’t doing much independently to use his sense of judgement as the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces; and, when it’s very clear that the Islamic murderous gang Boko Haram are composed of people he knows very well, what message is he really sending to the Nigerian people?

Jonathan should know that he is sitting on a time bomb. If he has any advisers on this current crisis, which I doubt, it’s about time for him to find a way to diffuse that bomb for his own life and the interest of the nation. And on the striking working class, this is the time he should gather these people, consult with them and give them what they want. This is the best time for him to use diplomacy which should constitute a fair warning to a legislative fraud that power belongs to the people, giving the people what they want for the interest of the country and again for his own life.