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| Jonathan with former CJN, Katsina-Alu during his inauguration on May 29 |
On September 6, 2011, President Goodluck Jonathan and most of the state governors will clock 100 days in office for a term of four years.
Although it may seem so short a period to judge an elected public official running a four-year term, it has become an accepted tradition in Nigeria. The assessment of the performance of Jonathan and the governors is varied. While some believe that Jonathan has made some remarkable progress, there are those who argue that it has been a wasted period and a dismal outlook of a failed tenure.
The tradition was popularised by the 32nd president of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was able to accomplish much within his first 100 days in office. During his first 100 days in office, FDR, as he was fondly called, pushed 15 bills through Congress. Time magazine claims that the tradition dates as far back as Napoleon Bonaparte, because that was how long it took him to return from exile, reinstate himself as ruler of France and wage war against the English and Prussian armies before his final defeat at the Battle of Waterloo. It adds a note that it actually took him 111 days.
Time says, “Roosevelt had been in office barely 24 hours when he declared a four-day bank holiday and drafted the Emergency Banking Act, which helped to calm a financial panic that was quickly spiralling out of control. By the time he hit the 100-day mark, Roosevelt had instituted the ‘fireside chat’ tradition, called Congress into a three-month-long special session and passed 15 pieces of major legislation — the beginning of what would come to be known as the New Deal — which created everything from the Tennessee Valley Authority to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
“With farm credits, federal works projects and new financial regulations in place, the US of June 1933 was a substantially different place from that of 100 days earlier.”
Interestingly, Time adds, “One hundred days is a long time, and although the presidential progress report serves as a general gauge for the direction of the country, most administrations don’t achieve (or suffer) their greatest milestones until later.”
As Nigeria’s democracy is fashioned after the US model, the first 100 days in office have been used to predict how each administration, since President Olusegun Obsanjo was elected in 1999, has fared.
There is the general opinion that there is really nothing to write home in terms of the performance of either the governors in their second term or those first-term governors. It is the same rhetoric about promising the people an improved quality of life but short on delivery.
It has also been a theatre of the absurd in some states like Imo, where the governor appointed 100 aides, including a Chief Comedian of the State!
One common denominator between Jonathan and the governors is that they have yet to identify with the people’s yearnings for a reduction in the cost of governance.
Following the hospitalisation of President Umaru Yar’Adua in Saudi Arabia, Jonathan became the Acting President on February 10, 2010. Yar’Adua eventually died on May 5, 2010 and Jonathan was sworn in the next day as President.
He grappled with severe fuel shortages, insecurity, a fragile economy and fissures in his political platform, the Peoples Democratic Party. He struggled through the period and managed to obtain the party’s ticket to contest the presidential election on January 14, 2011 after defeating Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and Dr. Sarah Jibril.
His emergence as the party’s candidate ran against the zoning arrangement of the party and the North felt strongly that Jonathan, from the South-South, was ‘snatching’ its turn.
During his campaigns, Jonathan tried very hard to woo different segments of the Nigerian populace, by promising reforms.
A significant aspect of his campaign was the promise to spend only one term of four years. This was seen as a subtle way of appeasing the North.
The period of the elections was quite tenuous for Nigerians, with the callous murder of corps members in Bauchi State by rampaging mobs. There was also widespread violence in parts of the North, as murderous youths kicked against Jonathan’s victory.
In his 2,299-word speech after he was sworn in on May 29, Jonathan promised to transform the economy and fight for an improved quality of life for all Nigerians.
No sooner had Jonathan begun his tenure than he had to contend with security threats.
Interestingly, he made no direct mention of his determination to confront security challenges in his entire inauguration speech.
The best he came to talking about security was vague pledges that under his administration, Nigeria would play its role as a responsible member of the international community. Although he referred to the killing of corps members, there was no mention of how his administration would deal with the situation. At best, Jonathan merely condemned the murder of the corps members.
It appears the Islamic sect, Boko Haram, carefully studied Jonathan’s speech and decided to intensify its bloody campaign. Sadly enough, Jonathan became a visitor to scenes of bomb attacks and bloody violence.
