Gleanings President Jones’s Lagos Declaration

By Thursday, the French government had mobilized 80,000 troops to search the nooks and crannies of a village where the two assailants were believed to be hiding. Every man and woman of goodwill have signed in to the handle #JeSuisCharlie making it the most popular twitter handle since the #BringBackOurGirls campaign. Every president, prime minister and global leader of repute has sent condolences and defiance to enemies of a freedom.
Even President Jones said something without waiting for Malala Yousafzai’s advice. Believe me, some think that things are looking up. Sorry, not one of the Chibok girls has been rescued thus far. In fact, they do not feature in the Lagos Declaration that launched President Jones into the 2015 campaign season. Over 200 girls are still unaccounted for, and the numbers are increasing. Sorry, Naija is not France and although President Jones was at the Elysee Palace in the wake of the Boko Haram insurgency, he did not mobilise his troops to rescue the girls. He said he knew where they were, but that rescuing them may lead to bloodshed and he has a phobia for blood.
At the Lagos declaration, President Jones declared with reckless abandon that he has no enemies to fight. I guess that is sad news for parents of the Chibok girls, the #BringBackOurGirls campaign and for the good people of Nasarawa, Plateau, Benue and of course the entire northeast. Those who are daily reduce the population in these places are not our president’s enemies. They must be his friends. That includes, Ombatse, herdsmen and Boko Haram and residents of Baga, Gwoza, Konduga, Dikwa and Bama. Corrupt officials are welcome to the Jones paradise; there is no lorry big enough to crate them to Kirikiri or Gasua.
There is also reason that France is not Naija. Francois Hollande may not have carried out a leadership audit to discover that Francois Mitterrand probably gave the two fugitives he is looking for their French citizenship.  President Jones is not ready to fight insurgencies any more than he is ready to fight corruption because he has just discovered that 30 years ago, his closest rival, a former military ruler did not buy rifles. He needs 10 years to break that jinx and maybe to recover the 20 armoured personnel carriers that Shekau boasted he snatched from his troops.
Mr. President is happy to recall that he established schools for our almajirai, except that they are scattered in Chad, Cameroon and Niger and cannot attend the schools. They would have preferred the status quo than their statelessness. Nobody should remind Mr. President of the mass failure in entrance examination to his universities or that the schools do not feature on any list of best schools. Nobody should say that the schools have experienced the longest closures in the history of any government under his watch. This, of course must be the fault of the opposition.
We all love the presidential use of selective amnesia on MEND. In 2010 when they killed people at his centennial celebrations, Mr. President exonerated MEND even before he could be fully briefed. His logic was that his people have worked so much for living to disrupt democracy. It would be interesting to know when MEND was hired to kill him and why those who did are still waking free.
We don’t have to remind Mr. President of promises to end darkness in four years or lose the moral right to contest because we now have electricity yanfuyanfu. Dr. Jones electoral promises are like the beloved lies a suitor tells his babe before he wins her over. It is an open secret that those who donated N5 billion to his campaign would jerk up rates after February when the tides would have ebbed on the River Niger to warrant load shedding.
The good luck train mocks the French TGV, which at 2007 was travelling at 574 kilometres per hour. Lugard’s refurbished coaches make the journey from Lagos to Kano in just three days – faster than Ekene Dili Chukwu buses. Give it to Mr. President; he was right when he declared that his generation has failed, because it failed to take us to the moon. The world has left moon travel prospects to Richard Branson; all we ask is to inherit the earth first – the moon can wait. What is standing between inheriting the earth and dying in droves is official corruption, laxity in governance, unemployment, brigandage, insecurity, and lack of opportunities. Not much has changed in the six years when oil price was over $100 per barrel, what is the Jones blueprint for performing magic in four years with the bench mark at lower than $50 per barrel. Change beckons!