Jonathan Is A Superior Presidential Material To Buhari - By Femi Aribisala

Between 1983 and 1985, Peter Onu of Nigeria was Acting
Secretary-General of the OAU. At the 1985 Summit in Addis Ababa,
statesmen like Julius Nyerere, President of Tanzania, lobbied for
his election as substantive Secretary-General. However, there was
a major stumbling block to Peter Onu’s candidature: his Head of
State, Muhammadu Buhari, was campaigning against him.
Buhari claimed: “This generation of Nigerians and indeed future
generations have no other country than Nigeria.” But when the
crunch came, his allegiance to Nigeria disappeared. In the election
of the OAU Secretary-General in 1985, Buhari voted against Nigeria
and for Niger instead. He secured the election of Ide Oumarou, a
Fulani man from Niger; as opposed to an Igbo man from Nigeria.
By so doing, Buhari became the first and only Head of State in the
history of modern international relations to vote against his country
in favour of his tribe.
Years later, General Buhari marched all the way from Daura to
Ibadan to demand of Oyo State Governor, Lam Adeshina: “Why are
your people killing my people?” Again, he was not referring to
Nigerians as his people. Instead, he was an advocate for the rights
of murderous Fulani herdsmen who killed Yoruba farmers that
objected to their cattle grazing on their land and damaging their
crops. This same Buhari who voted against Nigeria in 1985, and
said in 2003: “Muslims should only vote those who will promote
Islam,” is now shopping for votes nationwide. He should be
rejected outright.
Ignorance running riot
If APC had wanted to be taken seriously, it would have come up
with a better presidential material than Buhari. There is something
anomalous about a party whose mantra is change, recycling a 73
year old man as its candidate for the president of modern Nigeria.
Buhari has little or no understanding of public policy. That is why
APC will always come up with some excuse or the other not to
have him participate in a debate with Jonathan. Buhari fought
corruption by imposing ridiculous 300-year sentences on
offenders. He fought exam malpractices by imposing 24-year
prison sentences on school children.
He dealt with indiscipline by flogging people to queue at bus-stops.
He dealt with food shortages by sending soldiers to break into
private warehouses and shops. He fought trade imbalances by
taking Nigeria back to the stone age of trade by barter (counter-
trade). He sought to extradite a Nigerian from Britain by drugging
and crating him.
There is so much about Buhari ending the Boko Haram insurgency
as he did the Maitatsine insurgency in the 1980s. But the General
needs to be advised that Boko Haram is not Maitatsine. Maitatsine
was in two towns: Boko Haram is in three states with spillover
effects into others. Maitatsine fought with bows and arrows: Boko
Haram fights with sophisticated weapons. Maitatsine was a local
insurgency, Boko Haram is an international phenomenon.
Anti-corruption hypocrisy: Buhari does not know what corruption
means and how to fight it. He became Nigeria’s Head of State
through the corruption of a coup d’état and he then tried to fight
corruption with corruption. Imposing retroactive decrees and killing
Nigerians under them is corruption. Putting an Igbo vice-president
in Kirikiri, while placing the Fulani president under palatial house
arrest, is corruption.
Detaining people like Michael Ajasin in jail, even after they were
discharged and acquitted by kangaroo courts, is corruption. Jailing
journalists for telling the truth is corruption. Putting pressure on a
judge in order to jail Fela Anikulapo-Kuti is corruption. Shepherding
53 suitcases of contraband unchecked through Customs during a
currency change exercise is corruption. Swearing an affidavit that
your school-leaving certificate is with the military when it is not, is
corruption.
Transforming Nigeria: Buhari’s shameful past is dwarfed by the
achievements of Goodluck Jonathan. Under Jonathan, Nigeria has
emerged as by far the largest economy in Africa with a GDP of
$503 billion; nearly double the previous estimates. South Africa
now comes a distant second with $350 billion. With the unbundling
of PHCN after 52 years of gridlock, and with now the realizable
target of 20,000 megawatts of electricity by 2020, Nigeria’s GDP
will soon double that of South Africa.
CNN Money projects that the fastest growing economy in the
world in 2015 will be China (7.3% growth rate); followed by Qatar
(7.1%); and then followed by Nigeria (7%). This belies all the
misinformation about the Nigerian economy dished out by the APC
and attests to the astute management of the economy by the
Jonathan administration. The seemingly ambitious Vision 20 2020,
proclaimed under the Abacha regime to make Nigeria one of the 20
largest economies in the world by 2020 is now well in sight. Today,
Nigeria is already the 23rd largest economy in the world. Kudos to
Jonathan, we have overtaken such European countries as Austria
and Belgium.
