At last, he's awake!

by Eze Eluchie

A close scrutiny of the powers vested in the President of Nigeria will reveal that the occupant of that office is by a wide margin, the most powerful ‘elected’ political office holder on earth. Barack Obama, Putin, Cameron and other elected political leaders can only dream of the powers Nigerian laws vests in the Nigerian President – short of an ability to declare a man as a woman and vice versa, there is scarcely anything that the Nigerian President is unable to do (within Nigeria) once he sets his mind to it.

Such powers, in the hands of a morally bankrupt personality can be turned into a tool for victimization, retrogression and monumental fraud and evil – as experienced during Nigeria’s ‘reign of evil’ (May 29^th 1999 – May 28^th 2007). On the converse side, if the same powers are handled by a person with his country at heart, the positive results could be beyond all known indices for measuring national development.

This reality had formed the basis of the consternation with which Goodluck Jonathan had been perceived by Nigerians. Here was a man, who at the onset, portrayed an intellectual mien and candor indicative of an ability to effect change and right wrongs, and when eventually saddled with the authority to perform, suddenly develops cold feet and seems overwhelmed by the enormity of the situation confronting him.

In the 2 years since his election into office, the Jonathan administration seemed eager to define itself by its ability to withdraw into a cocoon in the face of belligerent and sustained attacks from terrorist elements – in one instance, the government sheepishly cancelled ‘national independence day’ public parades for fear of attacks from terror groups, relocating the event to the comfort of the Presidential villa and in yet another set up an ‘amnesty committee’, populated with minuses, to negotiate with a group that had publicly told whosoever cared to listen that it was the Goodluck administration that needed ‘amnesty’.

All through this period, and with increasing audacity, the Nigerian State and its people were subjected to all manner of attacks resulting in thousands of deaths and seizing of entire regions of component States of the Nigerian Federation by terror outfits.

Nigeria was for all practical purposes, adrift. This situation had prompted the earlier post on this blog titled: ‘Help, Our Ship Is Rudderless’ (May 9^th 2013)

Enemies of the Nigerian State preferred the comatose situation which unfortunately was resulting in gradual but definite demise of not only the country, but also the millions of its citizens who would have been consumed in the continuing spiral of violence.

Those who made political capital of the carnage and fanned the embers of ethnocentrism and disunity, whilst posturing as ‘opposition’ politicians, had threatened hell and brimstone in the event that the Jonathan administration ever wielded the only powers it had to address the mayhem – a declaration of a State of Emergency, which would have accorded President Jonathan adequate powers to deploy his authority to quell the crisis. These characters have recruited their usual retinue of well connected ‘high profile’ lobbyist in Washington DC, New York, London and Geneva, to ensure amongst other things that the declaration of a State of emergency by Jonathan is misconstrued by the international community and that Boko Haram was not categorized/treated as a terrorist organization – spreading the fallacy that the violence in Nigeria was merely political and in no way linked with global terrorism and international jihadists.  

The question then on the lips of Nigerians and our international friends became: ‘was anybody in charge here’?

After what appeared to be an eternity, Goodluck Jonathan seems to have woken up. The declaration of a ‘State of Emergency’ on Tuesday 14^th May 2013 and deployment of additional resources to confront terror in the northeastern fringe of the country is a most welcome development which should be supported by not just all friends of Nigeria but also everybody desirous to avoid the gory spectacle of over 100 million refugees suddenly let loose across the already resource constrained African terrain and the risk of extremist religious ideologues having an infinite base for recruits on the African continent.

There will no doubt be collateral damages, as in all emergency situations, but the world has to understand that Nigeria, and indeed black Africa, is taking a stand to confront extremism.

For Goodluck Jonathan, though it is yet early to assess the results of the declaration of Emergency Rule, there can be no going back. Capitulating before securing the motherland will be quite costly.

On the personal angle, it sure feels good to be writing positively about ones President – I sure do hope he keeps it up and that this awakening is not a fluke.

Picture: President Goodluck Jonathan