When you are conducting job interviews your goal, if you are rational, is to find the person who can best do the job as specified by your work organization. Presidential elections are hiring interviews, this time the interview is conducted by the entire nation. The entire nation want to find which candidate competing for the job is best qualified to perform the job described in the Nigerian Constitution.

Of all the candidates competing to become the president of Nigeria in the February 14 election which one has a resume that shows us that he is the best qualified person to do the job? I am supposing that Nigerians are rational employers and would employ the candidate that in their individual opinions are best qualified to deliver what the office of the presidency ought to deliver to the people of Nigeria.

There are millions of Nigerians and each of them is an interviewer. I cannot possibly know how each Nigerian would rate the candidates but I know how I would rate them.

In rating them I would begin with the person currently in office. Goodluck Jonathan has been the vice president and the president; he has been associated with the presidency for almost eight years. Eight years in an office is certainly enough time for each Nigeria to evaluate his job performance and say whether it was outstanding, satisfactory or poor. I will leave it to each Nigerian to do the measuring of Mr. Jonathan performance and speak for myself.

How do I rate Mr. Jonathan? What are we talking about? What job was he doing that he is supposed to be evaluated?

As far as I can see, Mr. Jonathan was not performing the job of the president of Nigeria and, therefore, cannot be rated. The man went missing in action.

Consider that when over 300 Nigerian school girls were kidnapped at Chibok Mr. Jonathan went dancing at Kano. The man, like an ape, was shown laughing from cheek to cheek as if nothing is disturbing his peace! It took the world’s press reporting on the matter, several weeks later for the man to evince any kind of concern about the welfare of the children. Even then his heart is not in the efforts to rescue the girls and several months later he has not rescued them.

Three hundred of our children were kidnapped and you did not feel their pain or their parents anguish and instead you went merry making? You are not a human being.

Mr. Jonathan does not seem to have the feelings deemed appropriate for human beings, especially those in leadership position: caring for people’s welfare.

Jonathan was never at any moment the president of Nigeria. He appeared as the president but he was not, in fact, so. He did not perform any job that anyone would evaluate him for. He was simply not present on the job.

Jonathan does not deserve even an F grade, for that implies that he did make an effort and failed. The man simply did not try to do anything. He was a bench warmer; that is all.

Under his supposed stewardship, corruption hit sky high and the man did not even make “let’s pretend we are fighting corruption efforts to fight it”. Obasanjo, at least, appeared to have made some efforts to fight corruption even if those were largely a charade but he did something. Mr. Jonathan did nothing.

The man did not build roads or bridges; he did not build hospitals; he did not improve the supply of electricity; he did not provide all Nigerians with tap water; under his watch Nigerian universities and schools in general collapsed so that certificates from Nigeria’s schools are now not worth the paper they are printed on.

This man did not make any kind of effort to improve infrastructures necessary for economic developmental activity in a modern polity. He did not encourage the industrialization of Nigeria.

Like a clueless clown the man did not realize that Nigeria’s economy depends on only one source of income, crude oil. If he had any kind of smarts he would realize that if oil prices plummeted down the Nigerian economy is toast. He would have tried to diversify the economy to prevent its susceptibility to the vagaries of oil revenue.

In their fight with Putin’s Russia, the US and its NATO allies, apparently, engineered massive drop in oil prices; Russia, another mono-economy is susceptible to economic downturn should oil price fall. The West wants to crash the Slavic Russian economy and convert Russia to a vassal of the Germanic West; the collaterals in this struggle between the Germanic race (Germany, Britain, France, the USA) and Slavic people (Russia, the clueless Poland, Ukraine, the former Yugoslavia etc.) are those economies that depend on selling crude oil, such as Nigeria.

To add salt to injury, the USA reportedly has stopped buying Nigerian crude oil since July of this year. The predictable result is dwindling revenue to operate the bloated federal and state governments of Nigeria.

The federal government’s budget is mostly spent paying personnel wages and benefits (over 80%) as opposed to the no more than 35% in the West devoted to wages. There are few or no capital projects development undertaken by the do nothing Jonathan administration.

Nigerian legislators are paid several times more what US legislators are paid and they are paid for doing exactly nothing for Nigeria.

It is stealing jamboree time and Mr. Jonathan supervises that looting of Nigeria. This man is the chairperson of the Abuja cabal of looters.

I am not even sure that Jonathan understands anything about Nigeria. Let us give him a quick quiz. What is the percent of Nigerians who are unemployed? Is it fifty percent? Is it 25% percent? I bet you that Mr. Jonathan does not know for certain!

If over 25% of adult Nigerians are unemployed most economists would say that the Nigerian economy is in depression.

So, Mr. Jonathan, is Nigeria under your watch depressed? If it is depressed what have you done to resurrect it?

What are some of the measures that John Maynard Keynes recommended that nations adopt to resurrect an economy in a funk and have you implemented any of them to resurrect the comatose Nigerian economy?

Does the man even know what the term depression means? Given the collapse of oil revenue and the Naira’s rapid loss of value, it is possible that soon Nigeria’s money would not worth the paper they are printed on; so, does Mr. Jonathan understand what inflation is?

