Why Brazil Crumbled

July 9, 2014

Brazil’s World Cup dream crumbled in spectacular fashion on Tuesday in a record 7-1 semi-final defeat. Here is a blow-by-blow account of a Germany’s night of triumph:

– ONE (Thomas Mueller 11)

Brazilians wondered how their team would cope without the injured Neymar, but the absence of captain Thiago Silva, such a reassuring presence at the back, was just as big a blow.

The Brazilian defence was hopelessly exposed at the opening goal, as Toni Kroos floated in a corner from the right and Thomas Mueller found himself completely unmarked at the back post to slot home his fifth goal of the tournament.

However, the movement by Mueller and the German players was intelligent as David Luiz, who should have been marking the goalscorer, found himself blocked off and unable to make a challenge.

– TWO (Miroslav Klose 23)

The crumble really began as Fernandinho failed to cut out a pass from the German right, and Kroos and Mueller combined to cut through the middle of the Brazil defence.

Klose collected the ball inside the area and saw his shot from close range blocked by Julio Cesar, but he still reacted the quickest to convert the rebound.

The veteran striker confirmed himself as the greatest poacher in the history of the competition, scoring a record-breaking 16th World Cup goal to move one clear of the Brazilian Ronaldo, compounding the hosts’ misery.

– THREE (Toni Kroos 24)

Almost immediately after the restart, Germany scored again through a combination of poor defending and marvellous finishing.

Nobody cut out Philipp Lahm’s low centre in from the German right, and even after Mueller mis-hit his shot, the ball came to Kroos.

The Bayern Munich man’s connection, first-time on the half-volley with his left foot from the edge of the area, was marvellous and Julio Cesar could do nothing.

– FOUR (Toni Kroos 26)

Fernandinho was hopelessly caught in possession just outside his own area, and Kroos and Sami Khedira took advantage to break into the area.

Khedira returned the ball to Kroos, who this time simply could not miss.

– FIVE (Sami Khedira 29)

The culmination of an extraordinary first-half burst that will go down in history came as Mats Hummels sliced right through the heart of the Brazilian team, riding unchallenged deep into the opposition half.

Germany simply walked the ball into the net this time, with Mesut Ozil providing the assist and Khedira applying the finish.

– SIX (Andre Schuerrle 69)

Brazil attacked after the break in a doomed attempt to rescue some pride, but they still had six defenders in their own area when Germany went on to add a sixth goal midway through the second half.

Schuerrle, who had replaced Klose 11 minutes earlier, still found himself in space in the box to convert Lahm’s cutback, as Brazil were yet again found wanting on the left-hand side.

– SEVEN (Andre Schuerrle 79)

Mueller turned provider this time to set up Schuerrle to score again, and his delightful control was followed by an arrowing left-foot shot on the half-volley that beat Julio Cesar and went into the net off the underside of the crossbar.

Oscar’s late reply for the hosts was irrelevant, with Brazil already having succumbed to their greatest ever humiliation. [myad]

140 Million Indonesian Voters Elect President Today

Greenbarge Reporters

July 9, 2014

An anticipated 140 million Indonesian voters are trooping to various polling cnetres to elect the President even as the government declared today a national holiday in what has been described as the world’s largest direct presidential election.

The polls were scheduled to be open for just six hours and closed at 1 p.m. Jakarta time. The voting was reported to be going smoothly, with relatively short lines at polling stations.

“All I want is a good leader,” said 21-year-old Monica Apriyani, a first-time voter who arrived at her polling station in Cibinon, Bogor, as it opened at 7 a.m. She declined to say who she voted for.

With less than 30 minutes to go before the polls closed, fewer than 400 of the 558 registered voters at one polling station in the South Jakarta neighborhood had cast their ballots, prompting an election official to use a public address system to urge local residents to vote.

“Don’t waste your vote,” he called out. “Your vote will determine the future of Indonesia.”

The election offers a stark choice between populist Governor Joko Widodo, a former mayor and furniture exporter, and former general Prabowo Subianto, who was discharged from the army for human rights abuses but is now a wealthy businessman and political party founder.

Many voters traveled long distances to be with their families and cast their ballots together in their hometowns. In Jakarta, where traffic congestion is typically among the worst in the world, the streets were nearly empty.

Voting was simplified for this election, the ballot only has two choices. Many voters identify the candidates by their ballot positions—No. 1 for the ticket of Mr. Subianto and running mate Hatta Rajasa, and No. 2 for the ticket of Mr. Widodo and running mate Jusuf Kalla.

Mr. Widodo arrived at his voting station in central Jakarta shortly after 10 a.m. wearing a brown and yellow traditional batik-patterned shirt. Accompanied by his wife, Iriana, he waved to a crowd of supporters and flashed the number two with his fingers.

The polling station isn’t far from the elementary school that U.S. President Barack Obama attended when he lived in Indonesia as a boy. Mr. Widodo has been called Indonesia’s Obama and often draws parallels to the American president for being a young, upstart politician that is perceived as a man of the people.

Mr. Subianto also arrived at his voting station, near his home in West Java, at about 10 a.m., wearing his trademark white safari shirt and a black pechi hat. He waded through a throng of cameras and supporters, waving, shaking hands and giving an occasional military-style salute.

“Everyone needs strong leaders now,” Mr. Subianto said in English in response to a question from a reporter. “Leaders must make good decisions, right?”

After voting, Mr. Subianto kissed babies and shook hands with villagers, some of whom shouted his name.

“Mr. Prabowo, can you please kiss my son’s forehead,” said one father, using the candidate’s first name. “We came all the way from Sukabumi,” about 20 miles (32 kilometers) away.

