One of the most frightening things about the Jonathan
administration is the President’s palpable lack of appreciation of the
problems that confront us and “the fierce urgency of Now”. This
phenomenon rears its head at every opportunity the President has to
reassure Nigerians that he has the capacity to lead the country out of
its current morass.
It is clichéd now to refer to the President’s
response when asked last June why he was unwilling to declare his assets
publicly as a mark of his commitment to fighting corruption. The
President told a bewildered nation that he didn’t “give a damn” about
Nigerians not knowing what he is worth. That comment reverberated and
still reverberates around the country, particularly whenever the words
fighting corruption and the Jonathan administration are used in a
sentence.
Those who thought that was one presidential gaffe too
many were surely mistaken. The President upped the ante during the 2012
Christmas service in Abuja when he said his government appeared to be
slow because it did not want to make mistakes. “By human thinking, our
administration is slow; I won’t say we are slow, but we need to think
through things properly if we are to make lasting impact,” the President
said in his homily. “If we rush, we will make mistakes and sometimes it
is more difficult to correct those mistakes.”
Slow is an understatement. The President is simply
telling us he doesn’t know what he is doing. The truth is that there is
no governance going on in the country. We all know the President is not
circumspect or afraid of taking decisions, particularly when such
decisions will benefit his friends in the oil industry. We witnessed
that a year ago when, to the chagrin of the mass of our people, the
President increased the price of petrol even when negotiations were
ongoing with the Nigeria Labour Congress and civil society. Since then,
the President has followed that insensate decision with numerous
anti-people actions like spending N22.6bn of our collective wealth to
offset bank loans owed by 84 rogue stock broking firms.
The major headline of the preceding week was not the
hardship Nigerians had to endure during the Christmas and New Year
holidays or the death and destruction that stalk the land. It was the
pronouncement of President Jonathan in what appeared as an official
endorsement of corruption during the funeral service of Gen. Owoye Azazi
in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State. Presidential aide, Reuben Abati, has
admonished us not to take the President literally when he speaks. But
this is one time we have no option but to pay close attention to the
President for “out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh”.
Bishop of Bomadi Catholic Diocese, Vicarage Hyacinth
Egbebor, probably didn’t know he was stirring up a hornet’s nest when he
blamed the December 15 helicopter crash at Okoroba in Nembe Local
Government Area, Bayelsa State, that killed the former National Security
Adviser, Azazi, former Kaduna State Governor, Patrick Yakowa, and four
others, on corruption. “Corruption is the only underlying evil that is
responsible for the air mishaps. If the military cannot guarantee the
safety and security of their own, who else can they protect?” Egbebor
noted in his sermon. “If there is anywhere one looks for excellent
performance, it is the military. Now we have compromised excellence for
money. Money has taken over.”
An obviously peeved President Jonathan remarked in
response to Egbebor, “But most of these things we talk about corruption
are not even corruption. It is true that most cases we talk about
corruption as if corruption is the cause of most of our problems. No.
Yes, we have corruption in this country, no doubt about that. The
government is also fighting corruption.” The President reminded us that
“Nigeria has more institutions that fight corruption than most other
countries”. His solution: Attitudinal change on the part of Nigerians
and concerted efforts by at least half of the population to follow in
the footsteps of the late Azazi.
It’s a good thing that President Jonathan, while
rejecting corruption as the problem, returned to the theme of attitude
as the bane of Nigeria’s development. As a result, the President
apparently demonstrated the logic of rational analysis in locating
corruption in the wider cosmic of attitude. In that context, he is right
to call for a change of attitude. But Nigerians would expect the change
of attitude he preaches to begin with him. The only way to do this is
for him to lead by example; to practise what he preaches.
President Jonathan should not expect the man on the
street to heed the call to imbibe new ways of doing things when he
himself is not demonstrating it. Unfortunately, he has refused to drive
the process by, amongst other things, arrogantly failing to publicly
declare his assets, apportioning over N1bn to the Presidency for feeding
and expanding the presidential fleet while saner countries are reducing
theirs.
Unfortunately, the President failed to mention that
the attitudinal change we need most is one that de-prioritises
corruption as an ingrained culture of the Nigerian people. By so doing,
he ignored the consensus among not just the dispossessed majority, but
also in the circle of elite of which he is one, that corruption,
contrary to what he believes, is the number one problem facing Nigeria
today.
All the negative indices routinely ascribed to
virtually every sector of the Nigerian life are the consequence of
widespread sleaze perpetrated by government officials and their
collaborators outside government. As long as the status quo continues to
endure in the midst of rapid degeneration in the quality of life and
infrastructure, corruption will continue to get the pride of place as
the major cause of Nigeria’s problem.
Though he never misses any opportunity to dish out
rhetoric about his government’s anti-corruption credentials, the
President’s mindset is one that places corruption at the lower rung of
the socio-economic evils bedevilling the country. Thus, the will to
confront it headlong does not exist. What exists is the impulse to
nurture it in order to continue to sustain the plutocracy which he and
the Peoples Democratic Party have dishonestly sold to the people as
democracy.
Evidence of this intent is the recent appointment of a
notable party chieftain, popularly known as “Mr. Fix It”, as the
chairman of Nigeria Ports Authority, the cash cow which produces a large
chunk of the money the ruling party uses to fund its political
campaigns. The President disregarded the mountain of allegations of
corruption sitting on the appointee’s head to make the appointment. It
is a mark of a President who is not only out of touch with the people,
but one that doesn’t give a damn, indeed, about corruption and its
deleterious impact on our society.
In a sense, I agree with President Jonathan. It is
time to disband our anti-corruption agencies and set up an agency for
attitudinal change, that is, if we can’t revive the National Orientation
Agency. The first task of the new agency — the National Agency for
Attitudinal and Behavioural Change — will be to get President Jonathan
to change his attitude toward corruption. And the reason is simple.
Corruption, regardless of the President’s stance, is Nigeria’s number
one problem, and it manifests itself in different ways whether Jonathan
sees it or not.
Martin Luther King, Jr., clergyman, activist, and
prominent leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement, once
reminded Americans about the “fierce urgency of Now”. In his “I Have a
Dream” speech delivered almost 50 years ago on August 28, 1963, at the
Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C., he noted: “This is no time to engage
in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilising drug of
gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy”.
I think President Jonathan should read that speech if
he hasn’t done so. Even though its focus was race relations, its
unifying idea was a warning for every people to frontally confront their
national “demon” and “make justice a reality for all of God’s
children”.
Corruption is Nigeria’s “demon” and unless the President wants us to
believe he is granting a national amnesty to corruption, now is the time
to end the platitudes and confront it head on.
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