Mr president please read your innaugural speech again

I doubt if President Jonathan ever bothered to read his
inaugural speech after May 29, 2011. Jonathan, like most
before him and Governors too, probably considers the
inaugural speech an academic exercise that should soon
be discarded with as soon as it is over.
I doubt, and I am willing to bet my salary on this, whether
some of them even keep a copy(ies) of their inaugural
speech afterwards.
I have read several inaugural speeches by Nigerian
governors and presidents (forgive the sickening way some
of the speeches were crafted) that overtime I have come
to believe strongly that is either they don’t bother to read
it once in a while afterwards or that the pressure and
responsibilities of the job become too complicated for
their brains. If not, how did we find ourselves in this
situation? Why would GEJ endlessly bungle the
presidency? We all know, as he said, that the problems of
Nigeria did not all start in his time, but we also know that
Osama Bin Laden was already a menace to the US before
the Obama presidency and yet Obama saw to his
crushing. But who am I kidding? Why should I compare
America with Nigeria? One’s leaders apparently lack sense
of duty, the leaders of the other do not. So what is the
basis for comparison? NONE!!!
Despite their no-longer-news incapabilities, should the
Nigerian leaders flip through their inaugural speeches
once in a while, maybe, just maybe things would have
been different? If President Jonathan does it, he would
have by now known that he has expressly failed Nigerians
and that at the rate he is going, he doesn’t seem to have
any clue as to how to proceed. The so-called progress his
government daily celebrates and vociferates about
through Labaran Maku is at best described as moving
round in circles, which is worse that retrogression
(backward movement), for in retrogression there seems to
be a destination, but sustained movement in circles will
certainly, someday, along the line, result in spinning which
could set us off-balance and make us collide with
unforeseen objects. I doubt if even we are not already in
that state. Was Boko Haram’s menace foreseen by our
leaders? Clearly, their responses to the sect and their
inability to stop it bear all the markings of being caught
off-guard, like a child who gets too engrossed in spinning,
forgetting that at the end of it (if he is not caught by
strong arms) a fall awaits him.
Today, I can boldly challenge President Jonathan to tell
me if he has any workable blue-print to turn Nigeria
around! I know he will begin to sell his transformational
agenda; we know about that one and it doesn’t seem to
be working. GEJ should come out boldly, without the
prodding of Ngozi Iweala or Abati’s no-longer-credible
words, to explain if he has any clue about how to steer
Nigeria towards progress or if he has the balls to see it
through. We know for a fact that he is not a general as he
says, but he cuts the figure of a man overwhelmed by
events around him. Also, his tendency to vacillate makes
him appear like a poor and incompetent leader. I
challenge him to prove to me that the decision of my
aged grand-father to vote for the once-shoeless Otuoke
boy would not be a historical mistake! As a Nigerian who
is well aware of his rights and the provisions of the
Freedom of Information Act, I challenge Jonathan to
explain to me if he really understands the complexities of
the various policies he is being spoon-fed with by people
like Okonjo Iweala!
Towards the end of last year, Labaran Maku, Diezani
Madueke, Okonjo Iweala, Sanusi Lamido (just to mention
a few) flooded our public life with reasons the fuel subsidy
has to give way. They told us it was for our own good.
Well, as it turned out, it was for their own good. Almost
N3 trillion, according to the House of Representatives
probe, was expended right under Jonathan’s nose as fuel
subsidy. Why then the lie that it was only N1.3 trillion?
While a waste management company and other money-
sucking companies were tasked with the importation of
PMS and were smiling to the banks, Nigerians like me
were groaning under this Jonathan policy (or is it Iweala’s
policy?) Yet, in paragraph 30 of his inaugural speech, GEJ
said: “Fellow citizens, in every decision, I shall always
place the common good before all else.” Was removal of
fuel subsidy, as we now see, for common good? How
does punishing the poor for the greed of the rich amount
to a common good?
He went on: “The bane of corruption shall be met by the
overwhelming force of our collective determination, to rid
our nation of this scourge. The fight against corruption is
a war in which we must all enlist, so that the limited
resources of this nation will be used for the growth of our
commonwealth.” Well, Mr President, most of the masses
have already enlisted in the war, but have you? Have
members of your cabinet enlisted in the war? With
