President Goodluck Jonathan

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APC Rivers lists the 25 sins of President Jonathan

The Rivers State Chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) party yesterday issued a press statement via their State Chairman, Dr. Davies Ibiamu Ikanya on the gross sins President Goodluck Jonathan has committed against the state.

Ikanya said: “These, amongst other wicked acts against Rivers State for
reasons only to be explained by President Jonathan and his managers explain why we will do everything humanly possible to ensure that this man who has run aground our economy will never continue in office beyond May 29, 2015.
He continued “For the record, President Jonathan is from Bayelsa, a sister State to Rivers. He is married to Dame Patience Jonathan, who is from Rivers State and having schooled in UNIPORT and lectured in the State before joining politics; one would have expected him to be a key factor in any election in Rivers State after the State gave him the highest number of votes in the 2011 presidential election but, shockingly, he will be the greatest undoing of his party in the 2015 general election.”
The 25 sins
1. President Jonathan failed to muster the courage and political will in a PDP-controlled National Assembly to see to the passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) in the over six years of his administration to demonstrate his hatred for the Niger Delta region knowing that communities in Rivers State will benefit from the bill.

2. The East/West Road, especially Eleme-Onne axis in Rivers State, has not only been abandoned but is a nightmare to travellers and commuters.

3. Bodo-Bonny Federal Road is completely abandoned just because it is situated in Rivers State.

4. Refusal to refund to the State Government over 90 billion naira used in the dualisation of Ikwerre-Owerri Road approved by late President Yar’Adua and other Federal Roads in the State executed by the State to ease the sufferings of the people of Rivers State.
5. Wickedly stopped Train 7 at NLNG Bonny and the loss of jobs to our people and revenue to Government.

6. Non-implementation of UNEP Report on the clean-up of Ogoni land despite
all the pleas by our people and the International Community – just to punish the Ogonis and Rivers State irrespective of their overwhelming support for him during the 2011 elections.
7. Lack of any visible Federal Government project in Rivers State throughout his over six years as President of Nigeria. Instructively, of all the states President Jonathan has visited in the course of his re-election campaign, it was only in Rivers that he could not name a single development project he initiated, not to talk of executing.
8. Ceding of oil wells belonging to Rivers to Bayelsa and Abia states to ensure that the revenue accruing to the State is reduced to nothing.
9. Abandoned construction of the Port Harcourt International Airport after completing other airports started at the same time with it. The airport has thus become an eyesore. Pictures of the current state of the Airport attached explain the level of hatred President Jonathan has for Rivers State and her people.
10. Turning the Port Harcourt axis of Enugu-Port Harcourt Express Road into a death trap. The pictures attached of the bad state of the road explain everything.

11. Posting and encouraging the excesses of the tyrannical Police Commissioner Joseph Mbu during his inglorious days in the State.
12. Supporting the impunity of daily killing, maiming of members of Rivers APC by the Police under the watch of Dan Barure

13. Supporting every imaginable act of impunity in the State, including the plot by five State Assembly members to impeach the Speaker in a House of 31 members.
14. Seizing and grounding the planes of the State for no just cause.
15. Harassing and intimidating the duly elected Governor of Rivers State for no just cause and even supporting the splitting of the Governors Forum into two just to ensure that Governor Amaechi, who was duly elected by his colleagues, does not have an easy reign as the Chairman of the Forum.

16. Refusal to allow the Governor to construct the Federal Road that leads to the Kalabari Kingdom just to ensure that during the rainy season the Kalabaris will not have a road to their place.

17. Forcefully taking over the 50,000-seater Adokiye Amiesimaka Stadium.
Incidentally, his party could not mobilise enough supporters to fill the stadium during his rally even after hiring supporters from Bayelsa, Abia and Akwa Ibom states.
18. Refusal to refund the State the money used to construct the smooth, beautiful dual carriageway from Omerelu to Port Harcourt–particularly up to the Airport Junction from Owerri in Imo State, which the Federal Government abandoned just because Rivers State people ply that road.
19. Refusal to refund the money used by Rivers State to construct the Ahoada/Elele Alimini Federal Road and the interchange (Flyover) at Obiri Ikwerre.