In the 1920s a barrel of German Marks could not buy a pack of cigarettes!

Mr. Jonathan seems like an imbecile. I have seen him talk; he came across as a dull boy who has no clue what the questions asked him are expecting him to say.

The man comes across like the chap who kills time on the job, waiting for the work day to be over so that he goes home and gets plastered with alcohol. I do not think that he even has the capacity to think and therefore does not think about Nigeria’s issues. In his dull mind everything is peachy in Nigeria.

A country where the income per capita is about three dollars a day is a country that the president believes is doing well. The man wants to be given a seat at the Security Council of the United Nations so that he joins the big five to decide the fate of the world. This man runs a country that cannot even provide its citizens twenty four hours of uninterrupted electricity and he wants to sit at the same table with countries that have the capacity to destroy the entire world. I tell you, the man is probably deluded; he is not operating in the world of reality; he is living in his self-made fantasy world.

The Big boy whose country cannot manufacture a bicycle’s spoke talk more an aero plane has a fleet of jet planes ferrying him all over the world to attend parties; the man is having good times.

Certainly he does not participate in talks requiring knowledge gravitas for I doubt that any one expects him to know what to say on any serious subject under consideration. The man is having a blast partying but governing Nigeria is not in his job description. I say let us forget him and see if his opponent has what it takes to govern Nigeria.

Mr. Mohammad Buhari has had many highly placed positions in Nigeria, including been the head of state, a state governor and minister of petroleum. Most people with eyes to see would say that in any of those positions he performed admirably.

More importantly, he showed that he is incorruptible. The man did not steal a penny from the people of Nigeria. For that feat alone he ought to be given the opportunity to become Nigeria’s president and attempt to tame the beast of corruption that has become part of Nigerians culture, a beast that until it is tamed Nigeria is not going to do what she has to do to become economically developed.

Mr. Buhari is a disciplined man; he has a record of absolute integrity and honesty. Just look at him. His lean physical structure shows you that he lives a Spartan lifestyle. Everything about the man tells you that he is orderly and wants whatever is going on around him to be well ordered.

He is a disciplinarian. God knows that chaotic Nigerians are crying out to high heavens for a leader who understands discipline to help discipline them.

Nigerians need a draconian leader who while operating under the aegis of democracy helps them to become disciplined and law abiding.

You get the people around you to become ordered, instead of being chaotic by being ordered yourself. Buhari by personal example would get Nigerians to discipline their selves.

To the contrary, the goodtime Jonathan models carefree life style for Nigerians. Nigerians look at Jonathan and see a party boy and emulate him. It is party time in Nigeria but not work time.

Buhari understands work; his presence at the helm of Nigerian politics would get Nigerians to become a hardworking people.

Given his lack of proclivity to thievery, by his presence, Buhari would inspire Nigerians to stop stealing too much.

Stealing politicians would be arrested by a disciplined police and sent to jail by a disciplined judiciary (how many police and judges have been sent to jail under Jonathan’s watch, yet we all know that those are bribe taking specialists).

Mr. Buhari is a leader. He understands that leaders are people who sense where the people they lead want to go and articulate their aspirations; leaders set goals that the people desire and mobilize human resources and capital in pursuit of the attainment of those goals.

Aimless persons like Johnathan have no goals; if you do not have a place that you are going to you are not going anywhere. Under Jonathan Nigerians had no destinations they were aiming to get to and did not get anywhere.

Buhari would inspire Nigerians to passionate and enthusiastic effort to attain the goals he set for them. The man is a leader; his presence alone would call on those around him to put out their best efforts.

The best and brightest Nigerians would return from all over the world to help Buhari accomplish the goals he set for the Nigerian polity.

Leaders do not accomplish their goals by their selves only but by inspiring folks to work with them. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy inspired the best and brightest Americans to work for him; he led them to set the goal of landing a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s decade, and they did it in 1969 (they beat the Russians who had beat them into space with Yuri Gagarin). The man had dreams, visions, goals and objectives; he knew where he wanted to go and gathered people to help him get there.

Jonathan is going nowhere and therefore is not going to get anywhere. Nigeria now needs a leader that is going somewhere.

Under the leadership of a proven and committed leader like Buhari, in two decades Nigeria would attain the level of industrialization found in the Asian tigers (China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore etc.).

It is now time that Nigerians transcended their tendency to ethnic affiliation at the expense of national identification and work for the economic development of the country.

Nigerians must put aside their imported religions of Christianity and Islam and work for Africa’s interests, not for the interests of Rome, Jerusalem and Mecca.

Buhari‘s presence at Aso Rock would galvanize Nigerians to passionate and enthusiastic work; the man would unleash Nigerians untapped energy and with it not even the sky is the limit of what Nigerians can accomplish.

Buhari has visions for Nigeria; he will lead Nigerians to the goals he and they want to attain. For these and other reasons I support the man; I strongly urge you to work for his election.

Ozodi Osuji Ph.D
[email protected]
(907) 538-1086
Dr. Osuji specializes on management and leadership.