I walked
into the east wing of The Palms shopping mall in Lekki, Lagos (popularly
referred to as Shoprite); only to be buttoned-holed by a man trying to
sell me a Honda Civic parked inside the hall. His sales pitch was that
it was the first totally assembled Honda in Nigeria; built completely to
Nigerian specifications. For example, unlike the classical Honda, the
Nigeria model has a high clearance, being mindful of the potholes in
Nigerian roads.
I had no intention of buying a new car,
least of all a Honda Accord. Nevertheless, I could not fail to
recognise that what he was touting is one of the many achievements of
the Jonathan administration. In spite of the Buhari administration’s
daily vilification of Jonathan, the achievements of his government
continue to speak for themselves.
The outcome is that local car-assembly
is back in Nigeria; literally risen from the dead. Big auto giants,
including Peugeot, Nissan, Volkswagen, Kia, Hyundai and apparently
Honda, now either assemble, or entirely manufacture, their cars, SUVs,
trucks and buses at various locations in Nigeria. In addition, Nigeria
now has an indigenous car-manufacturing company, Innoson, which is not
only selling locally but already dabbling in exports.
Limits of denigration
These days, the most discernible policy
of the new APC government is to attack everything Jonathan. However,
propaganda can only mask the truth in the short-term. It cannot destroy
the truth in the medium to long-term. No matter what APC traducers
say, the fact remains that Goodluck Jonathan was an exceptional
president by Nigerian standards.
Now is the time to re-affirm this and to
invite a more dispassionate reappraisal of the facts, away from the
lies and fabrications of the election campaign. It can no longer be
argued today that anyone defending Jonathan is a PDP contractor; a
favourite line of defence of Buharimaniacs. Neither can Jonathan
defenders be accused any longer of wanting to replace Reuben Abati as
the president’s spokesman. “You can do nothing against the truth but for
the truth.” No matter what the APC continues to broadcast about the
Jonathan administration, the truth cannot be silenced.
Fashola’s gaffe: After
six months of stasis, Buhari finally unfurled his ministers in the most
anti-climatic fashion. These long-awaited saints and angels turned out
to be mostly Santa Claus.
Babatunde Fashola, former governor of
Lagos State, is now the minister of Power, Works and Housing. At his
maiden news conference, tagged grandiloquently: “Setting the Agenda for
Delivering Change,” the same Fashola who spent the election campaign
running down the Jonathan administration shocked his audience by
revealing that, rather than embark on new road construction projects in
2016, he would only endeavour to build on Jonathan’s achievements.
Wittingly or unwittingly, Fashola gave
the lie to APC propaganda that Jonathan’s years were wasted years? If
Jonathan was as incompetent as the APC would have us believe, why could
the party not launch its own superior nationwide road-building plan, as
Buhari had promised in the heady days of the 2015 election campaign?
Why rely on allegedly sub-standard PDP foundations?
Similarly, rather than jettison
Jonathan’s power-sector reforms that APC derided volubly during the
campaign, Fashola revealed that the government will be continuing with
them. Jonathan completed 10 power-plants in Nigeria within three years;
the first and highest of such record by any Nigerian president living or
dead. The APC had accused Jonathan of awarding the power projects to
PDP cronies and financiers who are incompetent and deficient. But
rather than revoke those contracts, Fashola preached continuity. He
also admitted that Jonathan‘s transformation in the power sector is
above 50%, and that his job would be to build on this achievement.
Jonathan’s transformation agenda
Transport Minister, Rotimi Amaechi, also
had the same assessment of Jonathan’s achievements with regard to rail
transportation. He pledged to complete all ongoing rail-restoration
projects around the country started by Jonathan; as well as extend them
to all parts of the country.
Jonathan inaugurated the Lagos-Kano rail
line and the Port Harcourt-Enugu mass transit train. He also embarked
on the rehabilitation of the Port Harcourt-Maiduguri rail line.
Furthermore, Jonathan’s projects include the Abuja-Kaduna fast train
line; the 322km Lagos-Benin City line, 500km Benin-Abakiliki line, 673km
Benin-Obudu Cattle Ranch line, 615km Lagos-Abuja high speed line, 520km
Zaria-Birnin- Koni line, 533km Ega nyi-Otukpo and the Ega nyi-Abuja
line.
Thanks to Jonathan, five million
Nigerians are now carried by rail, relative to the one million before he
came. An estimated 700,000 passengers are projected to ride the Abuja
Light Rail (ALR) on a daily basis. Only recently, KPMG listed Nigeria’s
high speed rail project proposed by the Jonathan administration as one
of the global top 100 world-class infrastructures. The rail is expected
to connect Lagos, Kano, Kaduna, Warri, Bauchi, Abuja and Port Harcourt;
at a cost of $13 billion.
