From Kelechi Deca, Lagos
Great leaders know the importance of starting and finishing strong. Though not all start strong, but how they finish is far more important than anything else.How a leader finishes leaves the taste for a long time after he/she left office.Only few will remember the great things he did at the beginning, and during his tenure, but nobody will forget how he finished.
His Excellency, President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, undeniably has done one or two things he could be remembered by, especially in the area of road infrastructure( he tackled some roads that previous governments shied away from) , agriculture development and efforts towards building modern aviation infrastructure( the MMIA terminal was built by Obasanjo in 1979, Jonathan started the construction of new terminals in Lagos, Abuja, Enugu, Kano and Port Harcourt.) Also efforts geared towards addressing the issue of ghost workers in the federal civil service will help the incoming government a great deal.
But just very few will remember all that I have enumerated above because of the wicked impact of his inability to reign in the petroleum marketers, and ill-implemented power reforms that saw government cronies and friends balkanise and share the privatized Discos with nothing to show for it in the last two years.
Nigerians will rate his government by its evident weakness in these areas, and as the economy slowly shuts down on his face as he exits government, posterity will not be fair to him, especially if the man coming after him show leadership in these areas.
It is easy for Mr President and his men to remind us that he is still the President, but in the last one month, he has been anything but that, hiring and firing while the country bleeds.
Banks are shutting down, telecoms companies are shutting down,airlines are cancelling flights, cars are off the roads,hospitals are shutting down, businesses are shutting down.Infact, Nigeria is shutting down as a parting gift from El Presidente…….
I am of the persuasion that President Jonathan has left a great template for Muhamadu Buhari on hundreds of ways in which things cannot work.All that is left for Buhari is to complete and continue the viable projects that Jonathan started, like in Agriculture, and in aviation, and railways, and roads. But in exercising full control over the men and women who form his cabinet, DONT EVER go the Jonathan way…
Kelechi Deca is a veteran journalist that lives in Lagos