Life expectancy
In 2010, when Jonathan became acting president, life expectancy
in Nigeria was 47 years. Today, it is 54 years; an improvement of
seven years. Adroit application of SURE-P funds has reduced the
maternal mortality ratio in Nigeria by 26%. Under Jonathan,
Nigeria has become Guinea Worm-free; a disease previously
affecting 800,000 Nigerians yearly. In the last six months, there
has been no new case of polio in Nigeria. If this goes on for
another two and a half years, Nigeria will be declared polio-free.
Bill Gates, the richest man in the world, hailed Nigeria’s fight
against polio as one of the great world achievements of 2014. He
said: “The infrastructure Nigeria has built to fight polio actually
made it easier for them to swiftly contain Ebola. The fact that
Nigeria is now Ebola-free is a great example of how doing the
work to fight things like fighting polio also leaves countries better
prepared to deal with outbreaks of other diseases.”
Investors’ haven: In the last three years, the United Nations
Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has ranked
Nigeria as the number one country for foreign investments in
Africa. We also receive more home-remittances than any other
African country; a vote of confidence in our economy by Nigerians
living abroad. They remitted $23 billion in 2013, a figure far more
than the $18 billion received by Egypt; the country with the second
highest home remittance in Africa. It is a testament to Goodluck
Jonathan’s adroit management of the Nigerian economy that the
richest African is now a Nigerian.
In 2010, when Jonathan came to power, Aliko Dangote was the
463rd richest man in the world, with a total fortune of $2.1 billion.
Today, he is the 23rd richest man in the world, with a total fortune
of $25 billion. Dangote’s billions are “made in Nigeria.” Indeed,
under Jonathan, Nigeria now has the fourth highest rate of returns
on investments in the world, according to UNCTAD.
Crisis of unemployment
The big challenge has to do with jobs. Every year, another 1.8
million people are offloaded into the job market. However, while
the APC says Buhari will create 720,000 jobs a year if elected,
Jonathan created 1.6 million jobs in 2013. He has established such
innovative programmes as Nagropreneurs and YOUWIN that
support young farmers and entrepreneurs with grants, training and
mentorship. He has also instituted internship schemes to enhance
the capacity of university graduates to secure gainful employment.
The unemployment problem is compounded by the more than
doubling of the education budget under Jonathan. Every Nigerian
child now has the opportunity to go to school. Indeed, there has
been a 10 million increase in school enrolment in Nigeria under
this government. There has also been a 75% increase in O’ Level
credit pass in Maths and English. Jonathan established 125
Almajiri schools in 13 northern states. He also established 14 new
federal universities. There is now a federal university in every
state. Indeed, the kidnapping of the Chibok schoolgirls derives
from the disenchantment of the Boko Haram that many Northern
girls are now going to school.
Dealing with corruption: According to Transparency International,
Nigeria has not become more corrupt under Goodluck Jonathan.
Out of 178 countries ranked in 2010, Nigeria was the 134th most
corrupt country. In 2014, Nigeria was ranked 136th. Unlike Buhari,
Jonathan understands that corruption has to be attacked
institutionally, from the roots. Therefore, he proposed the
abrogation of the petroleum subsidy; one of the biggest avenues
for corruption in government. However, Nigerians refused.
Jonathan has sanitized the corruption in fertilizer distribution. The
Minister of Agriculture, Akinwumi Adesina, lamented that between
1980 and 2010, Nigeria lost 776 billion naira to corrupt fertilizer
racketeering.
Fertiliser racketeering
That effectively came to an end under Jonathan. Through the
innovative e-wallet system, farmers are given cell-phones through
which they now have direct and easy access to government-
provided fertilizer, chemicals and seedlings. Jonathan has also
sanitised the banking system by removing dinosaur managing
directors, recovering indigent loans and using AMCON to mop up
bad loans. By instituting e-payment systems, he sanitized the civil
service by removing 50,000 ghost-workers in one fell swoop. He
has equally got rid of ghost voters from the electoral register; over
1 million ghost voters were removed from the Zamfara INEC
register alone. Under Jonathan, we have had free and fair elections
one after the other; in Edo, Anambra, Ondo, Ekiti and Osun.
Agriculture has been transformed under this administration.
Thanks to Jonathan, agriculture now accounts for 22% of
Nigeria’s GDP, more than oil and gas which only account for
15.9%. Under Jonathan, Nigeria has recorded a more than 50%
reduction in food imports. Prior to his presidency, we had a food
import bill of 1.4 trillion naira. But now, it is less than N700 billion.
With the innovation of dry season rice-farming, Nigeria has
reached 60% self-sufficiency in rice production. According to the
Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations (FAO),
Nigeria is now the largest producer of cassava in the world. The
Jonathan government built six strategically-located perishable
cargo airports in Ilorin, Jalingo, Jos, Lagos, Makurdi andYola; in
close proximity to Nigeria’s food baskets.
It is remarkable that Northern farmers were able to donate five
million tubers of yam in order to raise 5 billion naira for Buhari’s
presidential election campaign. If Jonathan’s transformation
agenda in agriculture was not working as planned, they would not
have been able to do this.