For Ojo and Adeyemi, garlands well merited

I give it to the president; there were a couple of times when he took far reaching decisions that reflected the national mood and in tandem with the aspirations of the people. Several years before President Jonathan though, Nigerians have had to question the authenticity and propriety of many of the beneficiaries of the different […]

I give it to the president; there were a couple of times when he took far reaching decisions that reflected the national mood and in tandem with the aspirations of the people.

Several years before President Jonathan though, Nigerians have had to question the authenticity and propriety of many of the beneficiaries of the different categories of the national honors. We have often argued that a good number of times, square pegs were not put in square holes. Those who deserved higher honors were often relegated and those who didn’t  deserve to have them most often than not become the beneficiaries of such honors. This attitude has since discredited the selection and award processes.

This is not to say however that in some cases, the right things were not done. They were sometimes. I have since the time of Aminu Bello Masari, the former Speaker of the House of Representatives denounce the selection committee’s thinking that the office of the Speaker is a second fiddle in the National Assembly. It is not; in fact it is the most important office not disregarding the position of the Senate President.

Apart from the fact that no bill becomes an act of the National Assembly unless it is passed correctly in the same content by each of the two chambers, the constitutional meaning of each of the chamber is clear and explicit and therefore does not put any chamber at the mercy of the other or rank one on top of the other. It is disgusting to note therefore that each time the honors list is released, the Senate President is conferred with the second highest national honor, GCON, so also is the Chief Justice of the Federation while the Speaker is ranked amongst the third most important category of Nigerians. This is an insult to the people’s parliament and must be resisted and corrected.

I wish Aminu Waziri Tambuwal would agree with me, I would have asked him and the House to return the medal to Mr. President and equally ask all previous Speakers to do the same for the seeming overt disregard of the criticality and relevance of the House of Representatives in the scheme of national politics and governance. The right thing to do is to honor whoever is the Speaker of the House in the same manner with the President of the Senate while Deputy Speaker should be honored in the same manner with the Deputy President of the Senate.

If Professor Chinua Achebe has refused to accept the honor seven years ago when General Obasanjo proposed it to him, what made Dr Jonathan think he is different and that things have changed? I am surprised, I listened to Dr Rueben Abati, the erstwhile radical and spokesman of the President alluding to the fact that Professor Achebe is probably not in tune with the current national political realities in the country. Dr. Abati mentioned the issue of ‘free, fair and credible’ elections which he said were conducted. I do not intend to keep joining issues with Dr Abati, but one thing that stands very clear is that it will appear that Professor Achebe who is out of Nigeria is more informed about the Nigerian reality than the presidential spokesman. It is not a lie that the 2011 elections were equally a fiasco and the most violent in the history of this country. I don’t know what Dr Abatti specializes on but as a student of political science, I do know very well that the most potent reason for violence during and after any elections is not far away from irregularities and fraud.

In an election where the zone with the lowest number of registered voters came up with over 90% turnout in the presidential election, and the zone with the highest number of votes came out with less than 40% outing, a lot of questions rather than answers are flying all over the place. This, apart from the decay in the nation’s educational system, a fact which I think I should have firsthand knowledge on. It is flatly wrong for the President to think that anything has changed for the better in this country unless if the transformation mantra is merely a polemic.

Equally a material fact is that the situation in Nigeria which Professor Achebe gave as his reasons for declining to accept the third highest national honor of CFR are still very much with us. In fact unlike what obtained during Obasanjo, Nigeria is now facing more serious challenges of social explosions never experienced in the history of this nation. The tragedy is that there does not seem to be the required understanding on the part of those who take decision on our behalf of the magnitude and nature of the crisis at hand.

While the political leadership seem to be thinking that the violence and insecurity in the country are a creation of imagined political groups that do not want Goodluck Jonathan to succeed, the military high command is only compounding the issue by statements that are every inch reckless. During the week, the Army Chief warned the Boko Haram movement against what he called daring the military.

Whatever that means in military language is what I don’t understand. When the Damaturu attacks happened Nigerians lost valuable citizens among whom was the Director General of the National Veterinary Research Institute, Vom, a distinguished Professor of Fulani extraction from Adamawa state. Nobody is talking about him because he probably belonged to a race of those who the contemporary federal authorities refer to as ‘them them’.

On the conferment of the nation’s second highest honor to billionaire businessman, Aliko Dangote, President Jonathan needn’t defend that for it was most appropriate except of the siege mentality which this government seem to be deeply ingrained in. I am not aware that there is any single citizen of this country that has created so much employment other than government than Aliko Dangote. Even in the few years past when the noise was high on how Obasanjo created a cream of billionaires, I always knew that Aliko wasn’t one of them for Obasanjo met him already standing and neck deep in commerce and industry.

The way things are going, Dangote will soon be the largest employer of labor than even the federal government. His song has not been sang in this country for obvious reasons, it is worthy that President Jonathan has come to terms with this glaring reality by conferring the second highest honor on this great man of enterprise, no matter what anybody will say.

Equally is the fact that the conferment of the honor of CFR to Dikko Abdullahi, the Comptroller General of the Nigeria Customs Service was well deserved if one takes a curious look at the transformation of that service from a haven of corruption to a money spinner and abode of relative integrity. I am proud of Dikko as one of those very successful young men in this country.

You can see therefore that the issues are as diverse as they are plural. It is important that Nigerians faithfully impress on government officials to ensure that appropriate criteria is used in judging Nigerians for the honors list. It will take time to convince some citizens that the government is serious in its selection process. I agree with some, but in total disagreement with quite a lot. The task of making this country a better place is ours and we must eschew selfishness and pseudo sentiments if the nation is to grow from strength to strength