You voted for Jonathan, not PDP. That’s fine. Now you’ve got Jonathan; the worst PDP imaginable and Alamieyseigha as extra dividend. So, why are millions of My Fellow Countrymen complaining? From late 2010, until the last Sunday to the 2011 Presidential election that year, we drummed the message to ears that were blocked and brains that were turned off. The message was as clear as can be. DON’T VOTE FOR JONATHAN; YOU WILL REGRET IT.

Fellow Nigerians, see what you have done to GEJ. Plucked out of obscurity; promoted rapidly beyond his ability to govern; he is now desperate to continue. He is now blundering deeper into a political quagmire and taking the nation with him. He has finally got selected as Chairman of the Board of Trustees, a man who had served OBJ. The late president cared about Nigeria; because he came from solid Nigerian stock.

“The only battle that counts is the last battle”. Richard Neustadt, in POWER AND PRESIDENTS.
Nigerians, of course, deserve President Jonathan; you voted for him overwhelmingly. Even Obasanjo, who, last week, was at his hypocritical best, when delivering a lecture, in which he decried Nigeria’s lack of good leadership, should accept most of the blame for GEJ.

In almost twenty years of writing this column, I have never written any article in support of anyone because he is “my brother”; neither have I written one against anyone because he is not “my brother”. OBJ received the same treatment as Babangida, Abacha, Yar’Adua and, now, Jonathan.

For years, Reuben Abati, the President’s Senior Special Adviser on Media, was the Chairman of the Editorial Board of the paper which was the self-proclaimed “Flagship” of the print media. As such, it was generally expected that he would embody the spirit of that paper; he was, at least we believe, expected to have a conscience and to uphold the truth at all times. And for a long time, most people reading the Guardian, thought he fulfilled the two conditions.

The two chorus teams, those singing the hymn called by ex-Minister, Dr Obiageli Ezekwesili, and those rendering, off-key, the tune in support of President Jonathan, would like unwary Nigerians to believe that their verbal media slugfest is a contest between “good” and “evil”. It is nothing of the sort.

The floods of 2013 will soon visit their fury upon us; large scale destruction of properties will follow and the usual hand-wringing and official excuses will follow. Yet it is an axiom of management science that a disaster which occurred twice should not be allowed to occur a third time because, if it does, it means that those in charge are not alive to their responsibilities. Floods will be back again in 2013; more devastating than ever before. Are we better prepared this year than last year?

Nigerian GSM network owners are swindling Nigerians and smiling all the way to the banks – whose ATM machines also rob depositors mercilessly. If the government of Olusegun Obasanjo had planned to take Nigerians to the financial slaughter house, it could not have done it better than by introducing the GSM and licensing companies based in Nigeria, Asia and South Africa as the major carriers. High ethical standards are in short supply in those countries; that is certain.

TO be or not to be?” Shakespeare, 1564-1616 asked. That, again, is still the question. Whether or not we shall allow officials and their crazy convoys to continue to run us off the roads and kill us with impunity, this year will tell. I have no sympathy for any governor who gets maimed or killed because his crazy convoy had an accident.

NOTE: The Commissioner of Information was sending his assault, written on behalf of the Government of Akwa Ibom, while Attah and Akpabio were in church on Christmas Day. The seven patriotic leaders, who started the peace process, as well as other Nigerians, must ask themselves: “what is the purpose of going to church if fighting continues during the service”?

NOTE: This was not the original article scheduled for this day. But some issues intrude on the best made plans demanding urgent response. This is one of them; especially because i am involved as you will find out. Pardon me for this. Thanks.

When Reagan was contesting against Jimmy Carter, US President, 1976-1980, he asked Americans the same question over and over again, “Are you better off this year than four years ago?” Much as I hardly supported Reagan’s approach to governance because it represented “government of the rich by the rich for the rich” – a bastardisation of democracy, he left us with a metric for judging whether or not we had been well-served by governments, at Federal, States and Local government levels in 2012.

What a coincidence it has turned out to be. Just last week under the new addendum to my columns “CHIP SHOTS”, I made reference to the fact that the President of Nigeria had ten aircraft in his fleet; more than any other President in the world. Bearing in mind that our country is ranked 39th in the world in terms of GDP, and one of the poorest on earth, when we take into account that 70 per cent of our people live below the global poverty line, Nigeria’s Presidential Airlines should enter into the Guinness Book of Records for presidential impunity.

“We salute the men and women who kept our nation together, especially those who paid the supreme price…The only way we can honour their memory is not to re-open old wounds but to resolve that never again will our people’s blood be shed by their own people. We must harness our diversity to make our union perfect”. Governor Babatunde Fashola, at Colloquium Fair, held at Brown University, Rhode Island, USA by Professor Chinua Achebe.

NLNG is one of the big success stories in our country. From what I am told, the company has invested $13 billion since inception, and has become a pace-setter in terms of revenue generation for the government”. Minister of Trade and Investments, Dr Olusegun Aganga