For his part, Audu Ogbeh, the new
Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, did not even pretend to
have an alternative to Jonathan’s Transformation Agenda. Speaking at
the launching of the Anchor Borrowers Programme in Birnin Kebbi, Kebbi
State, Ogbe commended Jonathan’s achievements in agriculture, while also
praising his ministerial predecessor for the innovations he introduced.
Thanks to Jonathan, agriculture now
accounts for 22 per cent of Nigeria’s GDP, more than oil and gas which
only account for 15.9 per cent. Under Jonathan, Nigeria recorded a more
than 50 per cent reduction in food imports; from an import bill of N1.4
trillion to less than N700 billion. With the innovation of dry season
rice-farming, Nigeria reached 60% self-sufficiency in rice production
and became, according to the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the
United Nations (FAO), the largest producer of cassava in the world.
Anti-corruption hypocrisy
Rather than hit the ground running, the
in-coming Buhari administration has spent the last six months on a
campaign against Jonathan and his men, as if it is still shopping for
Nigerian votes. This campaign has become a substitute for policy,
leading to the conclusion that the APC never really expected to win the
election and therefore does not know what to do now it has been declared
the winner. What the party did during the election campaign was
present pie-in-the-sky policies that were never intended to be
implemented but were primarily designed to harvest votes.
This accounts for the government’s
current embarrassment with its own party manifesto and the denial of its
campaign promises. It has even led to APC legislators being
constrained to vote against their own policy; the payment of N5000
monthly to the 25 million poorest Nigerians. In six months, the
much-touted change of the APC has turned out to be counterfeit. What we
have instead is a constant barrage of media trials pertaining to the
alleged corruption of the Jonathan administration.
This anti-corruption crusade is clearly
not addressed at curtailing corruption. Its primary objective is to
kill and bury the PDP. Not even the most ardent supporters of Jonathan
would insist that there was not rampant corruption under the PDP. What
is unacceptable is the present government’s pretence that corruption in
Nigeria is restricted to the PDP when, as a matter of fact, the APC is
just as corrupt, if not even more because of its blatant hypocrisy.
The government’s anti-corruption crusade
is already without legitimacy because it is unashamedly partial and
selective. Allegations made against APC office-holders are procedurally
ignored by the government’s anti-corruption watchdogs. Some of the APC
chieftains accused of corruption have even been rewarded with major
ministerial portfolios. Others have been nominated as APC candidates in
governorship elections.
PDP members are labelled corrupt until
they declare for the APC; then they automatically become saints. We are
meant to believe that while the PDP used government funds to buy
favours and votes during the election campaign, APC managed to spend
massively to dislodge the PDP from power without doing the same. The
truth of the matter is that corruption is not the exclusive preserve of
any party or persons. Corruption is endemic to the Nigerian political
system.
Selective maligning of the members of
the former government will not rid Nigeria of corruption. Neither will
allegations of corruption hurriedly put together for the sake of public
consumption, which are then thrown out by the courts. Corruption has to
be addressed systemically and structurally. But to date, there is
little evidence that the government’s anti-corruption intentions go
beyond the witch-hunting of the Jonathan administration.
Jonathan’s legacies
To the extent that the present
administration can be said to have any policies after six months in
office, they are all legacies of the Jonathan administration. The TSA
is from Jonathan. The turn-around maintenance of our refineries is from
Jonathan. The re-equipping of our military is from Jonathan. The
improvement in electricity is a Jonathan legacy. On the other hand, the
major policies enunciated in the APC election manifesto remain
essentially pipe-dreams.
In spite of APC propaganda, Jonathan’s
men keep matching on. Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina, Jonathan’s Minister of
Agriculture and Rural Development is now President of the Africa
Development Bank (AfDB). Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Jonathan’s Minister of
Finance, and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, is now a Senior
Adviser at Lazzard; a prestigious 167 year-old global investment firm.
Arunma Otteh, Jonathan’s Director-General of the Securities and Exchange
Commission (SEC), is now a Vice-President of the World Bank.
To paraphrase Marc Antony of
Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: “The evil that men do lives after them; the
good is oft interrèd with their bones. So let it be with Jonathan. The
noble APC hath told you Jonathan was clueless. If it were so, it was a
grievous fault, and grievously hath Jonathan answered it.”
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. He tweets from @FemiAribisala.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.
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