Don’t Name District After Jonathan

When the Minister of the FCT, Senator Bala Mohammed announced last week that he was naming the Maitama Extension District, Abuja, after President Goodluck Jonathan, most Nigerians felt offended at the crude assault on their collective intelligence by someone who should know but who has decided to play to the gallery.

In the first place, this is not the time to display such flagrant insensitivity and immodesty, considering the general insecurity in the country.

The Islamic fundamentalist sect, Boko Haram has nearly rendered the Northern part of the country prostrate with its strings of bomb and gun attacks against civilian and security targets. The president as Commander-in-Chief of the country’s armed forces was expected to stay focused and find solution to the deadly attacks by the murderous sect which has claimed thousands of lives in the past one year.

Rather than assist the president find solution to the myriads of problems facing the country, the FCT minister insulted us all by naming a strategic district after him. What the FCT minister has succeeded in doing by his decision to name the district after Jonathan is to trivialise the apprehension in the land over the general insecurity.

We regard the FCT minister’s action as a distraction and a self serving one devoid of any sense of decency and modesty.

We find the explanation offered by the minister that the naming was done to show appreciation to the president for providing infrastructure in the new district, as puerile. It was neither altruistic nor done with the best of intentions. It is a poisoned chalice Jonathan must not drink from.

We regard the naming of the new district after the president as disgraceful, self-serving and ill-timed self glorification.

This is why we are joining other patriots to call on the president to reject the naming of the new district after him to prevent future embarrassment. We consider it the height of immodesty for a sitting president to agree to a decision to name a street, monument or a district after him when the decision could be queried in the future.

It is our opinion that the president should leave the naming of any street or monument to future leaders and Nigerians who will be in a better position to judge his performance and whether he deserves such honour.

The tasks facing the administration are enormous. They include provision of stable electricity, good roads, efficient rail system and tackling corruption and insecurity. These are daunting enough and we think the president should devote his attention to these problems rather than allow himself to be distracted by a self-serving honour..

The president should not lend himself to a self immortalisation plot while in office. That task belongs to the governed who will give a correct assessment of his administration after he had left office.