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The one incident that overtly and graphically exposed the ineptitude, ineffectiveness, inefficiency, carelessness, cluelessness, callousness, insensitivity and selfishness of Goodluck Jonathan was the abduction of about 276 school girls from Chibok in Borno State by Boko Haram. Olusegun Obasanjo (My Watch)
ormer President Olusegun Obasanjo has completed a long overdue performance appraisal of his successor, Mr. Jonathan. The appraisal review Obasanjo delivered in his recent autobiography explicitly marked Jonathan down as a monumental failure, a non-performer, a lawless and weak man, and as the champion of a modern day kleptocracy. The performance appraisal also exposed Jonathan as a man who lack leadership qualities and whose driving force remains the fulfilment of his personal desires and selfish wants. The quote provided from My Watch did not come as a surprise to most Nigerians because they all have eyes to see what has been happening in the nation in the name of governance. Nigerians knew that Patience, Deziani, Oduah, and Ngozi can do no wrong with Jonathan and that most of these women run a fiefdom that is very distinct from the federal government of Nigeria. The parallel governments established by most of these women ensure that they are above the law, do what they please, and can ignore summons from the National Assembly. Jonathan urged them on and facilitated their brazen abuse of due process and disregard for constituted authority, and the constitution of Nigeria. Rather than build a nation Jonathan chose to build fiefdoms and kleptocracies within his own larger kleptocracy.
Patience became an absentee permanent secretary who got paid for work not done and who obtained severance package when she finally relinquished that office. She travels with large entourages that are previously unknown in the history of Nigeria and happily disrupt both air and road traffic on her travels. Remember that the Federal Capital Territory Authority (FCTA) allocated N4 billion in its 2013 budget to Patience Jonathan for the construction of a 'mission house' right on the very land that had previously been allocated to Turai Yar'Ardua. Patience Jonathan was determined to get Yar'Ardua's land just to show Yar'Ardua that she is in control and she can do whatever she likes. But Mrs. Yar'Ardua fought back and had since challenged the Jonathans' effrontery in court and floored them both, humiliating them in the process. We can only imagine what a tidy N4 billion can do to improve health care for Nigerians, though we know the Jonathans avail themselves of medical care in Germany at the expense of the nation's taxpayers. We all wonder who Patience Jonathan is and her position in the government for her to demand and secure a piece, a large piece of the nation's budgetary allocation for a self-promoting program. Where is she coming from that she has no rope tied around her neck and where is she heading that she needed to be an absentee Permanent Secretary to get there? It is all down to a warped feeling of importance, recklessness, insensitivity, greed and poor education, but Jonathan urges her on and he remains the cheerleader for Deziani, the one who has no respect for accountability and a large distaste for transparency.
Any government that creates untouchables definitely has integrity and reputation problems. It did not come as a surprise that Mr. Jonathan wanted Obasanjo to delay the publication of his well-timed autobiography till after the election in 2015. He did not want his performance appraisal report released and exposed to the world. All the make-believe and deception taking place inside Aso Rock have left many wondering how a man who got the best chance ever - and on a platter of gold - to make a difference became a monumental failure and a kleptocrat. His rise was facilitated by Obasanjo, his coming to Abuja was made possible by Obasanjo, and his headship (not leadership?) of the Nigerian government was made possible by Obasanjo.
It must be said that Obasanjo did the nation a huge disservice by fostering a failure, a clueless, callous, insensitive and selfish man on the nation and he must take a large portion of the blame. He head-hunted Jonathan and it turned out that Obasanjo is a bad judge of character who did not do his homework well before pushing Jonathan into the ring. On his own part, Jonathan bided his time, stooped and waited for the crown to rest on his head before showing his true colour, a colour that now overwhelms and stupefies the former president. Obasanjo failed to connect the dots and as such was unable to see the large frame of Diepreye Alaieyeseigha in the big picture. Obasanjo was not privy to the secret talks and messages that went back and forth between the two while he prosecuted one and promoted the other. He was not aware that Alaieyeseigha was (and still is) Mr. Jonathan's godfather and mentor. Obasanjo had already crowned Jonathan by the time the picture became clear and news reached him that Jonathan has a bigger godfather that is not Olusegun Obasanjo!
