By Joesf Omorotionmwan
THE average Nigerian journalist is today torn between the need to obey the biblical injunction of confessing positive at all time, particularly in the face of the perceived power of the tongue, coupled with the need to engage in image-laundering on matters concerning his nation on the one hand; and the general atmosphere of deceit around him on the other, that determining the real truth becomes a Herculean task.

For example, a situation in which the insurgents moved into an entire area and sacked many villages, including that of the nation’s chief security guard, without firing a single shot; determining the actual strength of the insurgents becomes extremely tasking – are they so strong or does somebody, somewhere, have a charge to make the nation so insecure so as to vitiate the possibility of holding the 2015 elections, thus creating conducive conditions for emergency rule? We have never stopped seeing the Goodluck Jonathan administration as one that may be willing to work for, and benefit from, its own confusion. All the same, 2015 provides a most frightening glimpse.

FROM LEFT: IGP SULEIMAN ABBA, SHOWING THE NIGERIA POLICE FORCE HUMAN RIGHTS PRACTICE MANUAL DURING A MEETING WITH SECURITY STAKEHOLDERS AND SENIOR POLICE OFFICERS IN ABUJA ON WEDNESDAY (12/11/14).WITH HIM ARE DIG LOGISTICS AND SUPPLY, MR MAMMAN TSAFE AND DIG TRAINING, MR SALIU HASHIMU

The past year was a year of fear, a year in which the administration feared so much that it took many panic measures – leaving undone many essential things it ought to have done; and doing many things it had no business doing. It created many fears into the future.

President Jonathan must remain in power by all means and at all costs. Nothing else counts. Just see how the Frankenstein monsters created by them are hunting them! Our President fled at the sight of Government Tompolo. After many years of pressure from the home front, Jonathan decided that it was time to do something definitive for the Niger Delta Region. The $16 billion Export Free Zone facility was quickly earmarked for Ogidigben. This was to be a good project intended to position gas as an alternative to over-reliance on oil and to generate jobs for our teaming youth population.

However, the project has since been mired by local conflicts between the Ijaw and the Itsekiri as to who owns the land on which the project was to be sited. In spite of this, Jonathan was so committed to the project that recently, he decided to go for the groundbreaking ceremony. On that fateful day, Government Tompolo, an Ijaw militant, threatened fire and brimstone that if Jonathan dared come down from his aircraft, he should regard himself dead.

Our President’s jet hovered over the area and returned to Abuja. That’s the type of fretting President we have! And that’s the type of fear we are carrying into 2015, plus the fact that in the battle field of the North East, Boko Haram is having a field day. Almost on a daily basis, territory after territory keeps falling into the hands of the insurgents and strange flags are being hoisted all over the place as if our military is on vacation.

When an enlightened State like Ekiti is consistently in the limelight, for the wrong reasons, there is cause for fear.

On November 17, seven members of the Ekiti House of Assembly, backed by the Nigeria police, “impeached” the Speaker of the 26-member House, Adewale Omirin, and installed a kangaroo speaker, one Olugbemi. Thus, Ekiti has now joined the league of States that run parallel legislatures – the PDP House and the APC House – and where, indeed, the majority could have its say but the minority must have its way, no thanks to the PDP administration.

This is the real fear. The 2015 elections could be the best that Nigeria never had. We do not see the Jonathan administration as one that would relinquish power when defeated at the polls. It has experimented long enough with minority rule in Rivers, Edo and now Ekiti State Assemblies. That could easily be a fall back position. Then we shall have parallel Executives all over the place, thus rendering elections useless.

We are not in a hurry to forget that on Thursday, September 25, 2014, in the same Ekiti State, the judicial arm of government was violated when political thugs invaded the State High Court premises, beat the Judge to polp and reduced his suits and court records to shreds.

That was the year that the cop fell slightly short of flogging the “legislative boys” out of their own Houses of Assembly and installing in each place, minority rule worse than the apartheid regimes we helped dislodge in the South African countries of those years. Somebody must begin to look for Ian Smith to apologize to him! The Jonathan administration is fast bringing Nigeria to the position that Smith occupied in the apartheid era.

What happened the penultimate Thursday at the National Assembly when members of the House of Representatives were locked out of their offices provides a watershed in the development of Nigeria’s democracy as the courageous legislators risked injury or even death to themselves: they served notice that Nigerians would no longer be cowed by a police force that has turned itself into an instrument of oppression in the hands of the Executive. Essentially, they were saying that Nigerians would no longer be ruled by rookies but by the will of the people reflected in their elected representatives.

Some pretenders have termed what happened on that Thursday as a show of shame on the part of serious-minded legislators simply because they scaled the gates to access their legitimate place of work. We are yet to see a serious worker, having serious business in his office, who would behave differently, if he were locked out of that office.

When the cop, the IGP, so-called, refused to recognize Hon. Aminu Tambuwal as the Speaker of the House of Representatives, not only did he exhibit crass insubordination, he also showed himself a complete ignoramus in the process of electing and removing the Speaker.

In other climes, that cop would have no right remaining in office a day longer! Is 2015 still possible?