WHEN A NATION IS IN CRISIS - by Dr. Kabir Mato.

A lot of Nigerians are in pains. This fact is
incontrivatible. The reason for their pains and anger are well known and it’s on them they know very well.
During the week, I sat with a friend who received a guest supposedly formally highly placed in the political arena. The guest was so broke that he claimed he neither had fuel in his car nor the money to buy the little that could take him home.
In anger and frustration, he told my friend that, despite all he did to bring the government in place, this is the cross he is carrying: poverty and want.
Whatever his feelings were, I wasn’t sympathetic to that man because most probably, given another chance to elect a president, he may go the way he
went in 2011 regardless of the fact that he is unable to pay the fees of his children and finds it difficult most of the times to make ends meet.
That’s just one person, there are several millions of citizens who even maimed and killed just to get Goodluck Jonathan elected in 2011 just because he is either a minority as he claims or from the South or a Christian and today are living in terrible conditions either like us or worst than some of us
who argued that the man lacked the capacity to pilot the affairs of the troubled nation called Nigeria.
Our assessment was frank and honest. Under normal circumstances, I would want people of President Jonathan’s make to be elected as leaders because it will appear that even without coming close to him, the man seems harmless, but as we keep on saying it takes more than simplicity to provide effective political leadership and definitely that is lacking in our Nigeria of today.
It will not be a matter of over-flogging the issue but we must continue to make the point clear that the election of President Jonathan in 2011 was a disaster to the nation if that is placed against the
backdrops of the obvious failures and misfortunes that Nigeria and Nigerians are subjected to. It is fact of life that virtually nothing works in the country today. The economy is in shambles while the few egg heads continue to deceive themselves
and the polity with false figures and statistics that things are going on well. Every day they speak to us they tell us that billions of dollars have been injected from outside as foreign investment, but nobody ever cares to finger at any such investment.
We have not seen unemployment addressed while the shouts of job creation persist from people in government. Voodoo economics you may call it as there is no relationship between claims by people in authority with realities of the objective condition of life of the people.
Politically, this government seems most vindictive.
We thought General Obasanjo was intolerant. Little did we know that a government was on its way that would break the record of impunity. How would a sensible government deploy a police superintendent
to obstruct a lawful assembly of state governors who incidentally enjoy the same constitutional immunity with the president?
On Sunday, five state governors were meeting at the Kano Governor’s Lodge in Asokoro and one CSP walked in and asked them to call off the meeting
otherwise he was going to deploy troops to arrest them because, according to him, he had such instructions from the Presidential Vila.
What an impunity! It has never been this bad and may God make this the last time Nigerians would be subjected to this apex of uncivilization from a government that claims its legitimacy from the people. This has gone down as one major trace of the calamity to come should this government read and understand the meaning of the political arithmetic that await them in 2015.
Some people are of the view that President
Jonathan has succeeded in washing away the powers of state governors off his party the PDP by bringing Bamanga Tukur, who many of us see as God’s gift to the Nigerian people and the undertaker
who certainly is taking the PDP to its grave soon after 2015.
In political reality, Bamanga is a blunder that is serving the polity right. With the sharp rift in the PDP where at least 7 Governors out of the mainstream – and we are made to understand many more of them are on their way out – the 2015 elections will not be as bloody as many Nigerians seem to be apprehending. In my view it is going to be a walkover since neither President Jonathan, nor Bamanga nor anybody for that matter, would come to Kaduna and rig my vote.
In political sense therefore, the nation is in pains due to the weak and poor brinkmanship of the party in power and those it brought to power at the center. Politics has been reduced to lower level than
it was played during the government of Obasanjo.
Nigerians are suggesting that this serves the
purposes of General Obasanjo when he chose to, after losing his bid for a third term, to bring a president without a kidney and a vice without a liver.
Socially speaking, Nigeria faces the worst of
insecurity in its one hundred year history. Some say it is deliberate other say it is political. Whatever it may be, its record breaking instability and I wonder how those in authority are making do with this
reality. Do they go to sleep with their two eyes closed when people are killed by the minute? Are they enjoying the bounties of office in the face of this gargantuan humanitarian crisis the nation is facing?
Whatever the case may be, Nigeria is in crisis and the situation seem unabated due very poor political capacity on the part of leadership at the center. We are compelled to hold the president responsible for all our woes. That is the natural thing to do.
When he contested elections, he told us that he was going to change our lives for the better. Now that he is there, our lives are worst off. Who then do we
hold responsible? It is him and those who advise and work for him.
Certainly Nigeria is in deeper crisis than President Jonathan met it and likely he will leave it at this stage so that other Nigerians may work post 2015 to make it better.
God bless Nigeria and Nigerians.