IN FAVOR OF PRESIDENT GOODLUCK JONATHAN

  President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan would no doubt go down in the modern history of Nigeria as the most unjustly treated Nigerian President whose real contribution in the political and administrative development of our nation would never be justly measurable.

  Let me state categorical clear that I am not a pro Jonathan and I still continue to believe till date that Nigeria since independence has not yet produced any real leader whose achievement could be rated above average or even close to the average line, considering the human and the natural potentials of our great country, Nigeria.  Let me also state that I personally do not believe in the sham constantly sold to us as democracy in Nigeria and do not believe in any of the constituted political parties today or before now, to me they are all the same group of self centered elites in power or desperately seeking power in order to enrich themselves at the expense of our dear nation and its teeming population.

  Haven said that, I must confess that one thing accidentally appears to be speaking in favor of President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan and that thing is no other than the fact that never in the history of Nigeria have we had the kind of security challenge that we have today, not even during the cruel civil war era of 1967 and 1970 because then it was a region fighting against Nigeria and the idea was clear on both sides and the level of violence employed was immeasurable, every Ibo man and woman and even children, were considered as potential enemies and their extermination was not seen as unfair or disproportionate by the Nigerian authorities, that was the same feeling too that the Igbos at the time nurtured about Nigeria and Nigerians. This is not intended to justify the barbarities committed on both sides of the divide during that condemnable war but to prove that today´s war on our nation lack a conventional battle field and a recognized enemy or enemies since it is accepted that unlike when the whole Igbo people were considered as enemies, today it cannot be said that every Northerner is an enemy neither can it be said that every Muslim is an enemy which makes it much more difficult to fight the menace of the Boko Haram except we want to identify the whole northern region as our enemy which will be very unjust and out rightly irrational even though we know that a lot of northerners are sympathizers of this sanguinary group and that some of them even within the government and the corridors of power are helping to complicate the management of the crisis.

  Even during the the Niger-Delta upheaval under rtd Gen Olusegun Obasanjo led civilian regime or the late Gen Sani Abacha led military government we cannot match the situation with what is prevalent under the government of President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan. Let us not forget that both, General Obasanjo and General Abacha were trained military officers who still had their loyalists in the army as at the time of the crisis and as a result could easily manage the crisis effectively through the efficient collaboration of their loyalists in the armed forces, which is not the same case with President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan who is the first civilian President in Nigeria to actually face the problem of full blown terrorism since the problem was only at a teething stage during the late President Yar A´dua government.

   Unlike the Boko Haram, the Niger-delta struggle had a clear cut and negotiable face to it, it also had a humanitarian undertone to its struggles, many oil infrastructures were bombed and sabotaged but there was really no massive and indiscriminate killings of Nigerians at least of the magnitude that we are seeing today with the Boko Haram, if we must be honest to ourselves, the Niger-Delta geo political zone was before the arms struggle the most unfairly treated region in the Nigerian federation, a nation cannot be getting close to 70% of its wealth from a region and allow the region to suffer such a blatant developmental imbalance as was done for decades with the Niger-Delta region. But in all the years that the Boko Haram have taken up arms against the federation, their activities have been void of any sanity and if the frequent declarations of their spokesperson, Abubakar Shekau is anything to go by, then it does not fit in nor create any atmosphere for any form of dialogue much less, amnesty.

  The pathetic thing is that those who are masked behind the Boko Haram, first ensured that they had initially destroyed the Nigerian armed forces and are still constantly weakening its strength through a politicization of the military and the strategic positioning of saboteurs within the rank and file of the Nigerian armed forces and within the intelligence services. The efficiency of a smaller Cameroonian force at their border in frequent armed face off with the Boko Haram is evidence to how so inefficient we have rendered our own world highly rated armed forces.

  President Gooluck Ebele Jonathan unfortunately is not a military man in a nation that was intermittently prepared during over four decades to be governed by the military, a nation that still has Buhari, Obasanjo, Babangida and Abacha´s loyalists in its army much more than it has President Jonathan´s loyalists and much more than it has patriots and nationalists. Take for instance when Gen Obasanjo was president, he could call on a handful of batallion commandants who are his boys and trust them to carry out a top secret operation on the enemy without a prior leakage of the plan, today under President Goodluck Jonathan we are seeing that it is practically impossible, the enemy is always a step ahead in intelligence collation and a much more devastating military reaction than our armed forces.  

  The only way that the incumbent president can tackle this menace efficiently is to pay more attention to the political wing of the Boko Haram than its military wing; the government should arrests sponsors, armed suppliers and ideologists of the group and begin to deal with them. The presidency should for once be honest with Nigerians and stop treating this very complicated and dangerous issue with vague attitude.