[dropcap]I[/dropcap] have just read the comments made by the Governor of Borno state at the launch of a book in Abuja on Thursday November 30, 2017.
At that event, Mr. Shettima said “Jonathan’s fairytale rise to power, his sheer display of bad governance, lack of political sagacity and willpower, he squandered the array of goodwill he commanded and subsequently got humiliated out of office”.
My response is that it is unfortunate that Governor Kashim Shettima has allowed hatred to blind his objectivity.
President Jonathan was not humiliated out of office. Sure, he lost the 2015 Presidential election by 2 million votes. If that is what Governor Shettima means by humiliation, it must mean that he never understood what Dr. Jonathan meant when he said ‘my ambition is not worth the blood of any Nigerian’.
Could a person who was humiliated have called to concede while the votes were still being counted and yet to be declared?
It is the pettiness of Governor Kashim that has blinded him to the fact that by conceding so quickly, Jonathan became the ‘Face of Democracy in Africa’ as former Vice President Atiku Abubakar described him.
Hundreds of people died when other people lost elections, but no one died when Jonathan lost.
Kashim Shettima talked of Jonathan’s sheer display of bad governance. I wonder if it was that bad governance that ensured elections held in EVERY local government area in Borno in 2015. Governor Shettima is reminded that not only have the United Nations and other humanitarian aid groups pulled out of certain parts of Borno since Jonathan handed over power in 2015, but Boko Haram has now begun an upsurge even in Adamawa state. So much for the ‘technical defeat’ of Boko Haram.
And then Governor Shettima talks about Jonathan not having ‘political sagacity’. Let me ask Governor Shettima if there was ever anything like ‘Quit Notice’, IPOB, nationwide herdsmen/farmers clash with impunity or 97% versus 5% under Jonathan?
May I remind Governor Shettima who is now accusing Dr. Jonathan of ‘tribal politics’ that when his state was struggling to cater for Internally Displaced Persons, it was then President Jonathan who set up the Victims Support Fund and held a fund-raising dinner at the Presidential Villa where private sector individuals and groups donated N58.79 billion to aid victims of Boko Haram terrorism and other humanitarian crisis.
If Dr. Jonathan was playing ‘tribal politics’, how come he did not hold such an event for the Niger Delta? Also, since Dr. Jonathan raised those funds for the victims of terror from the private sector has anyone been able to replicate what he did?
Governor Shettima disdainfully called Dr. Jonathan an “unsophisticated simpleton”, but I find it surprising that Nigeria’s economy became the largest economy in Africa and the third fastest growing economy in the world under a ‘simpleton’ but entered into a recession when the ‘simpleton’ left.
In my book, Facts Versus Fiction: The True Story of the Jonathan Years, Chibok, 2015 and the Conspiracies, I published Dr. Jonathan’s WAEC results where he made 7 As. I also have his university results. I challenge Governor Shettima to also publish his WAEC results. Let those results tell us who is a ‘simpleton’
Or how do you explain that Nigeria made her fastest ever improvement in increasing the average life expectancy of Nigeria under a ‘simpleton’ (from 47 years in 2010 when Jonathan assumed office, to 54 years when he left office).
Perhaps Governor Kashima was referring to someone else. West Germany comes to mind.
But the unkindest cut is when Governor Shettima said “When the Chibok girls’ saga started, they made the president to believe that there was no abduction; that the Chibok girls were kidnapped by the governor of Borno state ostensibly to embarrass the Jonathan administration and he believed that line of story.”
How could former President Jonathan have disbelieved that story when he held an emergency National Security meeting 24 hours after the news of the Chibok kidnap broke?
Governor Shettima is just being clever by half. He has forgotten that on the second of April 2016, he admitted in an interview to journalists that when the kidnap occurred, he did not call the President to inform him for two weeks.
Governor Shettima also failed to mention that two months before the kidnap of the Chibok Girls, he received a letter from the Federal Ministry of Education signed by the then minister of state and current Governor of Rivers state, Nyesom Wike, urging him not to hold examinations in Chibok because of the insecurity in the area.
He also failed to state that four months before the kidnap, he received a letter from the West African Examination Council and signed by the head of WAEC’s National Office in Nigeria, Charles Eguridu, asking him not to hold examinations in Chibok but to bus the girls to the more secure state capital.
In conclusion, the fact of the matter is that Governor Kashim Shettima is simply a typical sycophant. He is saying what he could not say before 2015, because Jonathan is not in office and when the current set of actors quit the scene, Governor Shettima will likewise direct his lying tongue at them.
Reno Omokri is a number one bestselling author of Facts Versus Fiction: The True Story of the Jonathan Years: Chibok, 2015 and Other Conspiracies. He is a media aide to Former President Goodluck Jonathan.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.