20. Refusal to attend to the poor state of the Onne – Port Harcourt component of the East/West Road. This is the road that services the Port Harcourt Refinery from where petroleum products are supplied to the South East and parts of the South South. That is the road that leads to the Onne Free Zone and to Okrika, the home Local Government of Dame Patience Jonathan, Nigeria’s First Lady.
21. Turning a blind eye while his party continues to kill, bomb and disrupt our rallies.

22. Against the spirit of equity, unity, justice and fair play, President Jonathan imposed Chief Nyesome Wike from the Ikwerre tribe as PDP candidate, knowing very well that the incumbent Governor, Rt. Hon. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, is also of Ikwerre extraction and that if Chief Wike wins the next election – but God forbid! – Ikwerre tribe would have governed Rivers State for 16 years to the detriment of other tribes and sections of the State. This shows that President Jonathan and his unjust party do not wish Rivers State any good.

23. President Jonathan released all the N25 Billion that accrued from the principle of derivation from the five Soku Oil Wells that rightly belong to Rivers State kept in reserve for Rivers State and Bayelsa State were all paid to Bayelsa State his home State to prove his hatred for Rivers State
24. As a President, President Jonathan has continued to under fund the NDDC to ensure that Rivers State and in extension the Niger Delta region is not developed, till date, N500B owed by the Federal Government is yet to be paid to the Niger Delta Development Corporation (NDDC)
25. Refused to empower and fund the Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs initiated by the Yar-Adua’s administration. The Minister of Niger Delta recently stated that the N41.7B due to the Ministry is not paid and it is affecting the 90 percent of the projects initiated by the Ministry just to ensure that projects to be executed by the Ministry in Rivers State and other Niger Delta States are not executed
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Jonathan Vs Buhari : When a public mistake requires an old fashioned apology | By Magnus Onyibe

The title of this article is adapted from a piece by Ron Ashkenas, managing partner of Schaffer Consulting and co-author of The GE Work-Out and The Boundaryless Organisation which was published in Harvard Business Report (HBR) that l received 8/1/20l5. 

