Nigerians have a choice to make this week between President Goodluck Jonathan, President of Nigeria, who seeks re-election, and Maj.-Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, former Head of State who overthrew a democratically elected government in 1983. Buhari is seeking for the fourth time the office of an elected President of Nigeria.
Jonathan arrived through a startling sequence of lucky circumstances. He was busy as a research zoologist looking for solutions for the environmental degradation of the oil producing areas of Nigeria, totally oblivious of politics. When the politicians arrived to ask him to come into their trade he refused. He explained that he had a lot to do where he was that he loved what he was trying to do. A great deal of persuasion and arm-twisting went into getting Jonathan to accept being the Deputy Governor of Bayelsa State. From there, he became the Governor of Bayelsa State, and then he was elected Vice- President of Nigeria, and later as Acting President when President Umaru Yar’Adua was ill. At the President’s eventual but untimely death, Jonathan was sworn-in as President. He ran for election on his own merit in 2011 and won his first four-year term which expires on May 29.
Maj.-Gen. Buhari was one of the most politically ambitious officers of the Nigerian Army, known to have played a part in the July 1966 coup which conducted a systematic liquidation of Eastern Nigerian, especially Igbo, officers in the Nigerian Army, an action which all but made the civil war inevitable. He is known to have once begun military operations against one of Nigeria’s neighbors without clearance from Defense Headquarters. Then on 31st December 1983, he struck and overthrew the government of Alhaji Shehu Shagari and assumed office as a dictator, ruler and law giver. For 20 months he ran an autocratic regime which jailed hundreds of politicians and journalists without due process and executed drug couriers at a time the offences did not carry the death penalty. The contrasts between both men are stark and, all things considered, President Jonathan deserves the ‘yes ‘vote. First, he is one of us, ordinary Nigerians. He knows what it is to go to school as a boy without shoes. He understands the daily struggles of Nigerians. And since he has been President, he has continued to evince the character of a well-bred man, humble to a fault, honest to goodness. The country does not need a man ordained by the heavens, like his arch opponent, the so-called ‘born-to-rule’ messiahs. In Jonathan Nigeria has got what it needs which is a simple, honest, humble, uncomplicated man, very educated but who knows the limits of his own knowledge and is willing to employ the best brains he could get to help solve the country’s problems. He is a great family man with a rather compassionate wife who adores him and who once recommended him to Nigerians as a “messiah.”
|Great nations are built incrementally not by transmogrification. To run an economy that grows at the average of 7 per cent per annum is no mean achievement, and he has held on to this growth for four years. The collapse of the world oil price illustrates how well the Nigerian economy has held up, especially when Nigeria is compared with other oil exporting countries like Venezuela and Iran whose revenue comes mostly from oil sales.
During the last few months, he has promised to do better in all areas, an indication of a man not blinded by conceit or ego who knows that life at whatever level is a learning process. He believes in building institutions. Since independence, there has been no president that has been as faithful to democratic ideals as Goodluck Jonathan. Even his opponents admit that much. It is obvious that he could have squashed the All Progressives Congress (APC) during its infancy if he had chosen to do so. During his tenure, there is no record of a single political assassination. There is not a single dissenter prosecuted. Not a single newspaper banned or censored. He holds the record as the most excoriated President in Nigerian history who is insulted daily in the most disrespectful language imaginable.
He has proved and demonstrated that he is a very patient man, a considerate man, not given to rash decisions. His turning the scales on Boko Haram, the blood-thirsty jihadist terrorists, is a testimony to that patience. The kidnapping of hundreds of students of the Government Girls School, Chibok, brought him so much uncharitable opprobrium. He was thought to be a weakling who could not rescue the innocent, as uncaring, and clueless. Some of the most hurtful epithets came from abroad, even from nations who ought to know better: that an ill-considered raid on the locations where the girls were held would lead to their massacre.
He has distinguished himself as a servant of peace in Africa. A day after a popular uprising overthrew the government of Burkina Faso, he was airborne and had persuaded several African leaders to intervene quickly to forestall what would have turned into a civil war. He played the same role in the Ivory Coast and saw the easing out of a leader who was trying to dig in and fight to the bitterest end. One of the most unfair cuts he has received he got on the issue of corruption. Jonathan doesn’t cut the image of the corrupt. Even his opponents acknowledge it. He has issued challenges to every accuser. Name one instance of corruption in government that I would not investigate and punish. He threw down this challenge to former President Olusegun Obasanjo, to the opposition and other critics. On his wealth he was specific. All the money he has ever earned, he said, he received for his public service. I f anyone could find anything more, let him or her cast the first stone, and reveal it. W hen he remarked that much of what was described as corruption was sheer stealing, he was ridiculed by opponents and critics, wrongly, because he was actually equating corruption to armed robbery which in Nigeria carries a life sentence.
Jonathan is a builder. Every nation values a builder. It is impossible to enumerate all he has built in his first term. His campaign suddenly found that his achievements have been grossly under-reported. Even when he speaks of them himself, he sounds almost incoherent, the way President Barak Obama sounds when talking of his greatest achievement, the Health Act. In all of Nigerian history, here is one President in whose care democracy is safe due to his temperament, his antecedents, and his records. Jonathan deserves a second term.
SUN
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