At each turn, his Inauguration Day promise to fight for the future of ordinary Nigerians is being questioned by the same people who voted him with much enthusiasm.
Infrastructure is depreciating by the day while security agencies appear to have no idea how to carry out their mandate.
There is hardly any road network in Nigeria that is free of potholes. Across the length and breadth of the nation, the death toll from road accidents is alarmingly high.
It took Jonathan over one month to constitute his cabinet, due to pressure from disparate interests in his party and various groups. He eventually constituted his cabinet in batches, attracting international figures like the Managing Director of the World Bank, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Prof. Barth Nnaji and Mrs. Omobola Johnson to his team.
Jonathan has been able to engage the international community constructively, building on interactions gained as Acting President and President, before the 2011 elections.
As ECOWAS chairman, he was able to rally the sub-regional bloc in December 2010 to force the exit of recalcitrant Ivorian leader, Laurent Gbagbo four months later.
Building on this momentum, Jonathan was one of the few African leaders that came out boldly on August 23, 2011 to ask Libyan despot, Muammar Gaddafi, to quit. He followed it up by recognising the National Transitional Council of the Libyan rebels as the legitimate leaders of the people. This was against the general feeling among African leaders, especially South Africa, as it was only Nigeria and Egypt that recognised the rebels.
Within his first 100 days, Jonathan has also been able to attract high-profile visits from world leaders.
These include British Prime Minister, David Cameron and German Chancellor, Angela Merkel.
He also organised $2m assistance in food aid for famine-ravaged Ethiopia on behalf of Nigeria.
But there is the belief that by attending the inauguration of despots like Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, Jonathan is not sending a strong message about his administration’s avowed commitment to democracy.
Although Jonathan signed the Minimum Wage Act 2011 in March, his administration did not take its implementation seriously.
It was not until organised labour moved to actualise its threat of a three-day warning strike that his administration took serious steps to implement the law. Some governors are yet to implement the law.
On the economy, his promise to create jobs through robust industrial development and reforms is yet to be actualised. Flowery speeches by his ministers such as Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (Finance) and Mr. Olusegun Aganga (Trade and Investment) have yet to translate to real growth in the economy, job creation, infrastructural development, etc. Instead, Nigerians have had to contend with rising prices of goods and foodstuff, with the spectre of the government’s planned withdrawal of fuel subsidy hanging in the air.
It was during Jonathan’s first 100 days that governors turned to public retailers of kerosene, hoping to use it to gain political capital.
The price of cement has risen sharply, in spite of Jonathan’s intervention and industries are increasingly finding it hard to cope with issues such as multiple taxation, insecurity, high operating cost, decrepit infrastructure and government insincerity.
His controversial endorsement of the suspension of the President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Isa Salami, and proposal for a single tenure for the president and governors are two areas that have hit his approval ratings badly.
Today, insecurity and public confidence are Jonathan’s biggest challenges. A few hours after he was sworn in on May 29, Boko Haram bombed a drinking spot at Zuba, killing about 10 people.
The bomb attacks on the headquarters of the Nigeria Police Force and the United Nations’ building, both in Abuja, significantly reduced Jonathan’s global rating. Going by public comments and reactions to his posts on Facebook, Nigerians are beginning to wonder if they were not misled into voting Jonathan.
His refusal to replace the top echelon of the security agencies has left many wondering if Jonathan is actually in charge.
All in all, impressions about his first 100 days are varied.
The National Coordinator, Human Rights Writers Association, Mr. Emmanuel Onwubiko, believes Jonathan is not focused.
He says, “The current administration started on a very wrong footing when it introduced a diversionary political agenda of proposing constitutional reforms to change the two terms allowed for the governors and the President to a six-year single term.
