A nation beyond paper-growth economy

AS IT IS/Opinion

by Soji Omotunde/THE NATION

President Jonathan

Let me repeat a statement I have made severally in this column: not all Nigerians are fools. Many are not also strangers in the land who are ignorant of the situation they are today compared to what their condition used to be. So, to be telling lies as intrigue to deceive the people is shortage of wisdom as the truth must surely emerge at the right stage.

Opposition parties might be working to pull a president in power down. That is not strange to politics across the world – even in advanced democracies. After all, United States President Barack Obama’s emergence for second term was through a sweating struggle against the Republicans. It was evident that it is hardly easy to retain power under democratic dispensation when all politicians desire to attain power to accomplish their missions. Otherwise, they will end up as failures no matter their visions.

Today, our President Goodluck Jonathan is not having a restful mid-term tenure essentially because of his focus to retain power rather than satisfying the peoples’ will. He might not have declared his political desire publicly, but only the blind in the spirit would not see his desperation and diversion of focus to 2015. The Nigerian Governors’ Forum debacle and the consequences of the loss of his candidate in the election among the governors are evident of the heart of the presidency.

My conclusion is that the president is in political dilemma today basically because of his advisers and aides pinning him down to failure. They are not helping him with all their reckless and senseless responses to critical national issues. Last week, for example, Senior Special Assistant on Public Affairs to the President, Dr. Doyin Okupe, was more abusive in his response to Asiwaju Bola Tinubu’s comment about leadership and good governance.

Okupe became erratic that the opposition national leader claimed that Jonathan administration was drawing the country backward. Instead of facing the raised issues, he kept boasting that the current leadership had done more than any other in the country’s 52 years of nationhood. He only admitted that no administration has been abused like the Jonathan administration, except that he lied that the administration was being lied against than any other. Like his fellow aides to the president, abuses might just have further been degrading his boss that defending what in reality are not working in his favour.

If things are not working, viable solutions should be acknowledged from all slants to makes them work. It goes beyond merely defending the indefensible. I remember the president once told chieftains of his party that democracy would have collapsed in the country without their party. He said the intention of the opposition was to sink the PDP by imaging it as a horrific party. He accused the opposition of adopting ‘philosophy’ of “when you say the wrong thing one thousand times, it becomes the right thing.”

In shielding his failed party which has been ruling for 14 years without making positive impact on the nation, he said that though PDP controls the Federal Government, it operates a system that allows the opposition to fly higher than the ruling party. His words: “They abuse us more, but we allow it. And it is the PDP that is handling the affairs of the country; that is stabilising the democracy in the country.”

Castigating the opposition parties for being critical is nonsensical. Nobody is talking about party but achievement. To many, the present administration has been non-performing. The mid-term report was more of paper work painting than visible realities. There is suffering in the land; insecurity everywhere. Poor people are getting poorer. Yet, corruption keeps draining without discernible reversal of criminalities.

It has been that Mr. President keeps shooting himself in the foot with the temperament of his advisers and aides who would not let him know ongoing realities in the country. They keep lying in order to impress him. Impressing the people should be with fulfillment of promises. Many voted Jonathan as a person and not necessarily to a ‘people deceiving people’ party. But it is untoward that his priority has been to perpetuate PDP’s grip on power in the nation. What the people want are results and not slackness, casualness or paper works by ministers stating economic growth that are not having impact on the life of the masses.

If ongoing disruptions and distractions in PDP are sustained by those in power, there is the tendency of eventual collapse of the country. What will manifest by earnest criticisms is the fact that without PDP the way it now operates, democracy will not only survive but strive in Nigeria.

Paper-growth economy being promoted by ministers is of no value to the people as long as they remain in poverty. Many Nigerians have nothing to hold on to today because they feel there is no future for them and their children. There is nothing people will accept as meaningful governance when they can hardly be inspired by good and effective leadership surrounded by honest patriotic advisers.