By Michael Egbejumi-David<\/p>\n
I watched Mrs Jonathan\u2019s meeting on Channels TV and came away with more than mixed feelings.<\/p>\n
As I watched this important gathering that Mrs Jonathan had pulled together on the back of lack of results in the case of the abducted school girls of Chibok in Borno State, my immediate impression was that, chai, with the right handling, this lady could be a good leader.\u00a0 And since we are already being led, or must be led by a Jonathan, we are probably being governed by the wrong one.<\/p>\n
Then, lamentably, Mrs Jonathan veered off and went the way of\u2026well\u2026Mrs Jonathan.\u00a0 She began to want to conflate matters and lay the wrong emphasis on the wrong things.\u00a0 But, doesn\u2019t matter; Mrs Jonathan had done something that, in the beginning, was certainly right; something that needed to be done and should have been done long before then.\u00a0 Through her small meetings, Mrs Jonathan managed to upstage her husband and, in fact, achieved in a couple of days more than the President and his security chiefs have achieved in damn near three years.\u00a0 Her intervention was more dynamic and shone more light on some pertinent issues –\u00a0 not like the occasional photo op talk-shop we get from the President.<\/p>\n
Sometimes, a leader just has to lead; period.\u00a0 Mrs Jonathan, in her own garrulous way, did just that at the end of last week.\u00a0 She had dragged before her some of the dramatis personae in this whole sordid Chibok matter.\u00a0 Through her effort, we can now see that there has been a method to Boko Haram\u2019s madness all along.\u00a0 We now know that apart from churches, Boko Haram appears to have been deliberately targeting schools with largely Christian students or in largely Christian populated areas.<\/p>\n
Through Mrs Jonathan\u2019s effort, we also found out that the governor of Borno State, Kashim Shettima, despite West African Examination Council\u2019s (WAEC) advice to the contrary, deliberately left the school (a State school) open for exams and therefore left it vulnerable to what subsequently befell those girls.\u00a0\u00a0 Mr Shettima refused for the students to be moved to relatively safer examination centres in Maiduguri.\u00a0 Instead, he wrote to WAEC assuring them that adequate security will be provided for the school.\u00a0 Obviously, adequate security wasn\u2019t provided; look what has happened!\u00a0 You can begin to see why Mrs Jonathan veered off tangent and gave in to her more impulsive, antediluvian and suspicious side.<\/p>\n
This should give all of us a pause.\u00a0 The rest of us and Mr Jonathan need to rethink our approach to this menace.\u00a0 Furthermore, I was shocked to hear the President say that we do not have a modern army.\u00a0 We don\u2019t?\u00a0 What then has been happening to all the billions that go into Defence budgets every year?\u00a0 So, in a way, I was relieved to learn that the Americans are coming to help us out.\u00a0 At this point, any help would be better than what has obtained for three long weeks.\u00a0 However, it would be best if the Americans assist from the \u2018rear\u2019 so that their humanitarian intervention doesn\u2019t turn into another theatre of good versus evil confrontation.\u00a0 My guess is that the cowardly Boko Haramites are still holding on to the school girls in the forest as human shields.\u00a0 What an ordeal!<\/p>\n
And this is why I disagree with Ms Iyabo Obasanjo who in a recent open letter to Boko Haram likened that group to a revolutionary one.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know whether Ms Obasanjo\u2019s take was informed by her ongoing walk down the cathartic path, but to christen Boko Haram a revolutionary group sounds too close to blasphemy.\u00a0 If anything, Boko Haram is the military arm of one half of the exploitative and thieving cabal that holds Nigeria down.\u00a0 Their current campaign is directed squarely at the people \u2013 the exact opposite definition of a revolution.\u00a0 After maiming and killing fellow citizens, their leaders can often be found cooling off in the inner recesses of the mansions and guest houses of cabal members.<\/p>\n
This is why I spit whenever I hear another one of their leaders carp that Jonathan should not seek re-election because of his lack of vigour in combating insecurity in the country.\u00a0 This is coming from the same people who told us that they will make the country ungovernable.\u00a0 It is like a tenant who lets into the house his sticky-fingered prodigal son only to turn around and blame the gateman for his missing briefcase.<\/p>\n
Their Boko Haram has taken up arms against the State, not in a revolutionary fervour but to criminally avenge an election loss.\u00a0 Do revolutionaries drive past schools of the privileged, head for schools for ordinary folks and gun down sleeping students in their beds?\u00a0\u00a0 Do revolutionaries drive past opulent mansions and other obscene edifices of graft and go bomb a motor park for the exclusive use of ordinary folks?\u00a0 I don\u2019t think so.<\/p>\n
It really burns me that Mr Jonathan continues to refuse to pick up the sponsors of Boko Haram.\u00a0 What really is stopping him?\u00a0 I don\u2019t at all understand this kind of leadership model.<\/p>\n
So I found Mrs Jonathan\u2019s effort and contribution (which sadly later degenerated into a spectacle) in unravelling this national heartbreak refreshing.\u00a0 We just wish Mr Jonathan could be more like her in some aspects.<\/p>\n
demdem@hotmail.co.uk<\/p>\n
Twitter: demdemdem1<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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