“The government, by this singular action, has demonstrated a clear misplacement of priority and lack of responsiveness to the yearnings of the populace, who are largely unemployed, poor, buffeted and overwhelmed by unprecedented state of insecurity and high crime rate and abysmal performance of the operatives of the Nigerian security community, especially the police. The first 100 days of the current administration headed by President Goodluck Jonathan have brought anything but good luck to Nigerians because for the very first time in the political annals of Nigeria, suicide bombers struck on two occasions in the federal capital city and precisely in the Force Headquarters of the Nigeria Police and unfortunately heads did not roll as if it is permissible for heads of security agencies to fail spectacularly to perform their constitutional duties and nothing by way of reprimand or punitive measures are meted out to such failures in sensitive public offices.
“Corruption and economic crimes have assumed larger than life dimension since May 29 and the statutory institutions created to fight these hydra-headed monsters of economic crimes (EFCC and ICPC) have since gone to sleep, while political office-holders like governors and ministers are feasting on the public funds kept in their care.
“The result of this unrestrained looting spree is that basic infrastructure such as roads and electricity have become comatose, leading to further unemployment because factories and operators in the real manufacturing sector are closing shops and moving to the neighbouring countries of Ghana and even Liberia, where electricity is evidently regular and the bad state of the entire federal roads in the South.”
Seasoned public relations expert, Osita Ike, agrees with Onwubiko.
“One hundred days down the road and I find myself asking, Quo Vadis? Which way Nigeria? Why does the elegant ship, SS Nigeria, seem adrift, even when we hear the engines running at full throttle and believe Capt. Goodluck is at the helm, in full control? Do we need more than random good luck?
“Why do I suddenly feel much more insecure, more helpless, less certain of tomorrow? Even when we proclaim God is a Nigerian? There have been lots of promises, plenty talk, but we desperately want action and leaders who will work the talk.
“Bomb blasts will soon be as regular as NEPA isn’t. Youth restiveness threatens a re-enaction of the bloody Arab Spring. The farcical comedy of errors at the head of the judiciary nauseates. Expired presidents ridicule our commonsense with general verbal combat in print, hunger and disease are gaining ground and unemployment gloats in the face of untapped potential in agriculture.”
However, the National Coordinator, Raymond Dokpesi Annual Lecture, Mr. Chris Ebuetse, disagrees.
His words, “The Nigerian project requires time, given the many years of misrule. Hundred days are relatively small to carpet the leadership of Dr. (Goodluck Ebele) Jonathan. He, however, must not allow the Nigerian project to overwhelm him. He must understand the tasks before him are daunting
“The people have suffered years of neglect and misrule; so, they are becoming impatient and want an immediate and automatic solution to the barrage of problems which confront the Nigerian state. There is the yearning by the people for him to fix the economy, I mean give electricity to the people, create employment for the teaming Nigerians who are not employed, face industrial development, provide good roads, improve the education and health sectors, provide food by investing in massive agriculture.
“The people will wish that the naira will gain value to improve our international trade and the banks also have a role to play in the policy thrust of any administration and the economy of a country.
“Governors like Babatunde Fashola, Chubuike Amaechi, Adams Oshiomhole have done well. In the South-East, the governors are becoming competitive in what they will leave as a legacy for their people. Enugu State Governor Sullivan Chime has a high commendation and my visit to Abia State, Theodore Orji gives a paradigm shift and his policy thrust today appears a lot better and more focused. We hear Rochas Okorocha often; his moves and by his pedigree, he must show the way to success and deliver his people.
“For the northern part of Nigeria, the security challenge has become so high. No state or country can do well when the security position is at its ebb. In the past 100 days, some states in the North are in shred. It is a fact that the country has to grapple with.
“Boko Haram has overrun Borno and Bauchi states; Plateau State has continued to witness violence and crisis; so, how do we rate that any meaningful development has taken place when peace is not ensured? In all, while some governors are working hard to move their states forward, other states are overwhelmed by security challenges, and my view is that the country needs stability to move ahead.
“This has become the biggest challenge of the Jonathan administration. They are the problems which he did not create, but seem to have held his administration by the jugular. They are corruption, insecurity and lack of electricity. If he succeeds with this, history will be fair to him as the 14th President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.”
It may be almost 100 days, but it may be early days yet to assess how Jonathan and the governors will turn out at the end of the four years.
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