Happy Birthday President Goodluck Jonathan
Last night I drove through the city in search of Children Homes I’d donate gifts to. There was none in sight. I was shocked by this revelation. I was in a jubilant mood having just opened yet another branch of my food processing company. In the past year my company employed three thousand graduates and they are the highest earners on the continent just like other Nigerian workers. Unlike in the not-too-long-ago days, we did not spend a dime on generating our own power because we don’t even have a generator. What would you need one for when power has not blinked in the past 24 months? I had just gone to celebrate with the great former Nigerian President whose birthday was yesterday. It was in his time we started our journey to greatness and the greatness we are witnessing today started from when the voice of the people started to matter and the ruling elite heeded to the call of wisdom. Today, Nigeria is not amongst the world’s top 20 economies but all the rating agencies agree that Nigeria was bound to be in the top 10 within the next decade even as it is the most profitable place to do business in the world. Nigerians have always marked the birthday of President Goodluck Jonathan as the day of national prosperity…
Then the sounds of cars honking their horns woke me up. I am still homeless and dwelling under the Falomo Bridge just beside the Muri Okunola Park. Something grabbed at my stomach but there was nothing except the reality of hunger. I had not tasted any form of food for almost 50 hours. I had walked away to help mum out after she was evicted from the house dad had paid 3 years in advance for. Dad died twelve months into the hostile regime of the president that virtually declared war on the Nigerian masses. Dad was a middle class self-employed man until each policy upon policy of the administration took something out of his finances and eventually everything out of his health. It had been reported that the middle class that had returned during the Olusegun Obasanjo years was almost entirely wiped out just 6 years after his presidency. It had started like a joke but for each hurting policy the people had shouted “we will resist it!” but each had stood because no one came out to show any signs of their angst. So policy by policy, month by month, rich men became poor, poor men gave up the ghost, then the rich men that got poor joined them. Then the children appeared on CNN and Aljazeera not for their beauty but for their looks. They had become the representation of global hunger and destitution.
Dad lived just metres from my current inhuman dwelling at Eko Court here in Victoria Island, but here I am awaiting the moment death would come. Death will certainly come because I saw death the previous night…Two other friends of mine had just dropped dead walking to the Bar Beach area. That was the new trend, people dropping dead…
Then I finally woke up. This time it was real. I had been dreaming all along. This morning the calendar says 20th November and it strikes me as I remembered my president would be celebrating his birthday today. Those that have benefitted from his rule will pay N100,000,000.00 for each newspaper in the land to wish him a Happy Birthday but who says this day makes the nation happy? They will praise and congratulate him for being the best thing that ever happened to this country. Others will look on wondering why the same man appears to be a curse on the land. I am here totally in disagreement with both ends. The man is yet neither close to be the best thing that has happened to this country but going by his intentions, inactions, actions and plans my second dream would become reality only within 24 months.
This man has everything in the world to be a great Nigerian president, but as far as today goes he is on the verge of another extreme and that extreme though has greatness in its description, but it is more like the greatness of failure than that of success. Happy Birthday Mr. President Goodluck Jonathan… What would you want Nigerians to remember you for a great president or a great failure? Think about it because at 54 years of age life will end someday and only your works will remain…
The illiterate and ill-educated blindly and sentimentally voted for you when you claimed to be a member of their class, a dream they wished for themselves… a man with no shoes going to live at Aso Rock as President but today you are turning out to be their worst nightmare… Like myself, pretend to be an ordinary man, enter the cabs of Abuja or take an okada in Lagos and ask these former friends of yours what they now think of you… I know what they think of you and if PHCN restores power before this battery of my system goes out I’ll write Conversations With Old Friends of President Jonathan. Yes, they were naïve and biased but they gave you their votes and the least you can do is remember them. Happy birthday president Jonathan you’ve got it all in your hands… whether your name will bring regret, pain and curses from the mouths of the masses or whether your name will be the sound of national greatness and prosperity, it’s in your hands sir. Happy Birthday sir. May the Lord give you the wisdom to hear the truth and abide in it. It is in your hands sir you will be a great one…between president and failure…you will be a great one. Happy birthday Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, President Federal Republic of Nigeria.
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