Goodluck Jonathan was an exceptional president
Goodluck Jonathan was an exceptional president
I WALKED into the east wing of The Palms shopping mall in Lekki, Lagos
(popularly referred to as Shoprite); only to be buttoned-holed by a man
trying to sell me a Honda Civic parked inside the hall. His sales pitch
was that it was the first totally assembled Honda in Nigeria; built
completely to Nigerian specifications. For example, unlike the classical
Honda, the Nigeria model has a high clearance, being mindful of the
potholes in Nigerian roads.
President
Goodluck Jonathan speaks during his visit to the Nigerian Stock
Exchange (NSE) in Lagos, on March 12, 2015. President Jonathan visited
the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) on March 12, and launched a new online
mobile platform, X-Gen, designed to increase local investment. The
platform is targetted at increasing the number of local investors in the
country and to enable about 30 millions domestic investors have access
to the market.
I had no intention of buying a new car, least of all a Honda Accord.
Nevertheless, I could not fail to recognise that what he was touting is
one of the many achievements of the Jonathan administration. In spite
of the Buhari administration’s daily vilification of Jonathan, the
achievements of his government continue to speak for themselves.
Jonathan put in place a policy that provided zero import-duty for
completely knocked down vehicles; while discouraging the importation of
already assembled cars; old or brand new, by the imposition of heavy
import-duties. This propelled car manufacturers to set up
assembly-plants in Nigeria that provide jobs for craftsmen, technicians,
technologists, engineers, and other professionals across the value
chain. The government also made it a policy to patronize locally-made
and assembled cars.
The outcome is that local car-assembly is back in Nigeria; literally
risen from the dead. Big auto giants, including Peugeot, Nissan,
Volkswagen, Kia, Hyundai and apparently Honda, now either assemble, or
entirely manufacture, their cars, SUVs, trucks and buses at various
locations in Nigeria. In addition, Nigeria now has an indigenous
car-manufacturing company, Innoson, which is not only selling locally
but already dabbling in exports.
Limits of denigration
These days, the most discernible policy of the new APC government is
to attack everything Jonathan. However, propaganda can only mask the
truth in the short-term. It cannot destroy the truth in the medium to
long-term. No matter what APC traducers say, the fact remains that
Goodluck Jonathan was an exceptional president by Nigerian standards.
Now is the time to re-affirm this and to invite a more dispassionate
reappraisal of the facts, away from the lies and fabrications of the
election campaign. It can no longer be argued today that anyone
defending Jonathan is a PDP contractor; a favourite line of defence of
Buharimaniacs. Neither can Jonathan defenders be accused any longer of
wanting to replace Reuben Abati as the president’s spokesman. “You can
do nothing against the truth but for the truth.” No matter what the APC
continues to broadcast about the Jonathan administration, the truth
cannot be silenced.
Fashola’s gaffe: After six months of stasis, Buhari
finally unfurled his ministers in the most anti-climatic fashion. These
long-awaited saints and angels turned out to be mostly Santa Claus.
Babatunde Fashola, former governor of Lagos State, is now the
minister of Power, Works and Housing. At his maiden news conference,
tagged grandiloquently: “Setting the Agenda for Delivering Change,” the
same Fashola who spent the election campaign running down the Jonathan
administration shocked his audience by revealing that, rather than
embark on new road construction projects in 2016, he would only
endeavour to build on Jonathan’s achievements.
Wittingly or unwittingly, Fashola gave the lie to APC propaganda that
Jonathan’s years were wasted years? If Jonathan was as incompetent as
the APC would have us believe, why could the party not launch its own
superior nationwide road-building plan, as Buhari had promised in the
heady days of the 2015 election campaign? Why rely on allegedly
sub-standard PDP foundations?
Similarly, rather than jettison Jonathan’s power-sector reforms that
APC derided volubly during the campaign, Fashola revealed that the
government will be continuing with them. Jonathan completed 10
power-plants in Nigeria within three years; the first and highest of
such record by any Nigerian president living or dead. The APC had
accused Jonathan of awarding the power projects to PDP cronies and
financiers who are incompetent and deficient. But rather than revoke
those contracts, Fashola preached continuity. He also admitted that
Jonathan‘s transformation in the power sector is above 50%, and that his
job would be to build on this achievement.
Jonathan’s transformation agenda
Transport Minister, Rotimi Amaechi, also had the same assessment of
Jonathan’s achievements with regard to rail transportation. He pledged
to complete all ongoing rail-restoration projects around the country
started by Jonathan; as well as extend them to all parts of the country.
Jonathan inaugurated the Lagos-Kano rail line and the Port
Harcourt-Enugu mass transit train. He also embarked on the
rehabilitation of the Port Harcourt-Maiduguri rail line. Furthermore,
Jonathan’s projects include the Abuja-Kaduna fast train line; the 322km
Lagos-Benin City line, 500km Benin-Abakiliki line, 673km Benin-Obudu
Cattle Ranch line, 615km Lagos-Abuja high speed line, 520km
Zaria-Birnin- Koni line, 533km Ega nyi-Otukpo and the Ega nyi-Abuja
line.