Adoke’s initial dilly-dallying about the subsidy probe and
with your handing it over to the EFCC, it would seem you
also believe, like your Attorney-General, that it was all a
fact-finding mission.
Besides my aged maternal grand-father who voted for
you, there was a 103 year old man who participated in
the election and a certain Emmanuel Bamidele Orevba
(mentioned in your speech) who, though not a politician,
campaigned vigorously for you and later died from
celebrating your victory, a victory he probably thought
would bring succour to his children and children’s
children. But how would he feel in his grave now? Happy?
Disappointed? What about the corps members who
worked tirelessly during the election only for some of
them to lose their lives in the aftermath? We know the
surviving ones have been repaid with delayed payment of
their allowances. What about the dead ones? Shouldn’t
President Jonathan honour them with a sterling
performance so that they wouldn’t die in vain? Was the
death of the Nigerians who lost their lives during the fuel
subsidy protests for a common good? Were those
prevented from protesting at the Gani Fawehinmi
Freedom Park treated so for the Jonathan-implied
common good?
Going through Jonathan’s inaugural speech again, I could
not but conclude that he has nothing to celebrate in his
one year in office. Ignore all those on-the-paper
achievements being reeled out by his ministers; Nigerians
are not fooled! Except if those achievements happened
somewhere else or all Nigerians took a vacation and did
not know Jonathan has done so much for them. Electricity
is still bad! Potable water remains a dream! Insecurity is
sky-high! What is it that the Jonathan administration
would be celebrating? The scores killed by Boko Haram?
The disoriented, hungry and willing but unemployed
Nigerian youths? The pension scam or its twin, the
subsidy probe roguery? The un-motorable roads?
Oh! We know he didn’t cause all the problems, but he did
promise to fix them! It’s his job to fix them! “The time for
lamentation is over. This is the era of transformation.
This is the time for action… Let us all believe in a new
Nigeria. Let us work together to build a great country that
we will all be proud of. This is our hour. Fellow
Compatriots, lift your gaze towards the horizon. Look
ahead and you will see a great future that we can secure
with unity, hard work and collective sacrifice. Join me now
as we begin the journey of transforming Nigeria. I will
continue to fight, for your future, because I am one of
you. I will continue to fight, for improved medical care for
all our citizens. I will continue to fight for all citizens to
have access to first class education. I will continue to fight
for electricity to be available to all our citizens. I will
continue to fight for an efficient and affordable public
transport system for all our people. I will continue to fight
for jobs to be created through productive partnerships.
You have trusted me with your mandate,and I will never,
never let you down. I know your pain, because I have
been there. Look beyond the hardship you have
endured. See a new beginning;a new direction;a new
spirit. Nigerians, I want you to start to dream again.
What you see in your dreams, we can achieve together,”
so he declared in his inaugural speech, only that we don’t
see him fighting. Oh yes! We believe in a new Nigeria, but
Mr President has not given us much to believe in. Just
fickle promises! Those are wearing us off!!! And Nigerians
have risen from their dreams. Never again will they be
sent to the dreamland of lies and clueless leadership! We
believe in dreams, but not here, not now. And we believe
in God also, but Mr President should stop pushing
everything to God. If he fails, only him and him alone (not
God) would be blamed. God has brought him from
Otuoke village to Aso Rock in Abuja; it’s time for him to
impress God!
Rather than work to make Nigeria better, his supporters
keep disturbing us in a mosquito sound-like way with his
eligibility to contest in 2015 and this is already tearing the
country apart contrary to another of his promises in his
inaugural speech. He declared: “We will not allow anyone
exploit differences in creed or tongue, to set us one
against another.” Well, Mr President, your campaigners
and defenders (whether self-appointed or not) are already
tearing us apart and unnecessarily hitting up the polity, all
for an irrelevant ambition that may never see the light of
day.
Wake up, GEJ! Wake up, Mr President!!! Time waits not
for you. Soon your administration will become history.
What will history and Nigerians remember you for? Pick
up a copy of your inaugural speech and read it again! You
would discover that your government is not even
crawling; it is dragging its buttocks on the ground like a
crippled. Pick up your inaugural speech and get on the
right track!!!

Dimeji Daniels writes from Ado in Ekiti State.

#CONSENSUS 2015