The Nigerian Tragic President

By the time the Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan completes his term in office, he would have become an horrendous genius in the payment of condolences and shedding of tears over disasters. For someone bearing Jonathan as a last name, the tragic DNA of his Biblical namesake must have proved far too superior to whatever positive comes with the first name "Goodluck".

That man has brought so much bad luck to our nation that his successor must definitely find a way to remove every trace of the spirit of the name "Jonathan" from the Aso Rock Villa. Here is a president whose tenure has witnessed and played host to so much carnage of the worst kind as to last Nigeria a lifetime. And if there was a Nobel Prize for a "reign of disaster", Goodluck Jonathan would have won it a dozen times for his calamity-inventive-genius.

Within this year alone, there have been several terrorist attacks by the religious group called Boko Haram. Yet, in reaction to each bomb blast by the terrorists, the clueless president never bothers to promise an end to the carnage except to pay condolences to the victims' families. It has gotten to a point that the president's spokesperson does not really have to prepare a new sad speech but simply recycle the previous one since national disasters are a regular feature of the government.

And talking of Boko Haram, those evil people hiding behind their religion would by now be cursing out the Dana airline for upstaging news of their bomb attack on the same day the plane crashed. On that same Sunday June 3, 2012, a bomb blast, for which Boko Haram claimed credits, destroyed Harvest Field and Living Faith Church in Yelwa in Anwan Ngas, Bauchi State with about 20 innocent people dead. As usual, a recycled condolence message with a prototyped signature of the president have been sent to media houses for onward broadcast to the families of the deceased victims.

In the Dana plane crash alone, a man lost his entire family! Yet, there were some other families who lost a minimum of two or three members in that same flight. They will never forget the tenure of Goodluck Jonathan. Why is that so? Because it's only under the watch of a useless president and his corrupt government that a plane known to be faulty and indeed obsolete such as the ill-fated Dana flight would be "cleared" for operation by some civil servants who cared more about their pockets than public safety.

Just last week, my daughter flew in that same plane and she observed that it was "behaving funny" in the air. Now, since the sad incident of last Sunday, I keep wondering...what if? And the worst part? Definitely, once the declared 3-day official mourning is over, the situation in the seat of power will be, "let's wait and see where the next disaster will take place". To them, it will be business as usual until the fire next time. Then the vicious cycle of a president on a perpetually crying mission without change will begin all over. What a president!