If you have ever been caught up at a road junction where the traffic lights are out and the poor traffic warden or police officer has succumbed to uncontrollable road users and disappeared, and you see the chaos that follows because motorists can not behave properly in the absence of control, then you begin to imagine how the same people could correctly run the affairs of their country, be it under a democracy or dictatorship. I have consistently argued that a Nation deserves the kind of leaders it gets and leaders cannot be different from the people.

An unbiased watcher or foreigner watching the cacophony that normally ensues when the traffic lights are not working, will always go away thinking that Nigerians are not gifted with the capacity of being civilized and that of taking control of their destiny.

This goes to explain why 51 years after flag independence, we are still not getting the rudder of our Nation to the path of statehood right (not even to the path of greatness). In fact we are non-starters. There is nothing to show that our country has raked in over six hundred billion US dollars from oil revenue alone since 1960.

Money that is mainly unaccounted for. There is mass hunger in the land, the economy is baseless, our people still live in shackles, the educational sector has collapsed and there is no health care, leaving the desperate citizens to now resort to new generation pastors for “miracles” for all their socio-economic and health problems.

Nigeria failed as a state, with the aspirations of millions of Nigerians unfulfilled, and it was at this junction that President Goodluck Jonathan propped up, preaching hope, fresh air and transformation. Surprisingly among the maddening crowd of so-called leaders and aspirants to leadership, Nigerians found him trustworthy and invested newfound hope and trust in him.
Before the coming of Jonathan, and even now,

Nigeria could be the only country in the world, where the citizens do not enjoy rights and privileges that citizenship carries along with it in modern civilization. Not even the right to a secured life. Even in medieval times, the subjects are protected, provided they remained obedient. And no country on planet earth has shown so much disregard for its citizens as Nigeria.

Take a look at what was happening in Jos recently and you get a clue as to how valueless the lives of Nigerians are to our leaders. It beats me how a government could sit back and watch, night after night, our fellow countrymen and women being butchered, and yet thousands of military men roam about in barracks doing nothing. In serious geo-political spaces, if it would mean sending all the men and women in uniform to Jos to save just one life, it would be done.

In the prevailing socio-political circumstances in Nigeria, the populace, due to the ostensible lack of government or since they do not fit into the concept of citizenship, resort to self-help, providing themselves with water, light, roads, health care and even security. This leaves Nigeria as mockery of a Nation. Perhaps this abnormally is what President Goodluck Jonathan promised to transform as he canvassed for the votes of Nigerians during the last presidential election. But the pertinent question begging for answer is: so far has he kept his words?

The Presidency had amused me and serious on-lookers when it gave itself pass marks after 100 days in office. Actually, I am not a fan of assessing public office holders after merely 100 days, which is now becoming fashionable in modern governments.

A hundred days are simply too short for any serious appraisal. This aside however, the inescapable truth remains that Jonathan had stayed over one year in office – disregarding propagators of Jonathan’s own mandate. There are no additional powers that were conferred upon him after he was sworn in in May as the victor of the April presidential polls.

The fact remains that he has been an executive president since the demise of late President Yar’Adua in a Saudi clinic early last year when he climbed up the ladder to become the first Nigerian Vice President to become president on account of death of a sitting president.

Talking seriously, I fail to resist the case of those who have argued that Jonathan’s first hundred days have been wasted. Apart from appointing his ministers and advisers, setting up the so-called economic team and hurriedly, in spite of more pressing national issues, deciding to send a bill to the National Assembly for a single tenure, with a view to maybe elongate his presidency, there is nothing else to show for his first 100 days of “his own mandate”- except perhaps his trips abroad to attend the swearing-in of other Africa Presidents, dictator or democrat.

If the people around Jonathan are not telling him the truth, let it be known to him that his affirmation of Salami’s illegal suspension was a major gaffe and incubus that can not be expunged from assessing his first 100 days in office.

But looking at some of the men and women (few of them heavily wiki-leaked) parading as ministers and advisers and even godfathers, it is not hard to see that Jonathan may not be an agent of change. They include people who finished this country.

To transform Nigeria, Jonathan must see the nation as a patient in an emergency room needing urgent and drastic surgery to survive. There are no indications that the President has grasped that Nigeria is in dare-straits, judging from his slow-motion approach to matters, except in the case of sacking Justice Salami where he was brisk.

If Jonathan were a schoolboy, his midterm assessment will be a catalogue of failures. But this does not mean that he may not pass the end of term examination. It solely lies in his hands and depends on how he wants to go about his work in the future. But if I were him, as a new king, to succeed and have a peaceful reign, he needs to kill politically the king makers that have the blood of innocent Nigerians, who died due to their misrule, in their hands.

What could the president be afraid of when majority of Nigerians are strongly behind him? Since the post independence history of Nigeria, no president has enjoyed so much support and goodwill from the Nigerian people like Jonathan. And Nigerians are ready to stand behind him to any length in restructuring an unjust Nigerian Nation, in so far as it is in the interest of ordinary Nigerians.

There is the need to note that there is a big dissimilarity between the fantasy the president has in his head about the transformation this country needs and the one the people legitimately yearn for. Change is not just visions and drawing road maps. Nigerians have seen that many times before, the health for all by the year 2000 being one of such. What they expect is concerted action and a president who does not only do the talk but also walk the talk.

To realize his promise to Nigerians, Jonathan has to sincerely fight corruption and bring to book all those who milked dry the cow called Nigeria. There is no gainsaying the fact that the bane of Nigeria is corruption and there could have been nothing to transform if there were no corruption. And to be able to transform things, he must first exorcise the devil called corruption.