Thanks to Jonathan, five million Nigerians are now carried by rail,
relative to the one million before he came. An estimated 700,000
passengers are projected to ride the Abuja Light Rail (ALR) on a daily
basis. Only recently, KPMG listed Nigeria’s high speed rail project
proposed by the Jonathan administration as one of the global top 100
world-class infrastructures. The rail is expected to connect Lagos,
Kano, Kaduna, Warri, Bauchi, Abuja and Port Harcourt; at a cost of $13
billion.
For his part, Audu Ogbeh, the new Minister of Agriculture and Rural
Development, did not even pretend to have an alternative to Jonathan’s
Transformation Agenda. Speaking at the launching of the Anchor
Borrowers Programme in Birnin Kebbi, Kebbi State, Ogbe commended
Jonathan’s achievements in agriculture, while also praising his
ministerial predecessor for the innovations he introduced.
Thanks to Jonathan, agriculture now accounts for 22 per cent of
Nigeria’s GDP, more than oil and gas which only account for 15.9 per
cent. Under Jonathan, Nigeria recorded a more than 50 per cent
reduction in food imports; from an import bill of N1.4 trillion to less
than N700 billion. With the innovation of dry season rice-farming,
Nigeria reached 60% self-sufficiency in rice production and became,
according to the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United
Nations (FAO), the largest producer of cassava in the world.
Anti-corruption hypocrisy
Rather than hit the ground running, the in-coming Buhari
administration has spent the last six months on a campaign against
Jonathan and his men, as if it is still shopping for Nigerian votes.
This campaign has become a substitute for policy, leading to the
conclusion that the APC never really expected to win the election and
therefore does not know what to do now it has been declared the winner.
What the party did during the election campaign was present
pie-in-the-sky policies that were never intended to be implemented but
were primarily designed to harvest votes.
This accounts for the government’s current embarrassment with its own
party manifesto and the denial of its campaign promises. It has even
led to APC legislators being constrained to vote against their own
policy; the payment of N5000 monthly to the 25 million poorest
Nigerians. In six months, the much-touted change of the APC has turned
out to be counterfeit. What we have instead is a constant barrage of
media trials pertaining to the alleged corruption of the Jonathan
administration.
This anti-corruption crusade is clearly not addressed at curtailing
corruption. Its primary objective is to kill and bury the PDP. Not
even the most ardent supporters of Jonathan would insist that there was
not rampant corruption under the PDP. What is unacceptable is the
present government’s pretence that corruption in Nigeria is restricted
to the PDP when, as a matter of fact, the APC is just as corrupt, if not
even more because of its blatant hypocrisy.
The government’s anti-corruption crusade is already without
legitimacy because it is unashamedly partial and selective. Allegations
made against APC office-holders are procedurally ignored by the
government’s anti-corruption watchdogs. Some of the APC chieftains
accused of corruption have even been rewarded with major ministerial
portfolios. Others have been nominated as APC candidates in
governorship elections.
PDP members are labelled corrupt until they declare for the APC; then
they automatically become saints. We are meant to believe that while
the PDP used government funds to buy favours and votes during the
election campaign, APC managed to spend massively to dislodge the PDP
from power without doing the same. The truth of the matter is that
corruption is not the exclusive preserve of any party or persons.
Corruption is endemic to the Nigerian political system.
Selective maligning of the members of the former government will not
rid Nigeria of corruption. Neither will allegations of corruption
hurriedly put together for the sake of public consumption, which are
then thrown out by the courts. Corruption has to be addressed
systemically and structurally. But to date, there is little evidence
that the government’s anti-corruption intentions go beyond the
witch-hunting of the Jonathan administration.
Jonathan’s legacies
To the extent that the present administration can be said to have any
policies after six months in office, they are all legacies of the
Jonathan administration. The TSA is from Jonathan. The turn-around
maintenance of our refineries is from Jonathan. The re-equipping of our
military is from Jonathan. The improvement in electricity is a
Jonathan legacy. On the other hand, the major policies enunciated in
the APC election manifesto remain essentially pipe-dreams.
In spite of APC propaganda, Jonathan’s men keep matching on. Dr.
Akinwunmi Adesina, Jonathan’s Minister of Agriculture and Rural
Development is now President of the Africa Development Bank (AfDB).
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Jonathan’s Minister of Finance, and Coordinating
Minister of the Economy, is now a Senior Adviser at Lazzard; a
prestigious 167 year-old global investment firm. Arunma Otteh,
Jonathan’s Director-General of the Securities and Exchange Commission
(SEC), is now a Vice-President of the World Bank.
To paraphrase Marc Antony of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: “The evil
that men do lives after them; the good is oft interrèd with their bones.
So let it be with Jonathan. The noble APC hath told you Jonathan was
clueless. If it were so, it was a grievous fault, and grievously hath
Jonathan answered it.”
