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Why President Jonathan Can’t be Trusted
By
Chido Onumah
Newsdiaryonline Wed Sep 14, 2011
Those who categorise Nigeria as a failed state forget to add
that it is equally a full blown criminal enterprise. It is a
reality many people in the country contend with, but few are
willing to accept. For a country acutely deficient in everything
that makes a state functional, the communal violence, bomb
blasts, kidnappings, and general insecurity in the country, are
troubling in more ways than one. And we can only dismiss them at
our peril.
We now know, thanks in part to WikiLeaks, why the new
imperialism, headed by the United States of America, had
predicted that Nigeria could disintegrate by 2015. All things
considered, it is hard to fault this prognosis. But this article
is not about the sordid revelations by WikiLeaks on how Nigeria
has been misruled and the characters responsible. It is about
the moral leadership that is lacking under President Goodluck
Jonathan.
We have about four years to doomsday, presumably. While we wait,
perhaps it is helpful to address some fundamental concerns. If
we ignore those who were focused on ethnicity or religion, we
would still find enough people who a few months ago genuinely
believed that Goodluck Jonathan was the man for the job. They
were willing to back him even though he was running on the
platform of a political party that ought to be on trial for its
crimes against Nigerians. They implored us to make a distinction
between the man and the party.
A hundred days on into his second stint as president and almost
500 days after he first took up that job, it is clear, even for
the cheerleaders of the Jonathan presidency, that there is
nothing to cheer about. There is hardly anything to show that
President Jonathan appreciates the enormity of the country’s
problems or the urgency they require.
In May, during his inaugural speech, President Jonathan promised
us a transformation agenda. Considering what the country had
gone through and the divisiveness that trailed the April polls,
the expectation was that before long there would be concrete
effort to address the myriad of problems confronting the
country, including corruption, unemployment, poverty,
infrastructural deficits, and communal violence. Unfortunately,
the only transformation we have witnessed is more violence,
sorrow, tears, and blood.
If not for the cronyism that has become the directive principle
of state policy in Nigeria, there is no reason the Inspector
General of Police and the National Security Adviser should stay
a day longer on their jobs. But since he has refused to act, the
president should take full responsibility as commander-in-chief.
President Jonathan is a Christian and he must be familiar with
the saying that “He that is faithful in small things will also
be faithful in great things”. Nowhere is this saying more
applicable than in the country’s political leadership. Let’s
take the small issue of providing moral leadership. And here, I
urge readers to ignore what anybody has said about the president
or for that matter the claims about the president by WikiLeaks.
President Jonathan swore to uphold the Constitution of the
Federal Republic of Nigeria. He has also said repeatedly that
his administration will not spare any official whose integrity
is called to question.
Paragraph 3, Part I of the Third Schedule of the Constitution of
the Federal Republic of Nigeria provides that the Code of
Conduct Bureau shall have power to: (a) receive declarations by
public officers made under paragraph 12 of Part I of the Fifth
Schedule to this Constitution; (b) examine the declarations in
accordance with the requirements of the Code of Conduct or any
law; (c) retain custody of such declarations and make them
available for inspection by any citizen of Nigeria on such terms
and conditions as the National Assembly may prescribe.
Paragraph 11 of Part I of the
Fifth Schedule to the Constitution provides that: (1)
Subject to the provisions of this Constitution, every public
officer shall within three months after the coming into force of
this Code of Conduct or immediately after taking office and
thereafter -- (a) at the end of every four years; and (b) at the
end of his term of office, submit to the Code of Conduct Bureau
a written declaration of all his properties, assets, and
liabilities and those of his unmarried children under the age of
eighteen years.
In
July, the African Centre for Media & Information Literacy
(AFRICMIL) wrote to the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) pursuant to
the preceding constitutional provisions and Section 2 of the
Freedom of Information Act 2011, (assented to by President
Jonathan on May 28, 2011) which states that
“Notwithstanding anything contained in any other Act, Law or
Regulation, the
right of any person to access or request information, whether or
not contained in any written form, which is in the custody or
possession of any public official, agency or institution
howsoever described, is hereby established”.
The
request was for the CCB to make available the following:
the 2007 asset
declaration of President Goodluck Jonathan; the asset
declaration of the president after the end of tenure on May 28,
2011; and the current asset declaration of the president when he
assumed office on May 29, 2011.
AFRICMIL submitted the request to CCB not because it wanted to
embarrass the president or score “cheap political point”. It did
so in good faith because it believes what the country so
desperately needs now is courageous and moral leadership.
AFRICMIL thought that perhaps if the president had forgotten,
the constitution mandates him to declare his assets. Two months
later, there has not been any response from the CCB. The closest
to a response we have got was an interview on national
television granted by the chairman of the CCB, Mr. Sam Saba, who
told the nation that there was no law that mandates the
president to make public his asset declaration or the CCB to
make public the asset declaration of public officers.
Any wonder nothing works in Nigeria? How can we progress when
you have so-called public officers who prefer to interpret the
law in a restrictive sense or how it suits them rather than in
the interest of the country? Surprisingly, in the same
interview, Mr. Saba said Nigerians were hampering the work of
the CCB by not giving information to the commission. Talk about
speaking out of both sides of one’s mouth! Perhaps, Mr. Saba
forgot that four years ago, as vice president, President
Jonathan made public his asset declaration. Never mind it was
done after much pressure from civil society.
Granted that Mr. Saba does not acknowledge the moral obligation
of the president to publicly declare his assets, he can’t claim
ignorance of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) which compels
the CCB and other public institutions to make available records
at their disposal. In line with the provisions of the FOIA,
AFRICMIL plans to seek legal redress against the CCB, but in the
meantime we hope the president will do the right thing.
Mr. President, there is something called moral authority and it
is sorely needed in public service in Nigeria.
conumah@hotmail.com
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