Jonathan’s toxic media chat

But let us take the issues from the bottom up. The journalists who interviewed or is it conducted the president’s charade showed sheer lack of grasp of official protocol at the end of the occasion when they stood up and left the president glued to his seat. It was a shameful act coming from people […]

But let us take the issues from the bottom up. The journalists who interviewed or is it conducted the president’s charade showed sheer lack of grasp of official protocol at the end of the occasion when they stood up and left the president glued to his seat. It was a shameful act coming from people who trained to criticize even deeper behavioural patterns than mere etiquette.
In the midst of the chat the issue of Boko Haram aroused my curiosity about the president’s level of commitment to our collective security, especially we from the north east. The panel asked Goodluck Jonathan about whether Abubakar Shekau is dead or alive. Remember that Shekau happens to be to Nigeria what Osama Bin Laden was to the United States of America. But the president’s response was as callous as cold fish. One wonder how many more deaths and how much more destruction it will take to arouse our national leadership to the fact that these guys are not mere political pawns on the 2015 chess board. Apparently neither the mutilated bodies of pupils in Potiskum and Maiduguri nor the charred bodies of churchgoers in Bauchi, Jos and Kano have shaken them yet.
Recently more than eighteen young school pupils were butchered by Shekau’s men but Jonathan simply does not seem to know the man, he has never met him and could not say precisely at that material time if the man was dead or alive, despite the fact that his JTF has claimed credit for killing the man in a gun duel somewhere in the Cameroons.
Ironically, the man who was declared dead by Jonathan’s army subsequently emerged in a video threatening fire and brimstone on the country. This whole saga leads one to ponder if the president is also Commander-in-Chief, to be tendering such meek and apologetic explanations to enemies of his compatriots.
I would have thought that Jonathan would have learnt something from Barack Obama who despite taking off the gloves from the fists of the American presidency still pinned the capture and eventual killing of his country’s number one enemy, Bn Laden. He could even have responded to the question as Kenya’s Uhuru Kenyatta did in the wake of the bloody siege on a shopping mall in Nairobi last month.
Kenyatta words were as caustic as they were venomous, not dour, polite and meek as Jonathan’s. He said: “These cowards will meet justice, as will their accomplices and patrons, wherever they are”. Kenyatta also personally oversaw one of the operations in search of the killers. What Jonathan displayed on that media chat was that the blood of Nigerians comes cheap and whoever wants can kill at will and maim Nigerians with impunity.
Not surprisingly Jonathan showed immense respect to the rebel governors who had broken out of their party to begin what has now assumed the popular nomenclature of the new PDP. He referred to them with their pet-name G-7, and tried unsuccessfully to pretend that they do not matter to him at all while his body language as he discussed the matter showed that if there was any reason for him to experience sleepless nights, the G-7 was it!
In maintaining his decision, or the one his coaches told him, not to ever tell whether he was running for president in 2015 or not, he digressed by saying and thinking that the G-7 governors were waiting for him to declare before they would make their intentions to run against him known. It is no wonder that our economy is in such tatters since our president is incapable of comprehending simple questions as will you or won’t you.
When the issue of governance came up, Jonathan left no one in doubt as to his capacity or more especially lack of it. He spent time discussing the problem with people who criticise his administration but said nothing about what the future holds for Nigerians and how he intends to better the lot of the people. To that extent, the media chat was toxic. It no political value except for the fact that for the first time the president looked comfortable before the media, which further established the truth that everything was a charade. There were no probing questions and the journalists looked too polite to be talking about the current political situation, which is going down in history as the most turbulent, politically and the most inefficient, administratively.  
I have pondered over the kind of rhapsody in Jonathan’s mind. He must conjure up a picture of enemies each time he thinks Nigeria.  That media chat messed up the country to a great extent and that is why it is referred to as toxic, for if journalists continue to allow such arrangement that abuses the country to continue, the nation would be the loser for it.