The die is cast and March 28 is for real; the date Nigerians will be going to the polls to decide who to lead them again in the coming years. Your vote is your power’ has in deed gained currency and eventually become a catchphrase we hear the world over during electioneering campaigns and Nigeria is not left out in this quest for credible leaders. During election eligible voters use their powers to bring about the desired change if such change is considered necessary. Today it is not in dispute that the change some Nigerians clamour for is already taking place under the exemplary leadership of President Jonathan. Most Nigerians are ignorant of this because the man at the helm is a silent performer who is not given in to blowing his trumpet.
This is what the All Progressives Congress capitalizes on to make this great achiever incapable and employ every derogatory adjective, put differently , to ‘disqualify’ him. Frankly, if you ask me President Jonathan has done exceedingly better than any of his predecessors living or dead. This, in fact , is not under contention considering the great feat that has been recorded in all sectors which is often downplayed by the mainstream opposition, the All Progressives Congress. Same is relayed to their party partisans that the President is an ineffectual lame duck , this is deception, terminological innexactitude and in fact a clear departure from the truth.
President Jonathan has succeeded in leaving his footprints on the sands of time resulting from munificence and magnanimity he has shown to the socially deprived children in the core Muslim north by building schools numbering over 120 to cater for their educational needs. These children who were once used for rituals by their task masters will eternally remain grateful to him for his messianic role in their lives. This is more than enough to send him back to Aso Rock, Nigeria’s seat of power in his bid to transform, regenerate and reposition Nigeria on the path of socio-politico and economic development. It is a thousand pities that the mainstream oppostion do not tell Nigerians the truth and where the truth wants to force itself out it is swiftly blanketed in lies and deception which is none other than a grave injustice to Nigeria and Nigerians.
As we tread cautiously and anxiously on the path to March 28 one incontrovertible fact we need bear in mind is that your vote is your power to decide your destiny. Your vote is your power to say NO to mongers of lies and deception who have been speaking to you in the appearance of Esau but in the deceptive voice of Jacob. That the Jonathan’s administration did not retain town criers to tell the world all he has done in the past six years to regenerate the country is not enough to allow enemies of progress who have metamorphosed into a cabal to ruin our future. He remains the best man for Nigeria’s plum job under the existing circumstances.
I have said it before and I am saying it again we have a man at the helm who is very tolerant with power, a living example of what can be and what he can accomplish in the realm of excellence and virtue. In his bid to rid the country of corruption he stregthened our institutions via elimination of physical contacts. Most transactions in the day-to-day conduct of government business in Nigeria are now done online because it will take a whole ocean of time to rid Nigeria of the cankerworm of corruption which has eaten deep into the social fabric of Nigerians. This calls the ghost workers to mind whose annual salaries told gravely on the Federation Account. President Jonathan’s administration detected this and rose swiftly to stop it. This scam has been on for years before President Jonathan got involved. Did Buhari not rule the country with the ghost workers siphoning money from the treasury? Why did he not detect this massive fraud? What about his other predecessors – IBB, Ernest Shonekan, Abacha, Abdulsalami Abubakar, Olusegun Obasanjo and late Umaru Yar ‘Adua.
What we have today which the world do not know is a new People’s Democratic Party. Jonathan employed wisdom and successfully separated the sheep from the goats and the goats that had destroyed Nigeria under the platform of the old PDP had no option but to defect to the opposition and resorted to propaganda to bring down this godsend in one sense and a mixed blessing in another. I heard a presenter on BBC today call Nigeria Africa’s largest economy, this is a fact the opposition has refused to admit and tell their partisans and followers. Who is the liar here? Who is the serpent here out to deceive their gullible followers?
The Jonathan administration does not control the supranational financial institutions which accorded Nigeria the new status nor does Nigeria influence any of their decisions. APC – a party given to lies and deception does everything within its bound to stop their gullible followers from knowing the truth and appreciate for once the untiring effort of this godsend at the helm? To what shall I compare these men? They are none other than vipers in human bodies who are bent on returning us to the proverbial vicious circle.
Iyoha John Darlington, aka Lington Donovan a social activist, political analyst and public commentator on national and global issues writes from Turin, Italy.
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