'The Economist' magazine in one paragraph captured the very essence of the Goodluck Jonathan presidency when it wrote, “for the past few years President Goodluck Jonathan has publicly shrugged off the deaths of thousands of people, mainly in the north-east of his country, portraying them as the unfortunate but unavoidable result of a fanatical insurgency for which his government cannot be blamed. But in the past few weeks the plight of 200-plus girls abducted from a school by Boko Haram, the extremist group chiefly responsible for the mayhem, has put Mr Jonathan and his government under an international spotlight, exposing them not only as incompetent but callous, too.” The magazine said more about the now globally renowned incompetent government but the above would suffice for this piece.
On the 6th of May 2014, 'The New York Times' also succinctly captured the identity of today’s Nigerian federal administration. The newspaper of record wrote this in its editorial of that day: “three weeks after their horrifying abduction in Nigeria, 276 of the more than 300 girls who were taken from a school by armed militants are still missing, possibly sold into slavery or married off. Nigerian security forces apparently do not know where the girls are and the country’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, has been shockingly slow and inept at addressing this monstrous crime…Mr. Jonathan, who leads a corrupt government that has little credibility….”
These globally renowned media platforms were not alone in the condemnation of our government’s response to the Chibok abduction; several others including the AFP had even more damaging words to say about the government. Former US Secretary of State, Senator Hillary Clinton did not mince words in her own submission saying how much bad governance Nigeria has had especially through its oil wealth and how irresponsible it has been in squandering same.
If you took the names of the platforms and replaced them with Nigerian names, you would be inundated with claims by elements connected to the presidency of how the platforms were tools of the main opposition party, the All Progressives’ Congress. As if the APC would offer more than the obviously richer People’s Democratic Party (PDP) if all the media platforms offered themselves to be bought over.
The Truth that this government has refused to face at home for the better part of the last three years has now come in the form of an even more expensive global mirror.
President Jonathan admitted that if money were to be missing in his government, the Americans would know. The Americans have more or less confirmed his stand. They know! They have all summed up our government as corrupt, callous and incompetent. There would be no need trying to shift the conversation by throwing the racist card like Dr. Doyin Okupe was looking to do. It was Mr. President who said ‘America will know’ and America has issued what it knows.
In a world before this, a government could steal all it wanted, be irresponsible as much as it could be and yet maintain a global face that portrayed it as the exact opposite. But in today’s world, such state of affairs will reverberate around the world. Information now travels much faster and unlike in years past, it now defies even the most impregnable borders.
There is nothing the likes of 'The Economist' and 'The New York Times' said about this government that Nigerian columnists, including this writer, have not said over the years. When we did, we were accused of being tools of the opposition. Would we then say that these globally renowned news platforms have been bought by the APC?
Maybe they have. Maybe the APC has so much money now, a lot more than the PDP it can afford to buy all these news platforms. Or maybe the truth cannot be kept out for too long. Maybe the dirty linen we thought was being washed in private had always been in public glare all along.
But of course, let us as Nigerians be patriotic, let us all go after these media platforms and tell them to stop exposing the corruption and incompetence of our government. As patriotic Nigerians, we must all condemn these media platforms; we must all ensure they do not expose our corrupt government any further. We must all join our government in its grand delusion and continue to ensure it never smells the coffee and the reality of its own status: a helplessly inept and a shamelessly corrupt government!
On the 6th of May 2014, 'The New York Times' also succinctly captured the identity of today’s Nigerian federal administration. The newspaper of record wrote this in its editorial of that day: “three weeks after their horrifying abduction in Nigeria, 276 of the more than 300 girls who were taken from a school by armed militants are still missing, possibly sold into slavery or married off. Nigerian security forces apparently do not know where the girls are and the country’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, has been shockingly slow and inept at addressing this monstrous crime…Mr. Jonathan, who leads a corrupt government that has little credibility….”
These globally renowned media platforms were not alone in the condemnation of our government’s response to the Chibok abduction; several others including the AFP had even more damaging words to say about the government. Former US Secretary of State, Senator Hillary Clinton did not mince words in her own submission saying how much bad governance Nigeria has had especially through its oil wealth and how irresponsible it has been in squandering same.
If you took the names of the platforms and replaced them with Nigerian names, you would be inundated with claims by elements connected to the presidency of how the platforms were tools of the main opposition party, the All Progressives’ Congress. As if the APC would offer more than the obviously richer People’s Democratic Party (PDP) if all the media platforms offered themselves to be bought over.
The Truth that this government has refused to face at home for the better part of the last three years has now come in the form of an even more expensive global mirror.
President Jonathan admitted that if money were to be missing in his government, the Americans would know. The Americans have more or less confirmed his stand. They know! They have all summed up our government as corrupt, callous and incompetent. There would be no need trying to shift the conversation by throwing the racist card like Dr. Doyin Okupe was looking to do. It was Mr. President who said ‘America will know’ and America has issued what it knows.
In a world before this, a government could steal all it wanted, be irresponsible as much as it could be and yet maintain a global face that portrayed it as the exact opposite. But in today’s world, such state of affairs will reverberate around the world. Information now travels much faster and unlike in years past, it now defies even the most impregnable borders.
There is nothing the likes of 'The Economist' and 'The New York Times' said about this government that Nigerian columnists, including this writer, have not said over the years. When we did, we were accused of being tools of the opposition. Would we then say that these globally renowned news platforms have been bought by the APC?
Maybe they have. Maybe the APC has so much money now, a lot more than the PDP it can afford to buy all these news platforms. Or maybe the truth cannot be kept out for too long. Maybe the dirty linen we thought was being washed in private had always been in public glare all along.
But of course, let us as Nigerians be patriotic, let us all go after these media platforms and tell them to stop exposing the corruption and incompetence of our government. As patriotic Nigerians, we must all condemn these media platforms; we must all ensure they do not expose our corrupt government any further. We must all join our government in its grand delusion and continue to ensure it never smells the coffee and the reality of its own status: a helplessly inept and a shamelessly corrupt government!
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