Jonathan, a good man betrayed?

His other name could have been modesty. President Goodluck Jonathan who hands over power today, came into office in a blitz of public sympathy, especially for his calmness in the face of total disregard by the handlers of his former boss and late president Umaru Yar’Adua.

Stories about how in his early life he did not have shoes, meant that many Nigerians could relate with a president who in many ways looked like one of their own.

International goodwill was not lacking and blessed by a regime of exceptionally high oil prices and low foreign debt, Jonathan could not have taken the mantle of leadership at a better time.

Not very inspired by his choice of ministers, Nigerians were in no hurry to judge him. They could wait it seemed. They even gave him an overwhelming mandate when he asked for one in the 2011 presidential elections.

However, one misstep after another and not helped by a blistering campaign against him by a well heeled opposition information machinery, the cracks in Jonathan’s wall began to appear, letting in more and more fierce attack from civil society and other Nigerians.

Jonathan himself once claimed he had become the most maligned president of our time. He may have been right.

Why did a young and perhaps best educated of all our leaders miss it so disastrously?

Only time will tell how history will treat the smiling man from Otuoke and whose backyard bares the oil that lubricates Nigeria.

Some people have linked the out going president’s lackluster performance to preparation or the lack of it. Here was a man who at the best of times aspired to be the head of a local government. He was catapaulted to the position of deputy governor by a beneficiary of his benevolence with whom he had had a chance meeting on the dusty road from Port Harcourt to Yenagoa.

As the story is told, Dr. Jonathan then driving in an official OMPADEC car stopped to offer a lift to one Diepreye Alamieyeseigha whose car broke down. The two men kept this chance association, which has blossomed ever since. From being deputy to Alamieyeseigha, he rose to become governor and then by a huge dose of fortitude, vice president and president. Leaders of the PDP, the president’s party, said he was the most unwilling of those touted to be running mate to the late Yar’Adua.

Apart from this matter of preparation, some have also pointed to the more germane setback arising from the quality of counsel and service offered by people around him and in particular, vice president Namadi Sambo, who by statute headed the National Council on Privatisation, petroleum minister Diezani Alison Madueke and lately Godknows Igali, the permanent secretary in the ministry of power.

The last two are from among the president kinsmen from Bayelsa state.

As chairman of the NCP, Sambo had an unrelenting stranglehold on the privatisation process and his touch became overbearing in the sale of power assets. His influence expanded following the forced departure of Barth Nnaji, then power minister and the only counter balancing voice in the NCP upon which the president’s hope of delivery was vested.

With the field now clear, the vice president captured the privatisation process and the associated cleansing of the transmission company of Nigeria, for which a Canadian contractor was legitimately hired. Cronyism set in quickly with the resulting abuse and lack of transparency.

Today,  the $550 million Geometric power plant which would have helped to deliver better life to the (mainly) ibos of Aba, some of the presidents strongest supporters, lies prostrate, hamstrung by barefaced refusal of government to do the right thing. The intrigues, which constrained Manitoba Hydro, are now legendary. Remember that even the president touted power as one area upon which he should be judged.

Next comes Alison-Madueke. Appointed in April of 2010, the first thing she did was to stop the application for operatorships of divested oil assets, even though paper work had been completed during the tenure of her more urbane predecessor Odein Ajumogobia.

Alison-Madueke snubbed and antagonised the IOCs in the name of a bogus local content policy. In her arrogance, she failed to understand that while the local content policy (initiated before her time) was a good policy, it had no chance of success unless the operation of the IOCs was robust and they made more and more investment in Nigeria.

Instead, one after the other, the IOCs began an aggressive programme of divestment and operation curtailment, making nonsense of the local content regime. If the mother is starved, the baby being fed starves as well. The petroleum minister shut out real investment into exploration, meaning that no meaningful new reserves of oil or gas were added in all her years.

It was in the area of gas that she inflicted the greatest damage. Exalting cronyism in place of merit, the big players deserted the field, starving Nigeria of the badly needed gas to power her thermal stations and light up the darkest area of the Jonathan presidency. Then oil subsidy payments ballooned to become the world’s largest welfare scheme and it’s most wasteful. Crude swap contracts became localised and polluted, fueling the largest single acquisition of private jets ever.

For years, she oversaw the outrageous implementation of a bogus and illegal kerosene subsidy, an indulgence for which she should really be in jail. She was unwilling and unavailable for meetings with industry leaders and investment decisions suffered as a result. Hers has now been termed the era of missed opportunities and for good reason. While other oil endowed countries expanded capacity in the years of high oil prices, Nigeria’s production declined.

In the end, the question must now be asked, whom was Diezani serving in government?

The last of the three is less known Godknows Igali, who is permanent secretary for power. He singlehandedly rubbished whatever credit can be given to the president for his uncanny ability to lead the privatisation of the power assets. By stalling several good policies and pushing through the controversial bill setting up two regulators for the power sector despite opposition from his minister and key privatisation agencies, he has put a massive roadblock on the way of the sector and the in-coming president.

Who needs two regulators when one can do? How does a government struggling to curtail public sector wages and the resulting bloating of its recurrent expenditure engage in profligate expansion of its departments without proper cause?

In the days ahead when the phones stop ringing and the doorbell stops buzzing, Jonathan will surely have time for some reflection as will be needful and thereafter he will have to wait for a kind cut by history.