Some salient points in the article struck a chord in me as l was ruminating over the imminent February 14th presidential election in Nigeria which is now a two-horse race between the incumbent, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan (GEJ) and former military head of state, General Muhammadu Buhari (GMB).
As an active subscriber and an avid reader of HBR publications, Cambridge University, London School of Economics, LSE and Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy (my alma mate) bulletin as well as other intellectual journals, my commentary on issues and events in Nigeria is usually not drawn only from local dynamics but equally considered from the prism of global experiences which l try to bring to bear in my analysis.
It is based on the foregoing that the HBR article ‘When A Public Mistake Requires An Old Fashioned Apology’ is very poignant and relevant to our current situation in Nigeria as it discusses public mistakes by leaders and how they can control the damage to regain respect.
Incidentally, both Jonathan and Buhari have had the rare opportunity of ruling Nigeria at different times — Buhari as military head of state some 30 years ago and Jonathan as the siting democratic president. In the course of leading Nigeria, both men must have made mistakes, which are obviously hunting them especially in this period of campaign for election as president.
Without equivocation, the issues being thrown up by both campaign teams are a sort of referendum on both the incumbent and challenger’s time in the exalted office of the president and Commander-in-Chief of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Do Nigerians require apologies from the two contenders for their past mistakes in governance before they can seek for and probably receive our mandate to lead us? Before going into the dialectics, I would like to first of all crave your indulgence to consider the interesting perspective from the business world in the HBR article by Ron Ashkenas as reproduced below:
“Everyone makes mistakes. We make bad decisions and insensitive statements, we speak before we think, and we let our emotions get the best of us.  But since we hold very senior executives to a higher standard, when they mess up, it often becomes a public spectacle.”
Consider the case of AOL CEO Tim Armstrong. On August 9, 2013 — a time of disappointing quarterly results — he held an all-hands conference call with 1,000 Patch (AOL’s hyper-local news division) employees. During the meeting, which was called to announce layoffs and site closings, Armstrong publicly fired Patch’s creative director for apparently recording the meeting.
This ‘brutal’ firing created a firestorm of negative publicity both for AOL and for Armstrong. Several days later, Armstrong issued an apology to all AOL employees, in which he admitted that he has “acted too quickly…(and) learned a tremendous lesson…”
Six months later, Armstrong was forced to apologise for another incident. In announcing his plans to delay retirement contributions, he mentioned the high cost of health care benefits and cited two individual cases, which the company paid $1 million to care for “distressed babies”.
Not only were his remarks callous, they also violated the privacy of the employees involved. After another round of disastrous publicity, Armstrong again issued a statement saying “l made a mistake and l apologise for my comments.” He also reversed his decision to delay retirement contributions (notice the similarities to President Jonathan’s reversal of his initial removal of petroleum pump price after a public outcry).
Of course Armstrong is not the first, last, or only senior executive who has made troublesome public remarks. Tony Hayward, the former CEO of British Petroleum, famously complained that he “wanted his life back” in the midst of the 2010 oil spill.  (He later apologised to the families of the workers who had died in the tragedy, as well as the thousands of people whose lives were totally disrupted.) 
Former Harvard President and Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers had to apologise in 2005 for his contention that “innate differences” between men and some accounted for the under-representation of women in the sciences. Senior advertising executive Justine Sacco was fired for posting an insensitive and racist tweet about AIDS in Africa.
And more recently, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella apologised for suggesting that women should not speak up about pay inequities. The question then becomes how to recover from one of these moments. A written and public apology is a good first step, particularly if you’ve offended thousands of people.
The next step is to proactively seek out the few people who have been most affected and talk to them privately. Public apologies are impersonal. People who have been hurt need something more human. They want a genuine, direct apology…
The third step in the recovery process is to find out whether the poor behaviour was a one time slip, or part of a recurring pattern. Occasional mistakes can be forgiven, but if the same behaviour occurs a number of times, an apology will ring hollow.  (Buhari’s retroactive decree no 20 that resulted in the judicial murder of three alleged drug dealers and decree no 4 which led to the jailing of journalists for writing the truth plus kidnapping, drugging and putting into crate of Umaru Dikko for illegal deportation to Nigeria qualifies as reoccurrence of same behaviour).
The real key to moving forward is to accept that you’re not perfect, and that future mistakes are probably inevitable. Without this mindset, executives can easily convince themselves that they were actually “misunderstood” or there was poor communication — that it wasn’t really their fault.
But without taking true accountability, executives won’t learn from their mistakes, and the next public gaffe isn’t far away. When executives do admit their flaws, they are better able to fix their mistakes and reclaim respect.
As the author posited, human beings crave apologies, which is a humbling way of earning the sympathy of people. Accountability is also a critical factor for apologies to be effective.
Most public mistakes are not confined to the business world, which the author focused on but even required more in the political space. Take for instance the case of Senator Hilary Clinton, the wife of former USA President Bill Clinton who stood stoically by her husband during the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal that rocked Clinton’s presidency with the potential of having similar catastrophic consequences as the June 17, 1972 breaking in at the DNC headquarters at Watergate, Washington DC famously referred to as the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon in the 1970s.
Mrs. Clinton’s apparent detachment from the indignation expressed by American women towards her husband’s apparent philandering, made her look inhuman and haunted her when she was contesting against President Barack Obama for the ‘primaries’ for  the Democratic Party ticket.

Realising that the American female voters were not queuing up behind her as they should, she broke down and cried during one of her campaign activities and that emotional vulnerability turned the tide. Women switched their support to her but it was too late as the ‘Obama for president’ train, as it were had already left the station.

Coming back home to Africa, it may be recalled that the late Nelson Mandela, former president of South Africa (1994-1999), instituted the Truth and Reconciliation Committee which enabled ex presidents and apartheid apostles, Iain Smith, Fredrick De Clerk, and a host of other ethnic supremacists to apologise to their black victims thereby bringing to a closure the evil ordeal for people like Bishop Desmond Tutu, who wept during one of such occasions. 
In Nigeria, how can we not remember clearly how the tears of late Sam Mbakwe, the then governor of Imo State (1979-1983), who was nicknamed the weeping governor, generated goodwill for him and his people. Also, Ernest Attah, the immediate past governor of Akwa Ibom State (1999-2007), who broke down in tears during the agitation for resource control and Supreme Court judgment on the onshore offshore oil dichotomy is a more recent reminder.
While not advocating that Jonathan or Buhari should break down in tears during campaigns, in my view, they owe Nigerians a huge debt of apology for the following mistakes:

GEJ for attempting to remove fuel subsidy and thus increase fuel pump price by 100% with the potential for exacerbating poverty in the country and for waiting till the visit of child rights advocate, Malala Yusufzai, before inviting parents of the kidnapped Chibok girls to Abuja to commiserate with them amongst others.

