He was the poster child of good luck. His parents named him Goodluck. Perhaps, a prophetic name; perhaps, a parental wish. No man has had such a run of good luck like Goodluck Ebele Jonathan.
From an obscure and unknown university lecturer his unusual luck propelled him all the way up to the top of our nation’s political leadership: deputy governor of Bayelsa State, governor of Bayelsa State, Vice-President, Federal Republic of Nigeria, Acting President, Federal Republic of Nigeria and President, Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Alas, when he needed his good luck most, it failed him. Goodluck Jonathan leaves office as president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria today a thoroughly messed up man; messed up by his hubris and messed up by his wife and aides. As you read this, it should be easy for you to picture him walking towards the sunset of loneliness, deserted by friends, mocked by detractors.
He expected a sustained ovation in his last week in office but it turned out to be his worst week in office. The nation was shut down and its economic and social activities paralysed. The week added a new feather to our nation’s cap as a nation of ironies, contradictions and indifferent leadership. An oil-producing nation forever battling with fuel supplies. And so, in the last week of the Jonathan administration, we are stranded in our homes for lack of fuel. Even in a nation inured to embarrassment, this still takes the cake. It must be part of the reason why General T.Y. Danjuma has urged Buhari to probe Jonathan’s “corrupt administration.
Despite the nation wide paralysis, neither Jonathan nor his powerful petroleum resources minister, Mrs. Deziani Madueke, as of this writing, bothered to tell us what is happening. Obviously, they do not give a damn. Here is the problem: Jonathan cannot extricate himself from charges of sabotaging the transition or hand over programme. He has turned something worth celebrating into ashes in our mouths. We deserve better.
Corruption is endemic in the petroleum ministry and the NNPC. Jonathan knew about it but he was more than reluctant to do anything it. Now it has brought him down in a manner that cements his place in our national history as a failed president. Our country is the butt of international jokes. No one expected Jonathan’s scrappy legacy to be a thoroughly demoralized nation in his last days in office but here we are: the man who lost his re-election bid and led his party into a thorough walloping at the polls goes home in a whimper, soaked in the cold rain of public opprobrium. He has my sympathy.
In the coming days and weeks and even months, the pundits would subject the Jonathan tenure to a rigorous examination, trawling for lessons in human management and political administration. It is no use disputing the fact that despite his offering the nation airy slogans such as fresh breath of air (2011) and transformation agenda (2015), the man enjoyed enormous public good will. So, why did he end up “a failed president” (The Economist) and “a lousy president,” (The New York Times)?
The answer is complex, complicated even. My take is that Jonathan was an indifferent leader. He did not understand power and, therefore, he had problems excising it other than in the primitive sense of who was the boss. Either he was misled or he misled himself into believing that as president, he could do anything, not necessarily because it was right but because he could. The consequences meant nothing to him.
This unhelpful belief fired his adrenalin in the last two or three weeks of his administration. We found him engaged in a flurry of activities that resulted in administrative actions and decisions that were thoroughly unwise. He was motivated by his understanding of his enormous presidential powers. He could exercise them to the last minute. If anybody’s ox was gored in the process, well, poor luck to the ox and its owner. He was trying to court popularity but went about it in a way that suggested his ultimate objective was to commit the new Buhari administration to retaining his unwise and unhelpful decisions at its own peril. An unfriendly act.
Jonathan believes in planting universities in all corners and crannies of the country. His belief has no positive or objective end. His 12 federal universities were not the products of strategic educational thinking. He used them for his popularity contest with himself. He was unable to fund them. He knew it would come to that any way because his administration could not properly fund the existing federal universities. No government makes its burden light by adding more weight to it.
His decision to play politics with our education must go down as one of his failings as a leader. He appointed councils for those universities towards his last days to tell the new administration that their existence was a fait accompli. Thanks for nothing. Administrative decisions are not cast in stone.
Jonathan piled it on. Less than two weeks to the end of his tenure, Jonathan approved the setting up of two specialized universities and upgraded four advanced teachers training colleges to universities. He approved every application for private universities submitted to the executive council of the federation. Does anyone know the actual number of universities, public, private and religious we have in the country today? Has this large number of universities, the highest in Africa, stopped the steady decline in our standard of education? It all boggles the mind. Well, not Jonathan’s mind, obviously.
Buhari faced a similar situation in 1984. The Shagari administration had set up some new universities more for political reasons. The general felt that more universities would not remedy the crisis in our educational system. He down graded those universities and made them campuses of existing universities to cut administrative and other costs and free needed funds to tackle the real problems of our education at the roots.
Encouraged by this and believing that Jonathan’s decisions are a drag on good governance, I give the new president my special gift of a box of red biros. With them, he should walk the red biro through the new universities, the 31 billion Naira contract, the relocation of the N500 million oil and gas treatment project from Lagos to his home state of Bayelsa, the five billion Naira contract for the supply of smokeless cooking stoves for rural women (where?) and all the last minute grandstanding decisions calculated to tie the hands of the Buhari administration.
Let me borrow this from The Economist magazine and say, good bye, Jonathan.