Taju Tijani
Consider these aberrations: the power probe, the Halliburton probe, the subsidy probe, the conviction of James Ibori, the looting of public wealth allegation levelled against almost all past governors and the freshly brewed bribery allegation against Farouk Lawan. Think of the infamous red carpet reception we gave to a famous Peoples Democratic Party’s convict like Bode George.
Think of the five star rehabilitation in a five star hospital, which then amounted to jail sentence that we handed to a common crook like Cecelia Ibru who broke Oceanic Bank. Again, think of the unjust importation of plea bargaining for most bank CEOs who abused public trust and stole billions of customers’ money.
Think of the promise of a dazed, drunk and confused Sanusi Lamido Sanusi that all the corrupt ex-bank thieves like Mrs. Cecilia Ibru (Oceanic Bank), Mr. Bartholomew Ebong (Union Bank), Mr. Okey Nwosu (FinBank), Mr. Sebastian Adigwe (Afribank Plc), Mr. Erastus Akingbola (Intercontinental Bank Plc), Mr. Francis Atuche (BankPHB), Mr. Charles Ojo (Spring Bank) and Mr. Ike Oraekwuotu (Equatorial Trust Bank) will all be convicted and jailed. Think of the tongue-tied, sidon-dey-look and gross inaction to combat the horrible, lawless Boko Haram killings of innocent Christians. These are enough flesh-and-blood distillation of Nigeria’s social pathologies that would embarrass any number of less shameless nations. Ah…President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan just sidon-dey-look!
That aside, what aggravates my anger is the prevailing cliché and silly insinuation that President Jonathan may contest for election in 2015. Unburdened by any restraint of shame, Jonathan and his errand boys are now speaking in a tart, power-drunk tone. He wants to continue in office beyond 2015. There is a kind of extravagantly embroidered deceit through his gift of crafty and manipulative creativity. This is a man who promised the Ndigbo of his support come 2015. Wither integrity? In the pool of South South candidates available to choose from, we elected to buy into the lies of a shoeless, zoologist from the backwater alley of ogogoro-crazy Otueke.
I have been tempted to see the 2015 ticket as a dreadful, fabulous, sweeping illusion. But with the PDP and its formidable tranche of stolen dollars, I am undertaking a rethink. However, before that doomsday scenario, it is essential to undertake an intellectual audit of Jonathan’s first year in Aso Rock. In the magnificence of our democratic deceit, the Ota bogeyman, Olusegun Obasanjo, soiled his reputation through the obvious narrowness of his choice of our future leaders.
First, he anointed Umaru Yar’Adua. Then Jonathan. The moment Jonathan was elected, Nigeria’s political constellation was brilliantly polluted with one long darkening shadow of feral meanness of mestasised corruption and soulish nightmare. From the inception, there were doubts about Jonathan’s ability to tame a lionized nation like Nigeria. Still, in the opiate of our compassion, we allowed him a level playing field to prove the cynics wrong. One year into his quadrennial mandate, Jonathan’s political flaccidity and nightmarish leadership has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Now. let us lance the boil a bit.
Our infamy, delusion and miscalculation were the votes we gave to Jonathan. By that act alone, we all reduced our democracy to the narrowest stricture of empowering a lazy, posturing and clueless man at the helm of power. In our search for a morning star, we embraced a flaccid, senescent, talentless, tacky, biddable and dithery Ijaw man, who is incapable of simple, sentient articulation of robust and progressive national rebirth. Ah…just sidon-dey look!
Jonathan, who was clothed in deceitful finery of past achievements as deputy governor of Bayelsa State, has now morphed into the dumbest president Nigeria ever had. He could not remake the much ballyhooed prowess of his old ability. There had been no flash of genius in his selection of ministerial advisers. In terms of mint-fresh ideas, Jonathan is as virgin as the Arctic zone. Rather, he is deepening a graft-driven feral culture that feeds mercilessly on our finite national cake.
He faffs around Abuja in a sealed bubble of expensive, bomb proofed and darkened Jeep, seeing nothing, hearing nothing and doing nothing. Ah… Otueke journeyman, just sidon-dey look!
With his government, the old dignity of governance is set back at every turn by our ghastly aberrations enacted daily through the vulgarized counter cultural behaviour of our graceless, eccentric, flatulent and demented rat pack called politicians. It is frighteningly sad to see a rich nation like Nigeria swim in excrement of shame, inaction, stunted growth, debilitating poverty, arrested destiny and social logorrhoea. It is dead easy for the fragile, holy man of Abuja and his paid, co-opted acolytes to project a sordid fantasy of Nigeria’s greatness to a disbelieving universe. Such gobbledegook and roundaboutation of reality further insults, diminishes and disables Nigeria.
tajutijani@hotmail.com.