The kleptocracy we see today has taken our nation to previously uncharted waters with billions of dollars audaciously looted from the nation's oil and gas account and oil blocks shared out to fronts, friends and sidekicks. Every avenue to steal from the Nigerian people are being fully exploited - name it, SURE-P, TAN, millennium estate project in Abuja, petroleum subsidy program, crude oil lifting, turnaround maintenance (TAM) of refineries that has done nothing to improve the performance of the refineries, gas lifting and sales contracts, crude oil sales to those who pay less than market price and pay huge bribes to the powers that be, etc. SURE-P is another layer of government that is engaged in doing everything the government departments and agencies are doing. SURE-P was created to loot oil subsidy funds and reinvest government funds into the hands of PDP chieftains and contractors. Billions of naira that should have gone to federal departments for roads, transportation, health care, environment and agriculture went to SURE-P. SURE-P receives N15 billion monthly and the money is quickly sucked down the bottomless pit. The money comes from the government's derived 41 per cent from the partial subsidy removal. I guess all that will end with the fall of crude oil prices in recent weeks.
In 2014, SURE-P claimed it received N164.9 billion from the government. While major infrastructures relating to health care, educational institutions, roads and highways are broken and in need of urgent repair and maintenance SURE-P has been busy sharing hundreds of millions of naira to PDP leaders and contractors for doing next to nothing. Sure-P's funds have the propensity to disappear and never be found and there are currently issues relating to billions of naira in missing and unaccounted for funds at the federal and state levels. The Jonathan kleptocracy is a cabal that took Obasanjo by surprise. He did not expect that his appointee-president will be that brutal and clinical in the way he raids and loots the nation with the connivance of his friends, agents and sidekicks. I have often felt that former President Obasanjo never liked people who outfox him and he cannot stand anyone who gathers way more than the person who invited him to the harvest field. He created this monster and he must take the lead in ridding the nation of the kleptocracy.
The irresponsibility and wickedness constantly and recklessly displayed towards our people and nation just surpasses the imagination of many. Nigeria now has more than a million people who are refugees inside their own nation, people displaced by war. These internally displaced Nigerians have received little or no help from the government. The Nigerian government is yet to secure the release of the more than 200 young girls abducted from their school since April 14, 2014. Under the Jonathan kleptocracy, the Boko Haram he referred to as "a bunch of riffraff's" have repeatedly humiliated the Nigerian armed forces and security agencies, making them look like upstarts and shadow-chasers, and Jonathan no longer control the 923,768 square kilometers handed over to him in 2011. Only a shameless man who is too deep into the act of self-denials will have no trouble standing up to ask to be allowed to continue when he has lost a large slice of the nation to an insurgency. The question reasonable citizen will ask him is this: Do you want to continue until the nation is reduced to the size of Otuoke?
While the parents and families of the Chibok girls continue to suffer untold pains, anguish and uncertainties, Mr. Jonathan continue to act and behave like all is well in the land - and that is for a man who has lost hundreds of citizens to the bombs and guns of Boko Haram with many maimed, wounded and disabled, and lost a section of the nation to the same gang of religious fanatics! On this score, The Economist labelled Jonathan as incompetent and added that Jonathan and the Nigerian military "cannot be trusted any longer to guarantee security for Nigerians." The magazine further expressed shock and disbelieves about the situation by concluding that "the worst aspect of the Nigerian government's handling of the abduction is its seeming indifference to the plight of the girls' families…." Mr. Jonathan, when do you plan to get our girls back? When will our girls return home and when will the hundreds of displaced families return to their ancestral homestead? Selfishness and the lack of feelings for others are two major problems of Jonathan. I very much doubt if the food budget in the Jonathan household before he became deputy governor in Bayelsa State was up to N100, 000 a year, but now 1 billion naira was his demand as food budget at Aso Rock! His and his family's comfort, satisfaction, health care and well-being are far more important to him than the well-being of the people and the nation. No nation deserves to have an insensitive kleptocracy like Jonathan's.
The failure of Jonathan and his kleptocracy is obvious to the world and it is the reason why the New York Times and the Washington Post both referred to Jonathan as "clueless and irresponsible." Nigerians have no trust or respect for Jonathan and they are very anxious to see his back and the back of his co-presidents. I have no doubt that that he knows he is a laughing stock among our people and he is the butt of their joke on a regular basis. If anything, the performance appraisal of Jonathan that was contained in former president Olusegun Obasanjo's My Watch confirms that this is the time to rid our nation of a president whose "ineptitude, ineffectiveness, inefficiency, carelessness, cluelessness, callousness, insensitivity and selfishness" are glaring for all to see. This is the time to bring to a close the nation's endless run of bad luck, illegalities and kleptocracy. As soon as Jonathan and his kleptocracy are behind us in 2015, we need to make an open government declaration as a nation and develop a new and open government, a government that will work in partnership with the people - an all-inclusive government as enunciated in the Open Government Partnership project illustrated in the video link provided here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ursu7GP85qs