The President Still Doesn’t Get It

 SAM NDA-ISAIAH
The Monday Column - Last Word

Again, last week, President Goodluck Jonathan uttered words that have angered Nigerians and which clearly show that our president is living in a different world, all by himself. There are two sore points he raised. First is that the fuel subsidy protests of January were sponsored by opposition politicians. So what’s wrong with that? The second one is that the media have been too critical of his government. The president has lately been working extremely hard to get into a fight with the media. So far, members of the Fourth Estate have largely ignored him. But the way the president has been talking about the media and spoiling for a fight, his wishes would be granted much sooner than later. And when push comes to shove, I wonder how he intends to survive it, considering the serial scandals that have defined his government, most of which are not even in the public domain yet.

And one really wonders why the president is so surprised that the media should be criticising him. He wants them to clap for him after such a huge mess he has made of the country? He expects plaudits from the media after the unprecedented theft of N2.6 trillion under his watch? Under which of his predecessors has this kind of money been stolen in the name of fuel subsidy payments in one year? Somebody should tell the president that the media have, in fact, been too soft on him. If the Nigerian system were working properly like in other countries, the media would have been singing the music of his impeachment and removal from office by now. The most annoying thing is that the president is not even sorry for presiding over that level of thievery, which, even by Nigerian standards, is clearly beyond the pale.

No criminal or murderer has been tried and sentenced in Nigeria since Jonathan became president. Nothing has happened to the MEND murderers who killed several innocent people in Abuja on October 1, 2010, and nothing has happened to the several Boko Haram elements that have been arrested and ... heck, nothing has happened to the several armed robbers and kidnappers that have been apprehended since he became president. And the president does not expect to be criticised for such a laid-back and I-don’t-give-a-damn attitude to governance?

The president went to Malawi a few days ago and told the country to start exporting rice to Nigeria, and he expects the media to give him an award for that? Under President Jonathan, Nigeria started importing fuel from Niger Republic and he thinks people should be laughing with him?

Is there anything Jonathan has done right since he became president? Only recently, it was exposed that he pays bandits N7 billion annually to protect our oil facilities; and these bandits have done the job so well that the theft of Nigerian oil has never been this bad.

Regarding the sponsorship of the January fuel subsidy protests, the president is still talking after it has been exposed that N2.6 trillion was stolen in the name of fuel subsidy? Words fail me in this one. Is the president’s statement not an insult to Nigerians who have consistently been short-changed by his government? And if it was the opposition that organised the protests, so what? What was the opposition supposed to be doing? Watching him and his contractor cronies do as they like with the nation’s wellbeing and do nothing? This president doesn’t just get it and I don’t think he will ever benefit from good counsel. The truth is that he shouldn’t have been president in the first place.



EARSHOT
Grounding Arik Air

Arik Air has been offering a strategic service to Nigeria that no other airline has nearly been able to do. Without Arik Air, there would be many state capitals in Nigeria that would not be served with commercial air travel. Arik Air is the only airline that plies several routes that are considered unprofitable in the business. At the best of times, the commercial airline business is more of a service than a business, but Arik Air has even taken that service responsibility to a higher level. Only in Nigeria would such an airline be grounded for reasons other than safety.

In the course of its work, Arik Air has understandably accumulated a lot of debts. In a serious country, because of its place in the economy of the nation, Arik Air would have been qualified for a bailout. It is for that same reason that President Barack Obama bailed out the auto industry in the United States, an action that has made General Motors become the number one auto manufacturer again, after it was beaten briefly by Toyota of Japan during the US economic crisis. There are basic principles of running a government; no serious government grounds a company as strategic as Arik Air even if it is privately owned. But what do you expect from a government that appoints commodity traders as ministers?

Via Nasril el'Rufai