Why Goodluck Jonathan Does Not Deserve to be Nigeria’s President in 2015

madameaproko.com

Any time you talk about the many short comings of the President, his supporters bring up the most ridiculous reasons why the President does not know how to do his job. A fellow Nigerian shared this and I completely agree with him. Goodluck Jonathan does not deserve a re-election because of the following reasons.

Corruption: The corruption oozing out of this administration makes comparing it with IBB’s corruption like comparing a petty thief to a highway armed robber. Years after so many probes, no one has gone to jail despite trillions of Naira stolen under subsidy scam, rather we have more billions of dollars unaccounted for by NNPC. What about Malabu Scam, or the Pension Scam? And till date no one was punished for the armored cars scam in aviation sector. Despite billions of Naira contracts awarded to GEJ kinsmen for oil security, oil theft increased like never before. Mr Jonathan will rather give presidential pardon to his convicted corrupt godfather, and I read the man is now aiming at becoming a Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Take our foreign missions for example, in Malaysia, you’d have to pay almost triple the price to renew your international passport. 60 USD to the federal government via the Nigeria immigration and 77 USD to the private bank account of the embassy. I hear the story is the same in other parts of the world. NYSC coordinators deducting from the monthly stipends meant for youths serving their father land. You see, that fear of the consequence of being corrupt has evaporated with this regime, the looting and extortion is out of hand, it’s not being exaggerated.

Unemployment: This administration has done nothing much to solve the unemployment problem of this country. Rather than solve it, all we hear are trumped up statistics from his Ministers. 20 million jobs today and 10 million jobs tomorrow, the ministers and their aides have went further with scamming thousands of unemployed applicants of the little money they have, and organized an aptitude test that led to the death of many. Yet, Jonathan has not punished or prosecuted anyone for this.

Insecurity: Many can argue that Boko Haram did not start with Jonathan, but the question is what has Jonathan done to solve the problem besides talking about it and telling us ‘Terrorism happens everywhere’? I do not care who the people behind Boko Haram are, I expect the man that commands the Army, Air Force, SSS and Police to find them and deal with them. That man is Jonathan.

Adams Oshiomole while talking about smuggling as a trade unionist said, “if it is big, then it is visible, if it is visible then it should be easy to arrest many, if they have not arrested many, then they can be accused of conniving”. Same applys to Boko Haram; a group that patrols with many trucks, large armoury, a place to keep hundreds of captors is not a small group hiding in a small cave, but a big and visible group that spends millions of money daily to keep it running. So we should ask, how come there has not been enough intelligence to identify their base, get many of their sponsors arrested and deal with them? Is there is a ‘connivance’ somewhere? Only Jonathan can tell.

Legacy: Despite Obj’s many ills, he has a legacy of ‘de-politicing’ the military, providing GSM, and paying off our external debt. And Yar adua, despite his sickness and little time in power has the legacy of Rule of Law and Solving the ND militants’ problem. What is the legacy of Jonathan going to 6 years as President of Nigeria that should make him get an extra 4 years on the Job?

We cannot be foolishly doing the same thing over and over (re-electing Jonathan) and expect a different result. It's time to try another hand on the job. Jonathan and his supporters can not continue to pass the buck to others for his lack of performance. If he doesn't know how to get the job done, he has no business renaming in office.