The continuous attack and display of ill-will by the Kano state governor towards President Goodluck Jonathan keeps me wondering what kind of a leader the now APC-Senator-elect is. Governor Kwakwanso has used every opportunity within the last four years to show deep-rooted prejudice and contempt for the President. After 16years of Kwankwaso being an active member of PDP, a two-term PDP governor, PDP-appointed minister and board member, how does it sound for him to say that Jonathan’s PDP has misruled Nigeria for the last sixteen years?
The governor’s Almajari singsong of late is distressing. According to him, he used Kano Almajiris to vote out Jonathan. The governor also accuses the President of polarizing the country, promoting Christian-Moslem and north-south dichotomy, and instigating tribalism. He is working hard to smear Jonathan’s administration with the sins of high handedness, cluelessness, corruption, and tyranny. Lately he has begun a tale about Jonathan not knowing where political power resides, and not carrying along the people that matter. Kwankwaso needs to pause and reflect on his motives for these attacks that he is making on the President.
I am convinced that history and records will speak for President Jonathan. The governor and other bashers of Jonathan should know that Mr President harbors no hate for anyone. Jonathan is an authentic man. The President did not embrace a robust Almajiri program in other to exploit their vulnerability for his ambition. He did not invest in upgrading existing educational institutions and building new ones for any parochial reason. He was putting in place the infrastructure to power the transformation that he had promised Nigerians. The President made it clear on many occasions that the goal of his Almajiri education program was to ensure that every child growing up anywhere in this country gets a decent upbringing. He has been quoted as saying “I see myself in any of those kids; and I pray that one of them will grow up to become a Governor, possibly a President of this country in my life time”. This is the man Jonathan, and we need to internalize this.
I consider the other bogus accusations made by Kwakwanso as self-defeatist contemplations. How could anyone cast the government of Jonathan as being incompetent, of promoting divisiveness and parochialism in the polity, or of sponsoring ethnic cleansing, Boko Haram, and terrorism? The federal government under Jonathan recorded giant strides in most sectors compared to any other government at other times. The president is down to earth, he allows his team space to work, and ensures inclusivity; this has reflected in the unprecedented gender balance in government in Nigeria. Unfortunately, it is the governors that constitute themselves into tin gods; and most of you reduced their states to shrinking shadows, and fiefdoms of the governors and their lackeys. Some of the governors went as far as actively dislocating non-indigenes, rather than expanding the opportunities for indigenes to thrive alongside other residents.
I urge the governor of Kano and any of the other PDP decampees that are accusing Jonathan of various offenses to look at themselves closely in the mirror. The barracuda they see therein are the real culprits, these men and women in government houses, in the national assembly, legislative houses, ministries, parastatals, and local government councils who sabotage, steal, and plot evil, rather than gather and build. One remembers how the same governor of Kano mobilized against late Mrs Uzoamaka Nwizu when she was appointed the Immigration boss by General Obasanjo; and how he incited Northern leaders to make a demand of President Jonathan that Dr Festus Odimegwu, the erstwhile Chairman of the National Population Commission NPC, be removed because he raised issues about the nation’s population conundrum. I do not want to be too harsh on my friend Governor Kwankwaso, but I sincerely want to make him and others to sit back and reflect.
Being human we are entitled to our feelings. However people of my generation, those between that ages of 50 to 65 years from North or South need to reexamine their consciences and evaluate how we faired when the leadership of this country was entrusted to Jonathan between 2009 and 2015. Did we embrace and support the change, or did we treat the individual saddled with the highest position in the land with contempt? Were we able to take note of the paradigm shift, adjust, and function under the new realities, or were we petrified by what we saw, stuck in the belief that the old way is the preferred way? Maybe managing the peer relationship with a peer now first among equals was the problem for Kwankwanso, and for all of the political gurus, technocrats, media practitioners, and academic and business elites?
Could the smear campaign on President Jonathan be borne out of resentment for how he went from being a classroom teacher to Deputy Governor, to become Governor, and then rapidly to President? Is it that those that were governors, Senators, Ministers, from 1999 through 2007 could not stand him becoming the number one citizen before they could get there themselves? Is there a grouse somewhere that ‘a nobody’ rose to become not just ‘a somebody’ but a Very Important Person? Are there some who are still unwilling to accept the reality that a guy from a minority Niger Delta region who does not fit their mould became the President of Nigeria? A true reality check will help the governor of Kano to exercise restraint in his negative attitude towards the President and his wife, and allow them finish the seamless transition which they have started and retire in peace.
Whatever shortcomings Jonathan may have as a person and president, the outcome of the 2015 election is not a victory for any member of my generation. It is rather an indication of our collective failure. Rather than work with Jonathan to improve the politics and address our nation building challenges, some of us opted to foment trouble, escalate primordial animosities, and enact high wired conspiracy to give Nigeria a recycled leader whose generation was in power from 1971 to 1985. How do we explain that each time a major opportunity to re-engineer our country has come up, we go back 20 or 30 years? When Abacha died and democracy was given another chance, we brought back Obasanjo, who left office as Commander in Chief in 1979, to assume same office in 1999, twenty years after. Now in 2015, we bring back a Commander in Chief who left office 30 years ago in 1985. May God help us.
This behavior of our people requires further and deeper inquiry. Our propensity to becloud the truth for personal or caucus benefit has done much harm to the nation’s integrity and needs to be tackled. This is why I request Governor Kwankwaso and all other voices of discord to shut up, as there is a lot of work to be done. You all must find a way to assist General Buhari to succeed in a modern world. The confusion, propaganda, sabotage, and divide-and-rule of the last four years has weakened our public institutions and security agencies and created deep gulfs across the land. People have no confidence in government; all three tiers and arms inclusive. The military, state security personnel and the police are also running on a trust deficit. The Buhari government cannot function in a vacuum. They will need the entire spectrum of all available systems working in consort to succeed. It is time for the “rofo rofo” politics to stop, and for healing and nation building to begin. God bless Nigeria.
Chief Ralphs Okey Nwosu; Ikolo Dike Orabueze Awka, National Chairman African Democratic Congress ADC
