Wednesday 27 February 2013

Debo Adejugbe: Time To Encourage Our Transformational President


Time To Encourage Our Transformational President


Dabo
“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” – Bill Gates
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It is very important to recognize the esteemed position our President occupies; in order that we might be able to accord him due respect, and hold him in reverence for being such a gentle soul, even in the face of the cacophony of criticisms and enemies who now dog his life.
It’s going to be very hard, at least in the situation we are presently immersed in, not to praise Mr. President for standing tall and soldiering on, flogging the horse of transformation to the stream of change.
Lest we forget, Mr. President runs a gigantic edifice named Nigeria, which comes as a package with corruption in all sectors to boot. Here is a man who wriggled, lied, cursed and cried – even if they were not his strong points- just to have an extra four years of dishing out committees to solve our problems. We have to gradually make him the least criticized president; we must make the effort! Here goes!
My President is a man of words; One who provides lengthy quotes that tickles even dead brains into action (or should we say inaction?).
The President has built a very good team (even if on paper); you are advised to kindly remove the following names lest you are accused of a lack of balance: Emeka Worgu, Godspower Orubebe, Diezani Alison-Madueke, Mohammed Adoke and Labaran Maku. Yes! He has built a good, solid, wise* and well traveled team. The problem of whether they have charted any tangible / endearing “policy and direction” should not come up at this time; this piece is meant to ‘famz’ my President.
I can swear from zero to ten that the President is his own man; a very firm administrator too. It is not important to remember the number ofministers in his cabinet, with corruption cases/indictments hanging on their necks – that is not my interest. He declared “I don’t give a damn!” when asked about his constitutional obligation to declare his assets in June 2012 and to my subtle mind, only a strong character gets this off with such aplomb. How can we expect him to give a damn?
Let’s recognize his consummate skill and ability to deliver on promises in this regard. He has, times without number, reminded us of vision20:2020 which might eventually become vision 20:2100; but that wouldn’t be his problem as his job as His Excellency The President is to make proclamations. Our duty is to look for ways to achieve their realization – by ourselves.
My transformational president is a calculative and first class administrator. Many have complained about the slow pace at which he churns out his “Presidenting”, but I want you to understand he is being careful not to misstep, confirming same at the 2012 christmas party in Abuja where he noted -like the philosophers of old: “By human thinking our administration is slow; I won’t say we are slow, but we need to think through things properly if we are to make lasting impact,” and stringing the perfect denouncement of inefficiency together, he continued: “If we rush, we will make mistakes and sometimes it is more difficult to correct those mistakes.”
Please, let’s give him twelve years, I’m sure the heavenlies –with higher dimensions than the human mind – would applaud him and all our problems will become a thing of the past. Kudos to him; he deigned to give you an explanation.
You can’t blame my President for planes and copters dropping from the skies too. I don’t think he is responsible for the birds either. December 15, 2012 was really a sad one for several families and I’m sure Mr. President shed his trademarked tears for the departed; we can’t expect more than that, surely!
Except that…we have to.
While delivering a sermon on the Bayelsa Crash that killed “Two dignitaries” and “Four Others” – as reported by the Nigerian press; Vicarage Hyacinth Egbebor, The Bishop of Bomadi Catholic Diocese, opined, with our president in attendance, that “Corruption is the only underlying evil that is responsible for the air mishaps. If the military cannot guarantee the safety and security of their own, who else can they protect? …If there is anywhere one looks for excellentperformance, it is the military. Now we have compromised excellence for money. Money has taken over.”
Our transformational president, a man known not to let rare opportunities to bare his mind pass by unused, who had declared MEND not responsible for independence day bombing while security personnel were still gathering information and facts about the occurence, replied the clergyman with perfect grace: “But most of these things we talk about corruption are not even corruption. It is true that most cases we talk about corruption as if corruption is the cause of most of our problems. No. Yes, we have corruption in this country, no doubt about that. The government is also fighting corruption.” He went ahead, declaring with satisfaction that: “Nigeria has more institutions that fight corruption than most other countries”. Come on!
As usual, the President had one or two solutions up his sleeves. He advised Nigerians to change their attitudes in order to move forward and emulate the characters of such ‘noble men’ as the late General Azazi. Whew! There lies the solution to our problems, it is part of the transformational agenda the President is pushing us to embrace and as noted in his speech, it seems like the only real solution. And blimey! Nigeria will become a better country. Please, don’t ask me how, let’s dial up the President on 08000000000.
You can’t but pity Mr. President, sometimes he tries too hard to discard the clueless toga that people desperately stick to him and ends up giving us more lengthy quotes. When, on August 27, 2012 at the opening of the 52nd Annual General Meeting of the Nigerian Bar Association, he declared himself as the most criticized president in the world, I had to shed tears for him – after laughing myself to stupor!
He really is confused as to what the problem is. He is either expecting to be pampered or praised for receiving such huge patronage/remuneration and feeding allowance while doing nothing. Come to think of it, doing nothing is actually a job and Mr. President is obviously an A-student in that regard.
In Mr. President’s words: “I think I am the most criticised President in the whole world, but I want to tell this audience that before I leave I will be the most praised President,” He went further. “Sometimes, I ask, were there roads in this country and Jonathan brought flood to destroy the roads?”
“Was there power and Jonathan brought hurricane to wipe it out?”
“If Boko Haram is that of poverty in the North, were there farms and Jonathan brought tsunami and drought to destroy them? Within two years – is that possible?”
“But what I can tell Nigerians is, ‘let those talking keep talking, time will tell.’”
Time will surely tell.
Mr. President has spoken!Let’s keep talking and talking; after all talk is cheap. He’s crossed the Rubicon and is no longer fazed by the expression of our helplessness but the statements above lend credence to the fact that these ‘rants’ are getting to him and he is, with every passing day, talking out of the script written for him by Dr. Reuben Abati -the ‘don’t be stupid’ punchliner – and co.
The President is working assiduously to keep us talking and fuming; he is unique and we should learn to appreciate what we have before it’s gone forever.
Since the President is not leveraging on our unhappy voices to learn, by putting things in perspective and providing sound leadership, let’s encourage him to further make us deride his leadership style and transformational agenda more. Who knows? This might be the spur needed to make well-meaning Nigerians sit up and say “enough is enough, let’s boot out this joke in 2015″. But, if as the President, we rely on luck to help drive this lazy and gluttonic administration out of our lives, we’ll surely keep talking until 2019.
For those of us jobless enough to protest his ill-thought-out subsidy removal on January 1st, 2012, this is for you: “The demonstration in Lagos, people were given bottled water that people in my village don’t have access to. People were given expensive food that the ordinary people in Lagos cannot eat. So, even going to eat free attracts people.”
After carefully ruminating over the sorry state at which he met the Ikeja Police College during a surprise visit on 18th of January, 2013; he has this to say about those who brought his attention to it: “This is a calculated attempt to damage the image of this government. The Police College, Ikeja is not the only training institution in Nigeria”. That tells us all we need to know about how the awesome brain of President Jonathan works.
If you haven’t made up your mind on encouraging our President to pack his bags and set sail from Aso Rock to Otuoke, there is still time for him to drop more gems on the marble. If he doesn’t, who will?
He is surely a man of words!
I’m @deboadejugbe

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