DOCTORS AND OTHERS ARE LEAVING UK, USA, CANADA, INDIA, ETC. NOT JUST NIGERIA.

PRESIDENT JONATHAN, A PRODUCT OF AN OUTDATED UPBRINGING

Before you think I am being disrespectful to President Jonathan’s mother, let me start by saying that this write up is an indictment on the way Nigerian women raise their children. I am going to try here to let us see the danger of this continued out-of-date practice and if by chance any woman or man for that matter gives a thought as to what I have to say here, they might change the cause of the  future of generations of Nigerians  that would give the rest of us a better lease of life.

The ability to express emotions is part of being a live entity. Animals across the world have been depicted and seen to show empathy and concern for other animals and for humans too in addition to having the ability to express fear, anger and apprehension. I cannot forget when a friend came to visit me after the birth of my son many years ago. While escorting this lovely lady back to her car, our family dog leapt at her and viciously attacked her.  All effort to calm the dog failed until my neighbour yelled out to me to take my baby from my friend and that worked like magic: the dog ran back to its abode. This animal was not going to let my friend ‘steal’ my precious baby.  Animals do exercise emotions; they can be loyal and would usually act, according to their best understanding, in the interest of their owners.

You see, we have all wondered why the clueless Jonathan seems not to empathise or identify with the sufferings of Nigerians and resolve to put an end to some of the ills that have brought untold hardships to most of us. The simple and only logical explanation is that he does not have the ability to express emotions.  Jonathan is not much older than yours sincerely and I am not much older than Mallam Nasir El-Rufai so you can easily guess how old I am and you can say we belong to the same generation. To the best of my recollection, boys were raised as objects of reverence for the weaker sex. After inter-tribal wars ceased, our boys were and are still being raised to be hard and unbending. Mothers and fathers would chide to no end, a male child that dared to express pain, frustration, agony, etc by crying. “Shut up, don’t you know you are a man and that men do not cry?” This assertion was necessary in the days when every male child was expected to be a soldier for his local community during inter-tribal wars but times have changed. Times have changed but not in most Nigerian families. Boys are still being berated for crying and girls are still being raised to believe that they are inferior to men.

What this sort of upbringing has produced for Nigerians are men who are hard-hearted, who have stones for hearts, who have no feelings, who have no shame, who do not care and who do not empathise because they are insensitive! These men are selfish as they have been raised to be idolised by women and since there are no wars to fight any more, they preside over their homes like generals over conquered wives/girlfriends/concubines and children with iron fists. They are very happy and excited when their wives shed tears as it means to them that they are in charge and are able to inflict pain and agony. They feel they are in charge. Many women who are unlucky to be married to men raised like Jonathan are in marriage relationships they are enduring and I write as one who was there. Many of us, who were lucky to be thrown out of our homes by stone-hearted men, have known nothing but joy and happiness since then.

When you have men raised like Jonathan presiding over the affairs of a nation like Nigeria, they cannot understand the pain being felt by ordinary Nigerians. Jonathan was raised to be idolised by the women around him by the virtue of the fact that he was born male. Jonathan cannot feel or empathise as he grew up being reminded that men do not cry. The product of such upbringing is what we see today in Aso Rock and many state government houses across the nation. These men are sadists and are not really human in the real sense of it. They do not understand anything that has to do with another person because they are selfish. If selfish, how can they begin to understand the pain and agony Nigerians are going through at this point in our history? How can they understand nationalism or patriotism and resolve to work in the best interests of Nigerians? How can they begin to fathom that while they spent obscene amounts of money buying journals and paying for  entertainment at Aso Rock that millions of Nigerians starved and their children are unable to access the most basic form of education? How can they not see that Nigerians have reached a point where they did not care where the president came from as long as he was able to provide good and accountable governance, a breath of fresh air saturated with social justice and a purposeful leadership?  Nigerians desperately wanted Jonathan and his stone-hearted, corrupt, uncaring, inept and aloof team to succeed but it seems the minority who have always reaped the fruit of this punishment being meted out to Nigerians are set to win!

It was so disheartening to see that while Nigerians were being bombed at four different locations on Christmas day, President Jonathan was being shown on NTA in a dance. He was having a Christmas party while families were in agony from losing loved ones. Insensitive and stone-hearted! Even the combined efforts of the Vatican and the British authorities who condemned the bombings could not shame President Jonathan out of his drunken Christmas party to say a few words to Nigerians regarding the bombings; his spokesperson spoke for him, while the Pope spoke directly to us! Obama or Cameron, sensitive men, would have identified with the bombed by personally making a statement. I am not the only one who was appalled at the nonchalant attitude of our Jonathan regarding the Christmas day bombings. According to General Buhari, "How on earth would the Vatican and the British authorities speak before the Nigerian government on attacks within Nigeria that have led to the deaths of our citizens? This is clearly a failure of leadership at a time the government needs to assure the people of the capacity to guarantee the safety of lives and property."

Their eyes are now fixated on how to divide the colossal security vote in the recent budget. Even after the US authorities alerted their Nigerian counterparts that attacks were imminent around Christmas in Nigeria, they turned deaf ears and dismissed it as a hoax. What kind of a people would not take precautionary measures to secure the people they preside over? Insensitive and selfish people! It is no longer a secret that President Jonathan is holed up at Aso Rocks, presiding over an unprecedented scale of looting in the history of Nigeria; it is common knowledge that he does not have the ability or the wherewithal to do something about it. President Jonathan will not improve nor do better because he simply can’t. He and his band of looters do not have it within them to feel, they are insensitive, they are callous and they have no hearts. They are victims of an archaic up-bringing and they cannot understand why men like David Cameron, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton etc would shed tears in public because they would never understand that a sensitive man is a loving, caring, affectionate, empathetic, selfless individual. It’s ok for the male specie to show their feminine sides, it only proves that they are human.

I sincerely believe that Jonathan is out of his depth and silently hoping that Nigerians would revolt against him as that would give him an easy way out of this hole he has been buried in by the cabal. How else can one explain his statement that he would use executive powers to impose the dreaded removal of oil subsidy? Why would these same executive powers not work in the areas of looting and corruption, extra-judicial killing by the police, the activities of Boko-Haram/Niger Delta Militants and other vices that are desperately threatening the foundation of this nation? I have often said that Nigeria does not lack human resources, what we lack in government, are men and women of goodwill, who would only act in the best interest of Nigerians.

Nigerians just want what is theirs. According to Ras Kimono, we do not want the luxury of having some cakes, just a bit of sugar for our tea. Even the tea is no longer available. All we ask for are affordable homes, constant electricity, portable drinking water, good and efficient transport network system and yes, accountable & responsible governance and an equitable criminal justice system. Jonathan’s countenance has been misread by Nigerians to mean humility but the truth is, his heart is in ice storage and there is no warmth in his heart! I have no doubt that many Nigerians believed him to be a humble, Christian, nice, southern gentleman; but that’s the sort of man you take home to mother, not the sort that presides over a nation like ours. Nigeria needs a strong and decisive leadership. Unless we find a man or a woman with a human heart and face, who is also strong, bold and purposeful, I fear that Nigeria would remain in the doldrums for a while to come and still producing sons and daughters that do not fit into the twentieth century.