GMB on his part has to apologise for the judicial murder of the three Nigerian youths accused of drug trafficking who were sentenced to death with decree no  20, a law that was enacted after the alleged offence was committed which is retroactive justice.

The jailing of The Guardian newspaper journalists, Tunde Thompson and Nduka lrabor, for reporting the truth with decree no 4 which is a retroactive law similar to decree 20 in his bid to muzzle the press and the barbaric kidnaping, drugging and putting in a crate in the UK of ex transport  minister, Umaru Dikko, in 1984, in an attempt to forcibly and illegally bring Dikko back to Nigeria to answer corruption charges.

For sure, my list of public mistakes requiring apologies from the two contenders for Nigeria’s presidency in 2015 may not be exhaustive but it remains to be seen if any of the two presidential hopefuls think Nigerians deserve such nicety.
Nevertheless, whether Jonathan or Buhari chose the path of honour to apologise to long suffering Nigerians for their mistakes that have hurt them or not, the fact remains that with the murk so far raked up in the ongoing campaign, leaders will, going forward, think twice before formulating policies or making decisions that would hurt rather than help their fellow compatriots. That would be a positive and beneficial lesson to be gained from election 2015.
Source: 247nigerianewsupdate
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Entertainment

NIS victims compensation: Antics of a desperate President – APC

The All Progressives Congress has condemned President Goodluck Jonathan for compensating families that lost relatives in the 2014 Nigeria Immigration Service recruitment exercise stampede a whole year after the incident happened.
The party in a statement slammed the President for taking advantage of the situation to canvass for votes adding that but for the forthcoming elections, he would have reneged on his promises.
“The truth is that this President was forced to act because of the elections. Otherwise, why has it taken one year for the President to redeem his promise to the bereaved families? Why has his Administration not sanctioned those who sent innocent job seekers to their early graves after extorting them?
Why is the Interior Minister, Mr. Abba Moro, who presided over the deaths, still in office, virtually dancing on the graves of those innocent youths?
“Sunday, March 15th, will mark one year since those vibrant youths were lured to their deaths by a callous federal government that failed them in all ramifications, including the security of their lives and the assurance of their welfare, the raison d’etre of any government.
It is therefore utterly reprehensible, immoral and wicked for the same administration to seek to make political gains out of the needless tragedy,” it said
“After refusing to even visit the families of those school children in Buni Yadi and Chibok, the President suddenly woke up and started sending delegations to meet with them, all this because he needs votes.
As a parent himself, how will the President feel if he had been so treated? Why must the President put his re-election over and above everything else, including the welfare and security of Nigerians? Is there no limit to desperation.”
“No one is fooled by the antics of a desperate President, and in the fullness of time, Nigerians will show President Jonathan and his cohorts that they are not impressed by his pretend governance.” APC affirmed.
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President Jonathan's campaign Group incurs Blessing Okagbare's wrath

Nigerian track and field athlete, Blessing Okagbare has distanced herself from an advertorial tagged “GEJ Okagbare” run on electronic media in Nigeria by a certain GoodHouse Nigeria group.
The multi-awardwinning sprinter also slammed the presidential campaign organization for using her images in the footage without seeking her approval.
Okagbare expressed her disappointment via a statement released by her agent.
“Now, I am here struggling on my own to pay my coach, nutritionist, doctor and others to make sure I am in good shape for the All African Games and the IAAF World Championship in Beijing, China, later in the year, and some people back home are using my image and footage for presidential campaign advertorial without seeking for my approval.
“This is fraudulent because I am totally not in support of it. We called the people (GoodHouse Nigeria) and they denied using my image and footage for PDP presidential advertorial. Who did it then? Why are they lying? It is not about financial support. It is about me and what I represent,” she said.
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"Buhari was a gallant soldier but no one can cheat nature". Joseph Yobo writes

Ex Nigerian footballer turned partisan-politician, Joseph Yobo has questioned the health fitness of General Buhari for not showing up at the recently-held one million march organized by the APC in Lagos . His article is titled, “Mirror, Mirror On The Wall, Who Is The Fittest Of Them All?” Read below.
“For the sake of clarity, I must first point out that while all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, it is all work and no exercise that makes him an unfit one. 
From all indications earlier in the week, Friday 7th March, 2015 was meant to be a busy day for members and supporters of both the ruling People’s Democratic Party and the opposition All Progressives’ Congress.

