Feb. 14, 2014
Responding to my reply on his post recently, a respected senior of mine Chief Joe Musa, the former D G of National Art Gallery, accused me of being unfair to President Jonathan because I challenged him and some of his supporters to enumerate the so called achievements of Mr. President.
I am at lost as to why any Nigerian should hate another Nigerian. Therefore I am not able to see the sense in accusing people who queries government’s incompetence of hatred against President Jonathan. Me, I love President Jonathan and I have nothing personal against him, but truth must be told if we really want to move forward as a nation.
Honestly it will be unkind of anybody to say that any one is working hard to discredit a president who lacks credibility in the first place. There are signs of corruption under Jonathan’s administration starting with 2.6trillion on fuel subsidy in a year that only 245 billion Naira was appropriated for same. There was N32 billion police pension scam, industrial scale theft of crude oil worth about $2 billion monthly and N53 billion NCC spectrum scale racket or the 24 million barrels of oil worth $1.6 billion stolen through signature forgery monthly according to minister Aganga. Not to talk of the bullet proof Stella Odauh?
GEJ’S administration is best of the best for spending a whooping N400 billion on amnesty programme sending Nigerian youths abroad to learn crafts and other skills without realizing that it would have made more sense establishing vocational centres in the Niger Delta. We are talking about 400 billion Naira. Do you have an idea how many vocational centres can be established that would have trained and continue to re-train people from Niger Delta and possibly from other parts of Nigeria from that kind of money?
Some also queried N1.7 trillion heist in the NNPC where the money was spent by the co-operation without appropriation, and 300 billion Naira late president Yar’adua kept for the Niger Delta before he went into comma from which he never came back?
What about the alarm recently raised by Mr President’s Coordinating Minister and Minister for Finance Dr. Ngozi Okonjo Iwoala in Davos Switzerland that the Nigerian economy was under threat because on GEJ’s watch, the excess crude oil account has been depleted from $8.55 billion to an alarming $2.5 billion within a year and so also has our foreign reserves depleted?
You can also read Sanusi’s expose in http://www.powerpointmagazine.com/exclusive-lamido…
And I ask: who is to be blamed for all these shameful acts under Jonathan’s administration? Should we exonerate him just because he is Igbo, Ijaw or Southerner?
Unfortunately those who are singing Mr. President’s praise are not able to point to what he has achieved in almost 5 years as a president. Yet they want us to blindly allow him to continue to waste our time on the account of him being a southerner. That is unfair!
I will rather we ask a Donald Duke, an Okorocha or a Fashola to contest if we must have a president of southern Nigeria origin and not a Jonathan please.
And to be sincere with Nigerians, let me state that President Jonathan do not need one thousand years to show what he can do. After all Fashola made things happen in two years into his administration’s first tenure. Aregbesola, Sullivan Chime, Akpabio, Amechi, Rochas and all of them that are performers in this era showed their qualities two years into their administration. It will be unfair to allow President Jonathan to continue to waste our time.
The danger of allowing President Jonathan to continue after 2015 is that we will have ten years of misadventures adding up to the wasted years of other PDP presidents before him. Having spent almost six years in power, there is no magic left with this administration other than to result to desperation and treasury looting. Unfortunately, Mr President does not see the correlation between corruption and poverty. Or he is pretending not to know? And that is an unfair treatment of Nigerians by someone who claims that he is working to liberate Nigeria from poverty.
Truth is that all these so called plans by President Jonathan is a deceit and a waste of our time. We are used to hearing beautiful plans from him and we are tired of them.
In the four years of his administration Nigerians have been fed with high sounding proposals and humongous master plans none of which have seen the light of the day. But unfortunately there are still many gullible Nigerians who still believe these lies and desperate antics of Mr. President and the PDP to remain in power.
For example, on the 2nd of March 2011 in Akure, Ondo State, President Jonathan promised that “the bitumen deposits in the state would be exploited for economic development and employment generation.” He promised to “provide funds for small and medium scale enterprises, mechanised farming and agro-based industries” and to “partner with relevant agencies to harness the agrarian nature of the State.” He also promised to “open up the flank of semi and mechanized farming in the State to engender a paradigm shift from subsistence farming to reliable modern agricultural practices.”
To quote Ayo Arannilewa, ‘’I so much doubt if any of the promises has been fulfilled so far, as none of the projects is even in the 2014 budget for the benefit of Ondo people’’.
Time will not permit me to tell you of how this administration played ostrich a few months ago by selling our national electricity companies at give away prices to Mr President’s friends, leaving Nigerian people at the mercy of crass capitalists who are unable to muster the investment required to improve energy. Since handing over to these so called investors, the situation has gone worst, yet Nigerians are paying bills because a government that claims to move them forward left them to be exploited.
Sentiment apart, with President Jonathan in the driver’s seat in the years ahead, we are not going to make the desired progress.
Great Imo Jonathan is the CEO of Sunset Streams Company and publisher of Power Point Magazine.
http://saharareporters.com/article/why-president-jonathan-not-fit-continue-2015-great-imo-jonathan
