One
notable thing that has never favoured the administration of President
Goodluck Ebele Jonathan is the calibre, loyalty and competency of men
and women whom he has appointed in various positions.
Naij Publication provides to us, Mahmud Jega lists [Daily Trust] of 12 personalities that have further dented president’s personal image and the image of his administration.

1. Alhaji Bamanga Tukur
His
disastrous tenure as PDP’s national chairman was the biggest game
changer for the PDP from which it might never recover. Bamanga’s tenure
also coincided with the period when three major opposition parties were
consolidating into one mega opposition party, but the chairman failed to
recognise the emerging threat. Instead, he encouraged the Party Leader
to settle personal scores within the party. It was a cover for Bamanga
to also settle personal scores of his own. He suspended a state governor
for refusing to answer his phone call; he watched askance as seven
governors formed a faction called ‘the new PDP’ (nPDP), and he didn’t
care a hoot when 5 governors jumped ship and joined the APC.
2. Chief Edwin Clark
As
soon as Dr. Goodluck Jonathan rose to the presidency, this Gowon-era
Information Minister created for himself a position hitherto unknown in
Nigerian politics, that of the president’s ethnic godfather. No Yoruba
potentate occupied this post during Chief Olusegun Obasanjo’s eight year
rule and even the feeble President Umaru Yarádua had no such godfather.
Rather than use his extra-constitutional position to steady the
president’s position, Clark used it to create numerous enemies for
Jonathan through his use of intemperate language and regular assaults at
dissenting folks.
3. Mrs Diezani Alison-Madueke
No
one gets to sit atop Nigeria’s oil industry without making many
enemies. Mrs Allison Madueke’s beauty, fluent English and polished
manners gained for her a lot of mileage, but the sleaze in the oil
industry ultimately caught up with her. Most damaging have been the
scandalous rip offs in subsidy payments, the botched attempt to remove
the oil subsidy in 2012, Sanusi’s allegation of the missing $20 billion
and the reported N10 billion spent to hire private jets, not to mention
the failure to pass the PIB bill.
4. Mrs Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
The
first ever Coordinating Minister of the Economy fancies herself as an
economic wunderkind at par with the German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer or
the Japanese Prime Minister Sato. While most Nigerians thought economic
conditions were harsh, Mrs Okonjo-Iweala bandied figures and said it is
among the best-managed in the world. This sharp discrepancy between the
official claims and people’s feelings did much damage to the
administration’s credibility. Nor was there any preparation of the
public mind for the steep fall in oil prices, the sharp drop in external
reserves and the precipitous decline of the naira.
5. Dame Patience Jonathan
In
the last five decades Nigerian First Ladies have often been mired in
one controversy or another. Mrs Patience Jonathan however stands in a
class of her own by making many gaffes and ill-advised actions that
badly affected the public image of her husband’s regime. Worst of them
all was her intervention in the Chibok girls’ saga and her futile
attempts to prove that her husband’s political enemies orchestrated the
whole affair. Her quarrel with Rotimi Amaechi, the governor of her home
state, also resulted in PDP’s most impactful loss of a political figure.
6. Mujaheed Dokubo Asari
This
ex-militant’s coarse manner, intemperate language and his open threats
against whole regions of the country supposedly in Jonathan’s service
did much political damage. Asari was later joined by more ex-militant
leaders to threaten war against the country should Jonathan lose the
election. Their joint threat greatly antagonised non-partisan opinion
all over the country.
7. Chief Olusegun Obasanjo
If
remarks must be matched to records, this former two-time ruler has no
moral authority to criticise anyone but the wily Obasanjo re-launched
himself back into the reckoning of Nigerians by spearheading attacks
against the Jonathan regime in the last two years. Many people suspect
that his motives are ungodly. Yet Obasanjo’s devastating attacks against
Jonathan, sometimes through letters, at other times through public
lectures have taken a heavy toll. The Jonathan Presidency never quite
settled on the best way to tackle Obasanjo. Sometimes it answered his
letters; at other times it tried to ignore him and at still other times
it sent seven PDP governors to plead with him to keep quiet.
8. Governor Godswill Akpabio
The
ambitious Akwa Ibom State governor rapidly moved very close to
President Jonathan and soon installed himself as the president’s top
gubernatorial enforcer. At one point he went about the task wisely, such
as when he talked Bamanga into reversing Governor Aliyu Wamakko’s
suspension. Other times he handled matters with very damaging crudity,
such as the 16 is greater than 19 affair, which effectively destroyed
the Nigeria Governors Forum.
9. Alhaji Adamu Mu’azu
When
he replaced Bamanga Tukur as PDP’s chairman, the former Bauchi State
governor was proclaimed by his partymen as the game changer. It turned
out that he underestimated the fall in PDP’s esteem and total political
stature. Even though Mu’azu toured the country trying to lure back
members who defected and though he refrained from creating more problems
by not trying to settle personal scores, the damage had been done and
he was unable to reverse it.
10. Vice President Mohamed Namadi Sambo
Many
of Jonathan’s kitchen cabinet members would sit back and say that the
Vice President is to blame for failing to stem the tide when the
country’s single largest voting bloc, the far North, turned completely
against the Jonathan regime. Some northern PDP governors encouraged this
belief in the hope of replacing Sambo on the ticket. Sambo has nothing
of the political drive and ambition of, say, Atiku Abubakar. His affable
and non-controversial nature did not add to the regime’s problems but
it did not stave off the decline either.
11. NSA and military service chiefs
The
top security chiefs have contributed to President Jonathan and PDP’s
problems in only three ways. One was their failure to tame Boko Haram
despite repeated claims that they will do so. Second was their timing
the operation to end Boko Haram once and for all with the date set for
presidential election. The third, final damage inflicted by the service
chiefs was their asking for the election to be postponed while they
attack Boko Haram.
12. Dr Goodluck Ebele Jonathan
The
President contributed to his party’s current predicament in only three
ways that I can think of. They are his lack of adequate knowledge about
Nigeria, lack of adequate preparation before becoming the president of
Nigeria and lack of rapid catching up study when he became the president
of Nigeria.
His mistake in choosing Bamanga Tukur; his overreliance on Ngozi,
Diezani and Akpabio; his initial misreading of Boko Haram as a political
plot; his inability to manage Obasanjo, Edwin Clark, Aminu Tambuwal,
nPDP and ex-militants can all be attributed to those three inadequacies.
Source: Naij