In Abuja, there was a scheduled fitness march to keep the blood of Nigerian sports people along with party hierarchy and President Goodluck Jonathan, buzzing. An equivalent march in Lagos, billed initially to be a million-man march of opposition members was to hold in Lagos from Maryland to Teslim Balogun Stadium, Surulere.
As early as 8am, I and several other supporters of the President walked with him from Aso Rock to Eagle Square where we also jogged around. Some of the pictures from the walk have been swarming social media; one in particular stood out. It was that of President Jonathan doing the hop in an aerobics session.
Pictures of him working out in the gym have surfaced from time to time and this further proved that the man is mentally and physically fit to rule Nigeria. Immediately after the rally ended at 11am, he went back to the State House, freshened up and flew to pay courtesy visits to the Ooni of Ife and Owa Obokun of Ijesaland and attend rallies in their domain.
Enter General Muhammadu Buhari (rtd). After he and his party played hide-and-seek with Nigerians over his whereabouts, the man returned to the country and was conspicuously missing from a march that was the perfect opportunity for him and the top party brass to reassure their supporters that he was fit as a fiddle.
The job of president of a country with over 170 million people is a a tasking one and surely it would have been convenient for a man who insists he was on a two-week rest to have at least walked with the people who will vote him for say one-thirds of the march?
The party chieftains including Bola Tinubu and even its vice-presidential candidate, Prof. Yomi Osinbajo were present at the final stop, so why was the arrowhead of the campaign missing in action?
Why is the opposition shoving in our youthful faces, a grandfather who needs rest, an elder statesman who ought to be chilling in his country home in times like this? 
Assuming their candidate wins the presidential elections, will he disappear periodically too?
Nigerians must take a stand and decide to do what is right. Seeing is believing; we cannot saddle ourselves with a President whose health challenges will affect his output in office. General Buhari was once a gallant soldier but no one can cheat nature.
I, who by the grace of God and the support of sports loving President Jonathan led the Super Eagles to historic victory in the Africa Cup of Nations after a trophy less 19 years and having played football at the highest levels can boldly affirm that the secret to the game is in endurance, and the events of recent times point us to the fact that Nigeria needs just the man who stood and can last. The Game is on.

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Buhari is a better Christian than Jonathan |By: Ikechukwu Orji

It was Mahatma Gandhi who said he admired Christ not Christians. I guess he said this to remind people that most Christians are definitely not Christ-like.
One cannot claim to be a Christian when his attitude is opposite of the principle that we are called to live by. ‎There is no middle ground in this race.
It is either you are living like Christ or you are a pretender. People like pretending to be what they are not. It is for this reason that one writer defined hypocrisy as a tribute that vice pays to virtue.
There is absolutely nothing Christ-like in President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration. His policies are harsh towards the common man. He has done absolutely nothing for the poor of the land.
Rather, he has done a lot to favour the rich and eminent personalities. Any true Christian knows that God loves the poor and is earnestly seeking to do them good. He is seriously looking for those to use to render service to the poor.
It can only take a wicked man to increase the prices of petroleum products on a New Year day thereby causing immense hardship to numerous poverty stricken citizens. Any government that is anti poor is anti God.
Jonathan has refused to go after those who are squandering our patrimony. Corruption is rampant and he is pretending that all is well. You cannot be a follower of Christ and allow evil to run rampant around you. How long can we continue this dance of death?
How long are we going to allow these men from the forest of thousand demons to continue to desecrate our land? It is about time we chased them away. We need discipline and decorum in governance. And that is what Muhammadu Buhari is about.
Buhari is everything that Jonathan is not. He is disciplined, painstaking and has a visceral dislike for corruption. He has promised to confront corruption and he is just about the only politician that has the credential to do that.
He has done it before and he will do it again. The man cares passionately for the poor of the land and wants to do his bit to help them. Buhari is not a drunk and he is not in the business of running around with other people’s wives. As a Head of State, 11 out of 19 Ministers appointed by him were Christians.
Buhari showed leadership when a dangerous Islamic sect known as Maitatsine threatened our peace. He refused to register Nigeria as a member of the Organization of Islamic Countries and banned government sponsorship of pilgrimages to Mecca.
It is a well- known fact that his personal aides and domestic workers are mostly Christians and under him no one was victimized on the basis of religion.
It is on record that Jonathan is the first President to lead Nigerian delegation to the Organization of Islamic Countries in February 2013.
He has spent an average of $14 billion on 26, 000 Haji pilgrims annually from 2010. From all ramifications, Buhari has more Christian qualities than Jonathan.
Buhari’s government will focus on building a society that would begin to move the powers of a smothering federal government back to states and local government.
Government will be closer to the people and better aware of their real needs and wants. APC as party is open and beckoning to a majority of Nigerians not because we are handing out goodies to people but because we have a better proposal for them and their families.
As a transformational leader, Buhari is sure of what he wants happen and is extraordinarily strong-willed about it. He has one thing in mind instead of a variety of passing impulses.
He wants a society full of opportunities. In short, the key to a successful transformational leader is to keep your eyes focused on your goals. And the people’s general has a knack for ignoring unproductive criticism and feels neither threatened nor moved by it.
He is not one of such politicians that display so much pettiness and hostility that is simply not productive. Surely, Nigeria will be better under him.
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"Pres. Jonathan Misunderstood my Statements About Missing N30 Trillion” – Charles Soludo writes again.

