Association of Ex-Jonathan Ministers
The Association of Ex-Jonathan Ministers as Garba Shehu, Presidential spokesman, called Dr Abubakar Olanrewaju Suleiman and other ministers who served ex-President Goodluck Jonathan during the five years of his dishonourable administration, are beginning to find their voice in the face of relentless efforts to get them to account for their services to the country. The Jonathan ministers are tussling over the ownership of improvements in “power sector...national security...and social services.” What I really don’t understand is why improvements in this regard, which “are products of solid foundations laid by the Jonathan administration”, should manifest now. Did Jonathan programme his administration in such a way that the “solid foundations” of his “transformation” should begin to bear fruits just after he is thrown out of power?
These ministers can’t complain about media lynching, because except for NTA and Radio Nigeria, Nigerian media is dominated by private owners a sizeable chunk of which belongs to the Niger Delta people, so I don’t see why they should not be defending one of their own if Jonathan is really such a great leader. The Jonathan ministers have their money to hire lawyers to defend anything left of their reputation. If they feel already threatened, nothing stops them from going to court ahead of the Buhari government; on the other hand, if they are sincerely untroubled by the government’s investigation as they indicated twice in the sixth paragraph of their press statement, then they should calm down and wait for the court’s verdict on their stewardship. It’s unthinkable for the country’s media to shift loyalty so soon after Jonathan has “transformed” the country. By the way, the ex-Jonathan ministers mentioned transformation only once in their media statement.
Jonathan ministers should understand that Buhari’s merciless but sincere fight against corruption is wholly welcomed by citizens and is about the best thing that’s happening to Nigeria since independence. We cannot continue to allow conscienceless and unrepentant public officials many of whom have soiled their hands to seize the grounds and glorify the sordid details of their maladministration. It’s funny that the speaker of the assembly of these former ministers is asking Buhari to publish their handing over notes, what stops the offended side from doing so?
In the meantime, our ex-ministers should note that no one believes that 25, 000 kilometres of the country’s roads were repaired or rehabilitated by the Jonathan government. What we do know is that for more than ten years, the Jonathan government had been unable to complete the much advertised dualisation of the Abuja-Lokoja Road, the EastWest Road, the Kano-Maiduguri road as well as the 2015 election campaign stunt of Lagos-Ibadan Jonathan’s government
may well be the most extravagant in the history
of our country. As at the last budget, they were still earmarking billions of Naira for food in Aso Villa and for the purchase of yet another
aircraft for air jamboree. Over time, they budgeted $5 billion for security and ended up borrowing $1 billion to buy obsolete
weapons; this cannot be but an irresponsible
government expressway rehabilitation. What Jonathan government repeatedly promised was the construction of the above mentioned roads that we could possibly drive on, not the rehabilitation of 25,000 kilometres of roads that cannot be located anywhere in the country.
It is outlandish for Dr Abubakar Suleiman to claim that Jonathan instituted “transparency and integrity in the oil and gas sector” when we are well aware that they ran the most unstable regime of oil and gas exploitation. In the five years of the Jonathan administration, they had five different Managing Directors for NNPC; what manner of transparency and integrity could have inspired this? It is also disrespectful of the Jonathan administration to say they ordered investigations into misdeeds in the oil sector when those investigators have already told us that they were denied access to the most vital documents required to do the job. In any case, the summary of the investigation is that money is missing, read: stolen. As for oil theft, Jonathan’s ministers should not even go there because it is on record that the stealing of Nigeria’s petroleum reached its apogee under his obnoxious presidency.
We remember such heart breaking scandals still weighing heavily against Jonathan’s clueless government, including pension administration scandal; oil subsidy scandal; Malabu Oil scandal; Rural Electrification Board scandal; Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria Scandal (where are the multimillion signatures committed to Jonathan 2015 re-election?); $500 million alleged Jonathan Aviation Village farm in Abuja, etc. No country has had such a long list of scandals in a space of five years.
Jonathan’s government may well be the most extravagant in the history of our country. As at the last budget, they were still earmarking billions of Naira for food in Aso Villa and for the purchase of yet another aircraft for air jamboree. Over time, they budgeted $5 billion for security and ended up borrowing $1 billion to buy obsolete weapons; this cannot be but an irresponsible government. The claim that Jonathan operated a single treasury account (TSA) is derisory; where were the national revenue leakages coming from? Just where did Jonathan and his ministers get the foreign currencies that they were alleged to have shared on the eve of the election?
Apparently, the Jonathan ministers wrote their media statement in a hurry and thus omitted some of their foremost “achievements.” How could these ministers forget so soon that they “rehabilitated the railways”? Don’t the Jonathan ministers also remember that they “remodelled the airports”, didn’t they consult Stella Oduah? Did it escape the Association of ex-Jonathan ministers that they also created “millions of jobs”?
Don’t mind Dr Suleiman; though he was a Jonathan minister, he was an outsider and pretty oblivious of the shady deals allegedly embarked upon by some of his colleagues. Obviously, Jonathan and his ministers are troubled by their collapsing “Republic of Liars” (all rights reserved for Wole Soyinka). The Speaker of Association of Ex-Jonathan ministers, Dr Abubakar Abubakar Olanrewaju Suleiman’s media hysteria is akin to the skunk beginning to fart knowing that the hunter is closing in on his habitat. Buddari ya fara tusa.