In the last two years, a lot of water has passed under the country's political bridge, where Dr Goodluck Jonathan has been the leading participant. Abiodun Awolaja writes on how the president has fared within the period.AT first, an invisible vice president reportedly consigned to a newspaper reading role in the Presidential Villa, Dr Goodluck Jonathan was to assume a more visible status when former President Umaru Yar'Adua, with whom he had a joint mandate at the 2007 presidential election after an eight year tenure by current Republic's inaugural president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo (1999-2007), was flown abroad in mysterious circumstances on November 23, 2009 and taken to a Saudi Arabian hospital for the treatment of his kidney/heart problems. Unable to leave the nation without a leader, the National Assembly was to invoke the novel Doctrine of Necessity and make him acting President. Yar'Adua was flown back home on February 24, 2010 but died three months after, specifically on 5 May, 2010, paving the way for Jonathan to become substantive president, eventually being elected the first president from a minority background in the 2011 general election. In the last two years, the president has had his political fortunes shaped by a combination of factors, including his personality traits, loyalty to the late Yar'Adua, the power of incumbency, the all-conquering structures of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and geopolitical sentiment. Indeed, since May 2010, Jonathan has had an unstoppable progression in his political career.However, although he came into office as Nigeria's first elected minority president on May 29, 2011 in a groundswell of unprecedented goodwill, the tide appears to have turned very quickly for President Jonathan. Since the January 1, 2012 removal of petroleum subsidy by the Federal Government, a decision of the National Executive Council (NEC) for which he alone was subjected to ridicule, the president's image has taken a serious nosedive in spite of the postulations of his media handlers, while the opposition parties, particularly the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), have exploited his seeming diffidence and gentle mien to considerable political advantage, moralising on urgent national issues while failing to enthrone democratic conduct in the states which have come under their own grip. For its part, the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) remains strictly a northern contraption concerned only with questions of power. Thus, in analysing President Jonathan in the last two years, given the ongoing sustained Jonathan bashing on the internet, sponsored by the opposition for its own power designs and some non-aligned Nigerians who similarly feel pained on what they term his 'betrayal'' of the people and squander of political will, there are many Jonathans depending on which side of the power equation you belong.Of the many intrinsic challenges that President Jonathan has had to face, perhaps the most fundamental has been his personality. To many Nigerians, he has been a lame duck president without a mind of his own and unable to withstand pressure. It was against this backdrop that the ACN dubbed him 'a trainee president' last week, while, paradoxically, nearly all the newspaper editorials published during the week commended his decision to back down from the proposed re-denomination of the naira, particularly the sore point of introducing the N5,000 note in the face of an ongoing cashless policy. In Nigerian politics, leaders are revered when they take hard decisions and stand by them, not when they easily cave in to public opinion defined by elite posturing. It is in this regard that former President Olusegun Obasanjo is being silently revered by many who claim that he was a president who left no one in doubt of the fact that he was in charge of affairs.Almost at every given opportunity, riding roughshod on the president's pliable personality, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Honourable Aminu Tambuwal, whose rise to the speakership was facilitated by the betrayal of the Yoruba ethnic nationality against the choice of the president, has taken him (Jonathan) on, in the context of what is fast becoming the dictatorship of the legislature through vetoes, but has not got an appropriate response, unlike in the Obasanjo days when errant legislators could not ruffle the president's feathers. In the same vein, the House has toyed with an impeachment plot while a member of the Senate, Uche Chukwumerije, penultimate week, also promised to collect two-third signatures of his colleagues in the Upper Chamber to to co-sponsor a motion urging early implementation of the recommendations of the Senate Committee on Privatisation. While many would contend that Jonathan's major drawback has been his inability to solve the insecurity challenges facing the country, a deeper look at the underlying causes of the security situation would suggest otherwise. The Boko Haram-induced state of insecurity is one question, but the North-South politics is quite another'and more significant. Boko Haram attacked the Force Head-quarters in Abuja on June 16, 2011; the United Nations building in Abuja on August 26, 2011; St Theresa's Catholic Church in Madala, Niger State on December 25, 2011; and the office of ThisDay newspapers in Abuja and Kaduna on April 26, 2012, among other major attacks, claiming many lives and orchestrating massive destruction of property, but it is doubtful that the intensity of attacks would have been the same if a northerner had emerged president after Yar'Adua's death. It will be recalled that when former President Obasanjo assumed the Presidency in 1999, 20 years since a southerner (Obasanjo himself) ever occupied that seat, northern power hawks were to come up with the Sharia Law through which they attempted to heat up the polity.Yet there are many ways in which Jonathan has been a happy song for Nigeria. The Abuja metropolitan supersonic rail system; the newly awarded fast trail line project from Lagos to Ibadan worth $1.5 billion; the ongoing rehabilitation of the federal highways all over the country; ongoing re-equipment of federal hospitals; the achievements in space technology; the new initiatives in Almajiri education in the North; the partnership with India and Israel for the mechanisation project in the agricultural sector; the disappearance of December fuel queues and, more importantly, the reform in the electoral process, leading to the conduct of free and fair elections, are just a fragment of other laudable programmes of his administration.As noted by an analyst, the improved power supply is newsworthy, even by opposition standards. Similarly, the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) admitted recently that 240 new factories opened shop in the country within a year, thereby propping up investment in the manufacturing sector. President of MAN, Chief Kola Jamodu, said in Abuja at a stakeholders' conference on the review of common tariff for 2008 to 2012 that the projected turnover of these factories was N140 billion. He said some of its members had expanded their production base by as much as N100 billion, adding that close to 200,000 new employment was generated by December last year alone.On the international scene, never has the country's image had it so good. The president's initiatives have been commended by the President Barack Obama administration; former US Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice and former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who said 'Africa is a promising business destination, but Nigeria is a profitable business platform'. The Liberian president, Elen Johnson-Sirleaf, is also a big fan of the president, as are many of his colleagues on the international scene.But there is still much to be done. PresidentJonathan himself said, last Thursday, in Abuja that there had not been marked improvement in the welfare of Nigerians, despite the growth and development in the economy, because of what he described as absence of long term perspective, lack of continuity, consistency and commitment to agreed policies of government. However, if he can contain Boko Haram, ensure a functional rail system, build refineries, consolidate on the privatisation project in the power sector, implement the reform contained in the Petroleum Industrial Bill (PIB) and ensure significant improvement in the education sector and fight a decisive battle against fuel subsidy thieves, he would have implanted himself in the hearts of Nigerians. The president might start by working on his personality and revving up his propaganda machine.
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