September 10, 2014.
By: Jonah Obajeun
Freaking enraged! This is not the time to exchange pleasantries with me. This is not the time to engage me in any frivolous gist like Oyhakilome’s marriage funeral. This is the time to look straight into my eyes and tell me that I’m mad! Yes, I am off the rail. The gallivanting shoeless followers have rubbished our collective docility again. If you ever had the thought that Jonathan would win an election in Nigeria again, then you must be suffering from an undiscovered infection. If you are reading this and you are nursing the thought, you should be immersed in your own fury, stop reading this!
You ask, take a look at the theme picture of this post. Can you see presidential insensitivity in full wings? Can you see the mockery of the girls’ abduction in an unequal measure? Can you see leadership definition in inverted themes? Can you see the colour of pains of the girls’ parents? Can you see leadership unwillingness defined in a hash-tag? Can you see the diminution of our collective agony? Can you see the molestation of our aggregated tears? Can you see the manifestation of zero core value? Can you see the veneration of rapists of voices, rapists of gods?
If you are still normal after looking, take a bow and respectfully call yourself names. You need a re-christening. Something f**cking needs to be added to your middle name and you can go and die. Unlike Oshiomhole, I won’t be back here with any apology.
That the security of the country had been traded for politics is no longer a gist. What we have only been debating is the sustained branding of the clueless idea that Boko Haram is the creation of anti-Jonathan elements, a viewpoint advocated by louts in the Niger Delta and bizarrely sanctioned by some elements in the West. In the process, the North had been divisively demonized as a wholesale titleholder of Boko Haram, which has acquired terrifying streak. It apparently suits the Goodluck Jonathan presidency that that repugnant opinion is reverenced by precarious and malevolent reiteration. This was perhaps why the abduction of more than 200 schoolgirls from a secondary school in Chibok, was politicised not by the opposition, but by the Jonathan government, which first waved off the abductions, and has approached the matter since then with undisguised, shameless and enervating impotence.
Boko Haram had declared its caliphate and the sect seems set to build its territorial affront in the face of shambolic and feeble military response with disgraceful military desertion, the worst disgrace Nigeria has ever faced in its 54-year chequered history. On their own, however, military officers, presuming Nigerians to be incoherent, have described the embarrassment dubiously as either tactical manoeuvre or tactical retreat. Nothing makes the danger of destabilisation and fragmentation more pressing for Nigeria than the continuing threat posed by the Boko Haram Islamist sect.
The ignominy of the past few months has been unprecedented. Instead of situating the Boko Haram war within the global context of the war being waged by borderless or asymmetric warriors, such as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the Jonathanians are busy frolicking gods, playing the blame game, defending military corruption and clouding security challenges in kill-joy signatories gathering for his re-election campaigns, ungodly defined in the pictured hash-tag. What is at play here is not the contest of ideas and philosophies of government, nor the push and pull between liberalism and theocracy, nor arguments as to how the almost total alienation in the polity can be addressed, what is at play rather, is leadership unwillingness to accept responsibility and define pathways to Eldorado.
It is very urgent that the country must be anchored on profound values and principles, among which are constitutional rule shorn of any abridgement or perversion, justice in all ramifications, and the fostering of unity around those great values. Nigerian rulers have for a long time been complicit in the destruction of these values and principles, and consequently there is no lodestar around which to build a country every Nigerian would be proud of. For want of hope, it is super important now than ever for the president to appreciate the harm the absence of a national spirit or national identity is causing Nigeria. Unfortunately, the reality is, Jonathan doesn’t have this talent. We might be in this doom beyond this time.
Jonah Ayodele Obajeun is a professional. He blogs @www.obajeun.com. He can be reached on twitter via @Obajeun