My attention has been drawn this morning to an article entitled: “Jonathan Replies Soludo over “missing N30 trillion” claim”— extracting from Mr. President’s interview as published by Thisday newspaper.
ThisDay quoted Mr. President as saying that “Soludo said that under Ngozi’s watch they stole N30 trillion” but that since the sum of the federal budget over the last four years was less than N30 trillion, such an amount could not have been “stolen”.
According to the President, “it is all political”. I had earlier stated that I would not make further comments on the issues until probably after the elections but since Mr. President has decided to join the fray, I am constrained to make a further brief clarification.
For me, President Jonathan is a gentleman and a friend but I have a fundamental disagreement on his management of the economy. On the issues at stake, I believe that the pressures of office and the hectic electioneering campaigns have not allowed him time to read my articles or that his staff have not explained the contents to him hence he totally missed the point in his comments. For the avoidance of doubt, let me clarify as follows:
1. In my article entitled “Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and the Missing Trillions”, I presented some rough calculations covering: oil theft, money that ought to accrue to stock of foreign reserves, unbudgeted oil subsidy payments, customs duty waivers, leakages through the self-financing government parastatals, unremitted sums by NNPC, etc.
I concluded that section of my article by noting that: “I have a long list but let me wait for now. I do not want to talk about other ‘black pots’ that impinge on national security. My estimate, Madam, is that probably more than N30 trillion has either been stolen or lost or unaccounted for or simply mismanaged under your watchful eyes in the past four years”.
It is evident that the monies I referred to are “off-budget”. These are monies that did not make it to the budget. I find it funny that the Government deliberately avoided the issues raised above but instead has sought to divert attention by focusing on the “federal budget”.
Let me state for the record that I believe that the amount of resources that are either stolen from the economy or out-rightly mismanaged by government far exceeds the federal budget per annum.
Ours is about a N100 trillion economy, and I will be shocked if the government pretends that it does not know that currently about 10% of the GDP falls into a ‘black hole’ on annual basis.
We have not added figures based on counterfactual analysis such as the cost to the aggregate economy of bad or misguided economic policy. For example, in today’s Thisday newspaper, a headline news reports that “Aliko Dangote, Africa’s Richest Man, Loses $7.8 Billion as Naira, Stocks Plunge” while reporting that “In dollar terms, the devaluation has knocked more than $40 billion off the value of Nigeria’s economy”. Of course, most people predicted that oil prices would soon fall but we were caught unprepared, and today, the parallel market exchange rate is N225 to the dollar.
Thus, the kind of analysis in today’s Thisday is just one little example of the kind of collateral damages–’costs’ or ‘losses’– that mismanagement foists on the system. To repeat, my article did not focus on the federal budget: the mismanagement of the consumption budget and its unprecedented debt accumulation (with low value-for-money expenditures) are entirely different matters.
3. What I found particularly disconcerting as a Nigerian from the comments I read is the fixation to validation from the World Bank. According to Mr. President, “we asked the Minister how her colleagues at the World Bank saw the accusation”. I shook my head in disbelief. It is instructive that no one asked what Nigerians thought or ‘how Nigerians saw it’ but rather what was important to government was the impression of the World Bank. If this is the mind-set of our leaders, then ordinary citizens have real cause to worry.
Well, I have read several editorial comments of Nigerian media and they do not agree with the ‘impression’ of the World Bank official. I read a similar comment by a high government official stating that World Bank officials and CNN had told them that government was doing well and therefore who else could question them.
But neither the World Bank nor CNN conducts comprehensive independent surveys on the economy— they comment based on the data they are given— and their subjective “opinions” cannot substitute for hard facts.
The World Bank is not a statistical agency. I can provide a long list of countries that World Bank reports praised as ‘star performers’ and they slumped into deep crisis almost immediately after. 
Check out the World Bank and IMF reports on the US and other countries’ economies shortly before the unprecedented global financial and economic crisis in fifty years (the Great Recession of 2008/09).
Actually for many countries once they start getting such ‘praises’, then perceptive officials begin to worry. Nigeria is probably the only country where its government officials quote the World Bank while ignoring data from its own statistical agency!

