Lessons for President Jonathan from President Barak Obama

 

Following the bombing of the UN House in Abuja, the debate is on as to what to do with the perpetrators of the abominable crime. For some of Nigeria’s political elites, what happened was not criminal. Rather it was the result of massive unemployment among the youths in Nigeria, especially in northern Nigeria.

I am in total agreement that the idle mind is the devil’s workshop. Some estimates are that more than 60% of the young people in some states in the north are unemployed. And so, it is argued that the solution to the wanton destruction of life and property we witnessed lies in appeasing the criminals by providing them with jobs

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Since October 2010, there have been three bombing incidents in and around Abuja. Jonathan has been president for less than six months. Obviously, the situation of high unemployment was not of his own making. He inherited it from previous administrations

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Two of the terrorist acts were perpetrated by Boko Haram, a group that abhors “Western Education”. A cursory look at the world today suggests that countries that focus on education are the most progressive. Universities in Iran and Saudi Arabia are flourishing. Teaching mathematics, physics and chemistry and biology is strongly promoted. For the followers of Boko Haram, teaching these subjects in Nigerian schools would be disobeying the tenets of “pure Islam”. The same political elites who are themselves the products of western-style education and who see no crime in what happened to the UN House in Abuja refuse to see the danger that such doctrines pose to progress in Nigeria.

Having an illiterate class to manipulate for political gains is a profitable business. 

But I still wonder if the story-line would have been the same had Jonathan originated from the northern parts of Nigeria?

In January 2009, Barak Obama inherited an economy that was in deep recession. Beginning with Lehman Brothers, Wall Street was in complete melt-down. American banks were in trouble. A Republican president and a Republican congress had, over eight years, misled the American people into spending all their wealth in two wars that made little sense. On that January morning, everyone knew that the unemployment situation was going to get worse.

 In three years, Obama has only been able to stop the bleeding. The wound is still open and festering. Unemployment will remain very high come November 2012!

This past weekend, America’s policy makers, from the federal to the state governments and city halls, came together to prevent a disaster in the name of Hurricane Irene. This demonstrates that Americans can still come together in the face of an impending disaster. But then I ask “What is more disastrous than a lost generation of poorly trained and educated Americans?   What is more disastrous than a situation where America that used to lead the world in innovations is led by China, India and Germany?

So, why can the policy makers in Washington not come together to create the conditions that would get the economy rolling and create more jobs? No. Obama’s opponents are more interested in seeing that he is a “one-term president”. Of course their task has been made much easier by the banks (that Obama rescued) refusing to loan money to businesses. The result: American on Main Street are angry at Obama for using their hard-earned tax dollars to rescue Wall Street and the banks!

Here again, I wonder if the story-line would have been different if Barak Obama was not an African American who just happened to be the president of the United States of America. The difference between Jonathan and Barak is that Jonathan is not going for a second term.

 

Welcome to the politics of “the end justifies the means”.