Wednesday 12 September 2012

Before we praise the president

Before we praise the president


Before we praise  the president

BY DAN ONWUKWE
If President Goodluck Jonathan has an Achilles Heel, it is his proclivity to make talk cheap. But if he must avoid inflicting wound upon himself, walking the talk is what Nigerians want to see, that is, translating promises into concrete results. Performance is the key. The essence of presidential leadership is all about performance, making things happen, things that will impact on the lives of the citizens and the country. Undoubtedly, the power to achieve result is always there for an president to use. But few presidents realize this.
Fortunately, Nigeria is one country where the president has almost limitless power if he wants to achieve results for himself and the people who elected him. As they say, how a king chooses his own coronation is entirely his choice. All over the world, an elected president does not need to beat his chest for people to know if he is doing well. There are three basic indices that determine performance. These are employment generation, inflation and security of lives and property. How has president Jonathan fared on this scale? It is beyond question that Jonathan is aware that current public opinion of his performance is one of the worst of any elected public official. He knows that, and indeed, did open a robust debate on his performance when he spoke at the recent Annual Conference of the Nigerian Bar Association in Abuja.
He labeled himself as the “most criticized president in the world”. He declared his wish that before 2013 runs its full course, he would become the “most praised president in the world”. He said he was not perturbed by criticisms. “I am used to it even as Governor of Bayelsa state”, he remarked. But he did bemoan where he has now found himself. Unable to rationalize why he has been severely criticized, and his conviction that he is right, and his critics wrong, a situation that often permits a president to spend quality time searching for answers, on why things have gone awfully wrong, Mr. President asked rhetorically and ruefully: “where there roads in the country before and within two years Jonathan came and brought flood to wipe them away?”
Again, he turned to his critics and asked: “if they say Boko Haram is doing all this rubbish because of poverty, did Jonathan come within two years to cause drought which destroyed the irrigation fields in the North and caused poverty?” On his own, the President’s spokenman, Dr. Renben Abati, who, like his boss, has been under pressure to perform, laboured to do a damn damage control by excoriating the president’s critics in many newspapers a few weeks ago. All of this shows a president who feels he is under siege to deliver on his electoral promises, but has been unable to find that mechanical ability to perform. He sees a negative force, imaginary enemies intent upon destroying him. Often, this is what happens when a president is running aground.
It starts when a president begins to build an “enemy centre”, and confuse his own destiny with that of the country. He sees his own misjudgments to be the result of the misdeeds of his predecessors. The problem with such feeling, as the president Jonathan does now, is that the fear in the ability of the enemy creeps in. And when a leader is obsessed with such fear, failure becomes the likely outcome. Often, this feeling is imagined. It is not real. It results in living in denial. In such atmosphere, the president feels deprived of support and besieged by critics.
He doesn’t see the power of the office he occupies and how to use it, and the intensity of his own conviction which is necessary for him to overcome the challenges staring him in the face. That’s when the blame game comes in, and a feeling of “done in” by critics becomes an “occupational disease” that afflicts the mind of a leader, and holds him down from meeting the expectations of the people and even his own expectations. History proves that suspicion of a motive by a leader, of his critics, is a potent instrument for self-destruction, rather than focus on his own lack of strength, self-belief, conviction, hesitancy and vacillation to act in the face of clear and present danger.
The challenge posed by Boko Haram is a classic case of this hesitancy and vacillation on the part of this administration. I see a disturbing parallel between Jonathan and Lyndon Johnson when he was faultering in the America presidency, particularly during the Vietnam war in the sixties and his eroding public acceptance. Johnson always imagined himself surrendered by critics. He didn’t spare the media. He regarded the media, especially the newspapers, as instruments by his enemies to pull him down. Hear what Johnson said about newspaper columnists: “they turned against me because it was in their self-interest to do so, because they know that no one receives a Pulitzer Prize these days by simply supporting the president and the administration.
You win by digging up contrary information, by making a big splash. Truth no longer counts so long as a big sensational story can be produced.” “Every story,” he alleged, “is always slanted to win the favour of someone who sits higher up.” He likened the mainstream media, the Washington Post, New York Times, Newsweek, Time, etc as a wolf pack when it comes to attacking public officials. He called them a “bunch of sheep in their own profession and that they would always follow the bellwether sheep, the leader of their own profession.
This is what Doris Kearns, Johnson’s biographer said of his attack on the media: “by supplying himself with such explanations, Johnson tried to devalue the merit of the dissenting idea, and in doing so, he (Johnson) expressed a host of fears, biases and assumptions that had been held for a life time, and which not only had informed his public career but had made it so successful, and to which now he steadfastly would cling. Isn’t that what president Jonathan has been doing lately? What the president said at the NBA conference, and the promise he made for next year, not only serves a public purpose but an inner need.
It is an expression of what he desires and where he wants Nigerians to see him. But it only makes sense if he first achieves those things and let Nigerians give him the credit, to use his own words, the “most praised president in the world”, rather than the most criticized president in the world”. I have said this before in this column that the demanding nature of the office of the president has a huge prize attached to it. And for a president to excel in it, he must define what he wants to do before he gets there. It is not enough to parcel out an agenda without a concrete timelines on how to get them done. The problem with those who have found themselves in leadership positions in Nigeria, (Jonathan included) is that none of them truly prepared ahead of the task before him.
They end up trying to learn on the job, and end up as waka just pass, leaving no lasting impressions, no worthy legacy. When adequate preparation meets opportunity, the result is often excellent performance. Without knowing it, president Jonathan has put himself under tremendous pressure to perform and has given ammunition to his critics to ask for his resignation should be fail to deliver on his promises next year. Surely, he has permitted himself to be drowned by public expectations. He knows that he has squandered public trust and time is gradually running out. And politicians who fails to gauge the depth of public discontent will lose credibility and popularity.
This is because, a leader’s authority comes essentially from the public’s belief and his own ability to govern and the willingness of the electorate to suspend their own judgment. Jonathan faces the risk of losing this trust. Very little time is left for him to turn his presidency around. If he must turn rout into dignity, and collapse into order, he must search his own conscience and tell himself the truth, and to borrow the words of President Barack Obama, “take ideas from everyone…”. Jonathan should look beyond critics and get down to work immediately. It is only results that people can see and touch in their everyday living that supercede every other thing else. Charisma counts little. Only then can his wish to become the most praised president be granted him. If he can’t do that, the next logical thing for him is to begin the groundwork for his retirement from politics

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