Niger Top News

Jonathan’s last-minute appointments

Now that President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration has formally ended, it is time for us to show interest in how to handle the reckless injury-time appointments he made.
 Although a renowned legal luminary Prof Itse Sagay has already used the appropriate words to describe the appointments as ‘morally improper and politically immature’, the posture of some analysts that the appointments be dissolved would be simplistic if not more juvenile.
 This is because a look at the modus operandi of Jonathan’s government does not in any way suggest that his last minute appointments were worse than those made much earlier. The exact point in time when appointments were made is therefore virtually irrelevant.

 Indeed, for the better part of his tenure, Jonathan operated as if a ‘Caretaker-Gestapo’ was in place to act on his behalf. On his last day in office, his officials clapped when he naively said any conceived probe should go beyond his tenure. It was like a thief telling a court that many of his friends were also thieves. Knowing that his predecessors deserved to be probed why didn’t he do it? Indeed, why didn’t he do anything- Chibok, Power, Fuel etc?