A serious concern is that while government relies on external validation (opinion) as ‘proof’ of its performance, it is selective in the process—accepting the positive ones and disparaging the negative ones. Our recent exchanges illustrate the point. In my first article (26th January): “Buhari Vs Jonathan: Beyond the Elections”, I argued that “the economy seems to be on auto pilot, with confusion as to who is in charge, and government largely as a constraint.

There are no big ideas, and it is difficult to see where economic policy is headed to. My thesis is that the Nigerian economy, if properly managed, should have been growing at an annual rate of about 12% given the oil boom, and poverty and unemployment should have fallen dramatically over the last five years”. 

No one has credibly challenged the above, except what the Financial Times of London described as a “furious response by the Minister”. But, the influential Economist Magazine of London and New York Times agreed with us. According to the Economist editorial (7th February, 2015):

“… as Africa’s biggest economy stages its most important election since the restoration of civilian rule in 1999, and perhaps since the civil war four decades ago, Nigerians must pick between the incumbent, Goodluck Jonathan, who has proved an utter failure, and the opposition leader, Muhammadu Buhari….

The single bright spot of his rule has been Nigeria’s economy, one of the world’s fastest-growing. Yet that is largely despite the government rather than because of it, and falling oil prices will temper the boom. The prosperity has not been broadly shared: under Mr Jonathan poverty has increased. Nigerians typically die eight years younger than their poorer neighbours in nearby Ghana”. I gave the Government an “F” grade on economic management, and the Economist described its performance as “utter failure”.‎

The Economist also basically agreed with me that the re-basing of the economy and its observed ‘growth’ have nothing to do with government policy. Again, government has not credibly challenged the above or is the Economist’s view also ‘all political ‘? Government simply waved it off. My point is that if Government has to rely on the “impressions” of external bodies, then it should be consistent and comprehensive.
4. In conclusion, let me re-state that I firmly stand by my earlier statements. These are weighty statements which I weighed carefully before issuing. I appreciate that this is an election time and so attempts would be made to trivialize, or either play politics with, or divert attention from, them. In a serious society, we should have had a good debate on these matters as they could provide some of the building blocks in trying to pick the pieces after the elections.
Part of our citizen duty in a democracy is to raise such issues and demand for answers. In the meantime, I grant that our leaders are busy with campaigns but these issues won’t go away until we have a transparent resolution. Be assured that after the elections, we will be back with even more questions!‎
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Presidency wants Nigerians to re-elect President Goodluck Jonathan for these 12 reasons

In a piece titled, “Twelve reasons to support Jonathan,” and published in the latest edition of Villascope – the in-house magazine of the State House, Abuja; the presidency has listed 12 reasons why Nigerians should re-elect President Jonathan.

Here are the reasons;

(1) Road constructions

(2) Railway rehabilitation

(3) Remodelling of airports

(4) Transformed agriculture sector

(5) Increased access to education

(6) Increased access to housing

(7) Improved power supply

(8) Improved water supply

(9) Better health facilities

(10) Reformed security infrastructures (11) Economic transformation

(12) Increased Nigerians participation in downstream oil sector.

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