Sam Ndah-Isaiah: With A President Like This, Nigeria Has No Leader

President Jonathan has abandoned responsibility. And this is for the umpteenth time. This president just loves committees, and, as we are told, if you do not want a job done, form a committee. The president’s conduct is getting quite embarrassing. If this president sees a snake in his bedroom, he would form a committee on snakes.

If this issue of the 200 kidnapped Chibok girls had not gone international, President Jonathan would not even have mentioned the matter at all. Note that this is not the first time that young girls like these ones have been kidnapped in Borno State, but the president thinks it is the problem of the governor and the people of the state. About three months ago, scores of teenage girls were similarly kidnapped in Borno State. The president never said a thing about those girls till date because that one escaped the notice of the international community. Now that the international media has picked up this latest kidnapping, the president, to prove that he is working, has simply created a committee.

President Jonathan is one president who does not want the responsibility that comes with the title. Today, he is president but he has outsourced his job to other people, without even knowing it. For instance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala decides how much money gets to any sector, whatever the National Assembly appropriates and whatever anybody thinks. The minister of finance has refused to see any urgency in the current security situation in the land and so does not see any reason to disburse adequate funds to security agencies as appropriated by the National Assembly. And the president can’t intervene or thinks he can’t. This is actually one reason why the security situation in the country is such a mess and gets worse every day. Of course, the minister can also argue that half of the money that is supposed to be going into the federation account is routinely stolen at source – from the NNPC where, on a daily basis, more than 160,000 barrels of oil is officially stolen by contractors on behalf of some “ogas at the top”. This theft, of course, is totally different from the more than 400,000 barrels stolen every day by those we routinely refer to as oil thieves. President Jonathan also can’t talk to the minister of petroleum who also operates as the third president. Okonjo-Iweala is the second president while Dame Patience is the first. Unfortunately for all of us, President Jonathan, the one we elected, is the fourth and the weakest of the four presidents this nation has been contending with.

If the president knew the definition of leadership, at a time like this he would have abandoned every other priority and made rescuing of those girls his No. 1 priority. That would be for decency, humanity and the image of our country. That would entail his taking charge personally and not outsourcing the job of rescuing the girls to a committee as he has done. This is like a hospital situation. In the day-to-day administration of a hospital, when patients go to the hospital, the doctor can instruct other health practitioners to treat a not-so-sick patient. But, in an emergency situation, it is the doctor or consultant himself that enters the surgical theatre and handles the knife personally. That responsibility cannot be outsourced to any other health practitioner. The problem with our situation at the moment is either President Jonathan does not know we are in an emergency situation when he has to enter the surgical theatre himself and personally take over the surgical knives or, worse still, this is a doctor who is too incompetent to do his job and the life of the patient is therefore endangered. The patient unfortunately, in this case, is our nation. The frightening thing is that our problem might actually be the latter rather than the former.

That is why almost every Nigerian was frightened last week when terrorists struck in Abuja again at roughly the same spot of the attack just a fortnight earlier. People are now scared stiff, discouraged, forlorn, disillusioned, bereft, desolate and even desperate. For the first time, Nigerians are beginning to wonder how many of them would still be alive by May 29, 2015, when the life of this government would be over. This is a very horrible situation for a country to find itself in.

And, by the way, what is this nonsense that this government keeps harping about that it has successfully limited the killings to only a portion of the country, meaning the north-east? Are the people who die there on a daily basis not Nigerians? Or is that portion not part of the entity called and known as the Federal Republic of Nigeria, for which he has sworn an oath to protect? To think that President Jonathan actually counts this as an achievement is a disgrace. And it is not even true in any case. People die all over the country every day with no consequence whatsoever.

Yes, Nigerians should pray more than ever before because our nation direly needs prayers. But let us also start discussing how we shall survive between now and May 29, 2015, when the life of the Jonathan government would have officially come to an end. It would be abnormal not to be scared at this point.

 

EARSHOT

Shutting Down The Economy For The World Economic Forum

The presidency has basically announced that it will have to shut down Abuja, the nation’s capital, for the duration of the World Economic Forum this week. What this means in plain English is that the time the world will move to Abuja to discuss jobs, creation of wealth and generally how to bolster the economy, is also the time the government, bereft of any idea on how to secure the people, has decided to shut down the very engine that powers the economy. How ingenious! What a paradox!

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Article written By Sam Ndah Isaiah, and Culled from Leadership Newspaper..

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