Why President Jonathan Is A Superior Presidential Material To Buhari

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.

Femi Aribisala is a scholar and international affairs expert. He is
currently an iconoclastic church pastor in Lagos. He is also a syndicated
essayist for a handful publications in Nigeria.

by Femi Aribisala