By Rotimi Fasan

IT was and still is the single most talked-about issue in Nigeria in the last one year. Although its existence predated the Goodluck Jonathan administration, insurgency has been that single elephant of an issue that has dominated the room of national discourse in the last one year. It brought activists campaigning for the return of the Chibok girls out on the roads of Abuja on Christmas day 2014. It was on the lips of the hundreds of thousands of Nigerians that have been displaced from their homes in different parts of the north-east, and their families. The Pope didn’t forget to mention it in his Christmas message. And it would continue to dominate news about Nigeria until an end is put to it.

2014 would be best remembered by Nigerians as that year in which marauding bands of castaways took on a national army and all but succeeded in putting it out of business. Not only was the Nigerian armed forces routed in series of encounters with the insurgents, many times members of the armed forces perpetrated acts of sabotage against their own organization, became mutinous and turned their weapons on their own commanders. The discipline for which professional armed forces are famous around the world; the focus that gave the Nigerian armed forces a place of pride in Africa, was nowhere to be seen among those sent to the frontline to confront the insurgents. Poorly motivated and without the right or required resources to take on Shekau’s killers, the soldiers became their own worst enemies. 2014 must have the record for the highest number of soldiers sentenced to death for unsoldierly conduct. And except things get worse (which nobody prays for), its record would be hard to beat for a long time.

The tragedy that made the past year, perhaps, the worst for the Nigerian military started with the abduction of over 200 school girls from their school in Chibok on 14 April 2014. For many weeks following this unfortunate event, the Jonathan administration didn’t seem bothered to say nothing of knowing how to go about ensuring the rescue of the girls. But after many weeks of passing the buck and feeding Nigerians outright lies about the true condition of the school girls; indeed after Abuja could no longer turn a deaf ear to global outcry to bring back the girls, the government finally started rousing itself from its deathly slumber. It made some gestures in the direction of seeking assistance from the rest of the world to rescue the girls. But after these apparent attempts at rescuing the girls, nothing worthy of report to Nigerians has since happened. Surely, since the initial abduction in April, far more girls, their brothers, sisters and parents have been either abducted, displaced from their homes or killed by the same wanderer groups President Jonathan promised to bring to account on different occasions. As 2014 went into the ages, our dear president was still making promises to bring back the girls, improve the economy and make life more secure for Nigerians.

Scene of the blast.

The next few weeks are bound to be very busy and interesting. With the February presidential elections within sight, this government can have nothing for Nigerians other than its strategy to fight for its existence. A multi-billion Naira war chest is already in place. While oil prices continue to crash and state governments are struggling to meet their wage bills amid a belt-tightening regime of austerity imposed by Abuja, President Goodluck Jonathan was able to raise over N21 Billion in one single day to prosecute the war to keep his office. There is no doubt that more money would still be raised up to the eve of the election and beyond. Nigerians are perhaps now getting some insight into where and for what the billions of Naira that have either been declared missing or unaccounted for at the NNPC are. Of course, President Jonathan wouldn’t be the first to rake in so much electoral funds in questionable circumstances. But Nigerians would have expected him to copy the most appealing and admirable qualities of his predecessors, not their excesses.

After six straight years in office as president, Goodluck Jonathan ought to be confident enough to run his campaign on the record of his achievement. He ought not to allow any kind of under the table tactics in the prosecution of his reelection bid. But that increasingly seems a taller order than he can cope with. The reasons for this should be clear to any Nigerian. There are no records to speak of in real terms. Much of what the administration catalogues as achievements are nondescript efforts it should be ashamed of. On the question of security, for instance, this administration has failed abysmally. Otherwise, we would not be talking of 2014 as Nigeria’s year of insurgency. Which is another way of saying that the past year was one of insecurity. The violence at the level of actual hostilities was just without compare. It was no less so at the systemic level with many state governments now unable to meet their obligations by their workers and contractors. What then is there to cheer about this administration beyond the chest-thumping rhetoric of its ministers among other professional praise-singers and lackeys?

The past year was what it was because of the incompetence of the drivers of our national locomotive. They have failed to live up to expectation. Their incompetence threatens to bring the national house down on us all. A president that came into office on a groundswell of national goodwill, at least in the southern part of this country, has squandered so much of it that its goodwill account is now in overdraft. If Nigeria must look to a better future it cannot continue at this level in which a national government rolls out the drum to celebrate the fact that its petroleum minister, in her capacity as Nigeria’s representative, became the first woman president of OPEC. If this is the kind of achievement that the Jonathan administration feels happy celebrating, then Nigerians have very little to look forward to from it even if they cannot be sure that the alternative might be better. It surely doesn’t look like it could be worse. If anything, things could get better.

Providence has been kind to President Goodluck Jonathan as it has been kind to all of those who have had the privilege of ruling this country. That privilege must not be turned into a right or, indeed, a matter of sentiments in which anything but ability is allowed to determine who becomes Nigeria’s president in February 2015. Goodluck Jonathan may be a good person. He may want the best for Nigeria. But his personal goodness or well wishes cannot substitute for competent and able leadership.