The Real Enemies Of President Goodluck Jonathan — January 21, 2014 There is no doubt that as 2015 approaches, President Jonathan is probably increasingly having sleepless nights. Almost all chapters of the PDP are experiencing one form of crisis or another. Even his home region, the Niger Delta, is not spared, with the ongoing political tussle in Rivers State. On the other hand, the All Progressives Congress (APC) has now been registered and is poaching elected PDP members faster than a bush fire razes a forest and there is no telling what tricks they have up their sleeves to wrest power from the president and his political party. To counter these ‘forces’, the president is resurrecting all known and unknown political magicians, to help him win in 2015. As he remains pre-occupied with these seemingly obvious enemies, he is completely blind to his real enemies, the sycophants and public officers who will ultimately be his downfall, though he sees them as friends, partners and supporters. Mr. President, if you are interested in 2015, your real worry should be all those you appointed into office that have refused to perform their oath-sworn duties. These are the people through whom we ordinary Nigerians see and judge you. Nigerians may be cowed by poverty hunger and disease, but we are not blind or stupid. We know when we are being fed bulls..t and quite frankly, you and your officers have been feeding us with a whole load of it since you all got into office! To buttress my point, I will take the main reasons Nigerians’ lives are so hard and show how you and your officers have made enemies of themselves through how these issues are being handled. 1. Nigerians rightly believe that a major factor hindering development is corruption. Many argue that if corruption is reduced by a mere 20%, a significant improvement in people’s lives would be observed. Mr. President you and your cabinet are perceived to have responded by making sure that corruption has increased by 150%. Today, it is very difficult to see budgetary provisions resulting in any meaningful change in the lives of the people. To cap it all, you pardoned Chief Diepriye Alamesiegha, the former governor of Bayelsa State, who looted the state and jumped bail in the UK. The message you sent by this action is that you, Mr. President are corrupt and don’t care what the rest of us think. Our anger boils against you and we are greatly pained. 2. We further believe that the provision of basic amenities and addressing the sectors that are fundamental to human existence and development in the 21st century are critical to improving our lives. Your first response was to appoint the most unimaginative people to head these sectors and they in turn have responded by doing little or nothing. Nigerian roads are legendary for their deplorable condition. You know that and your response was to buy yourself and your principal officers private jets and helicopters. Every year, thousands die and are injured as a result of bad roads and yet precious little is done despite the billions budgeted every year. Do you think that those who lost family members in preventable road accidents are happy and will vote for you in 2015? 3. I may be wrong, but have up to 1,000 houses been built nationwide by your government in the face of the 16 million houses deficit reported in our country? 4. The greatest indictment of the healthcare system and biggest shame to Nigeria is that you and your officers refuse to subject yourselves to it. Even headaches are cured abroad! Need I say more? We make an exception for the Kogi State governor, who received emergency care, surgery and post- operative care in his home state, thereby beefing up the confidence of his citizens in his healthcare delivery system. 5. Mr President, you and your officers treat education as an afterthought instead of as central to your policy for economic growth and development. New schools are being built but nothing is being learnt, because there are no qualified teachers or requisite equipment. Students come out of universities as uneducated as they went in. You and your officers confirm this by putting your children in schools abroad, or international schools within the country. We also want good education for our children, but we don’t have the resources. So we take our children to the quack schools you have left us with, which milk us with high school fees and produce graduates unemployable in their chosen professions. We know there are enough resources to provide better! 6. It would be so nice to turn on the taps in our homes and have water gush out. It would be even nicer to be able to flush our toilets and reduce the stench and disease that waste brings, but you and your officers don’t think so. Instead of water for us, you give all sorts of luxuries to yourselves, leaving us to scour the earth for water. 7. After all the above hardships and obstacles, we manage to produce graduates and believe the time to rest has come; our children can now take care of us as we did our parents. But no, you and your officers won’t even allow that, because there are no jobs. So for indefinite years after they graduate, we still break our backs to feed our children, as we watch your children and those of your officers fly back from their choice foreign schools to take up the few jobs available. We see all this and we are pained by it. 8. As the sycophants around you may bar you from seeing all I have enumerated above, kindly take a cursory look at the deterioration of the Federal Capital Territory, your seat of power. The garbage piles are suffocating, water supply has become erratic, streetlights bring only darkness etc. Yet we learnt that the minister is your brother from another mother. Can you see how much he loves you with his great performance in retrogression? 9. When you visit the states, especially PDP controlled states, just go into a community and see for yourself how people are suffering. Sit in on a class and judge for yourself the quality of education. Enter the federal and state hospitals and health centres and see if you would be comfortable getting healthcare in them. You did not create these problems, we know, but this is no excuse. You presented yourself to run for office, because you told us you had solutions. So, Mr. President, if I don’t vote for you in 2015 and many Nigerians follow suit, it will be because you and the deadwood group you appointed into office have refused to provide basic amenities for Nigerians. A road here, a borehole there is all you need to provide in some cases to win the hearts of the people; but even this minimum is too much for you and your greedy cabinet members, who, after all’s said and done, are your real enemies! — Dr Catherine Okoye wrote in from Abuja
Posted on: Tue, 21 Jan 2014 05:56:53 +0000
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