Mr. Subianto kissed the boy’s forehead and asked, “Have you voted?”

“Yes sir, we voted for you,” the man said.

Etty Djuhaty, 63 years old, who voted at a polling booth in West Java, said casting her ballot was easy.

“It took all of 5 minutes for each person to get the ballot, pick their candidate of choice and stick the ballot into the box,” she said.

However, she said she saw at least six voters who found that their names weren’t on the voter list, which is a common problem. They were able to register but had to wait until the polls closed at 1 p.m. to see if there were ballots available for them, she said.

“If there are ballots left, then those six get their turn,” she said. [myad]

Brazilians In Tears As Germans Pound Them Out Of World Cup With 7-1

Greenbarge Reporters

July 9, 2014

Many Brazilians left the stadium last night in tears, even before half time as German national team pounded them with 7 goals to one in the ongoing World Cup tournament which it (Brazil) is hosting. The sports loving Brazilians were too stunned to watch the match beyond first half.

The host trailed 5-0 before a half-hour had passed at the Estadio Mineirao in Belo Horizonte. The 7-1 scoreline was the worst defeat in the soccer-crazed nation’s history, dashing hopes of overcoming the national tragedy of losing the final game of the 1950 World Cup at home.

Brazil spent $11 billion preparing to host the tournament, the first on home soil in 64 years, with the national squad tasked with delivering nothing less than a record-extending sixth title. Memories of the failure may last longer than the pain endured six decades ago when Brazil lost the final game to Uruguay in Rio de Janeiro’s Maracana stadium.

“It’s embarrassing,” said Alberto Portugal, 56, one of scores of fans wearing Brazilian jerseys who were streaming out of the stadium mid-game. “We are supposed to be the team that plays beautiful soccer.”

After the match, officials reported isolated disturbances with military police in Rio saying some fans fled a viewing party on Copacabana beach after a fight broke out. Globo News showed images of buses burning in Sao Paulo, though it wasn’t immediately clear if the vandalism was a reaction to the game.

Teammate’s Absence

The buildup to the match was dominated by discussion about how Brazil would overcome the loss of top scorer Neymar, who suffered a fractured bone in his back in the closing stages of the quarterfinal win over Colombia. Coach Luiz Felipe Scolari called in a sport psychologist to ensure the players could deal with their teammate’s absence.

“Of course, they had higher pressure on their shoulders,” German midfielder Toni Kroos told reporters. “They had to become world champions at home. Of course we had a load on our shoulder, but theirs was heavier.

Brazil was hurt further when its captain and defensive leader, Thiago Silva, lost an appeal to overturn a one-match suspension for accumulating two yellow cards.

To ease Brazil’s anxieties, a member of the back-room staff poured salt on the field before the game, a tradition common in Brazil to bring luck.

Wasn’t Fazed

It didn’t work. Germany, a three-time champion that lost to Brazil in the 2002 final in Yokohama, Japan, wasn’t fazed by the pressure created by Brazilian fans as the game kicked off.

The Europeans took the lead in the 11th minute as Thomas Mueller took advantage of the first of several defensive lapses that led Germany to score five unanswered goals in 18 minutes. Mueller smashed the ball after David Luiz and Dante, Mueller’s teammate at Bayern Munich, missed Kroos’s corner.

Miroslav Klose then tapped in a rebound for a record 16th World Cup goal. Kroos added two in three minutes as Brazil’s defense capitulated amid jeers from the home fans.

‘‘There were 10 minutes when I don’t know what happened,” Brazilian player Marcelo Vieira da Silva said. “Today was the worst day of our lives.”

Once Sami Khedira knocked in the fifth goal, Brazil supporters started deserting the stadium. Many of the remaining fans broke down in tears.

‘Got Worse’

“The first goal was a shock and then it just got worse,” said Rayssa Mayrink, 37, an office administrator who paid 156 reais ($70) for a ticket, as she left the stadium during the interval. “I am going to try and block it out of my memory, but it’s not going to be easy. I thought it was better to leave.”

Things deteriorated further after halftime as substitute Andre Schuerrle added two more goals, including the seventh that condemned Brazil to its biggest-ever defeat. Oscar got Brazil’s only goal in injury time at the end of the second half.

As soon as referee Marco Rodriguez blew the final whistle to end their agony, Brazil’s David Luiz and Luis Gustavo dropped to their knees to pray. Luiz, who was captain in Silva’s absence, burst into tears and Oscar had to be comforted by coach Scolari.

A team that was cheered on to the field by a packed stadium left it to a chorus of boos and empty seats.

Funeral March

While many Brazilians wept, others said they were resigned to the loss and even had a sense of humor about it. Renato Nakazato, a 37-year-old designer, walked along Paulista Avenue in Sao Paulo with two friends playing a funeral march on a toy horn. In the same city Eder Araujo laughed after saying he left a job to be able to watch all the World Cup matches.

“Apparently it wasn’t worth it,” Araujo, 32, said.

Some in the stadium jeered President Dilma Rousseff, who had promised to host the “cup of cups” as she runs for re-election in October. She wrote on her Twitter account that she was saddened by the defeat, also using lyrics of a popular Brazilian song to urge the nation to overcome the loss.

“Losing 7-1 is a great disappointment, something that will go down in history,” Luiz Carlos, a 52-year-old cook, said in Rio. “Brazil will never be able to erase that shame” [myad]

A Regime’s Loss, A Nation’s Gain, By Garba Shehu

Garba Shehu

July 9, 2014

As the National Conference gradually inches to a close, the major surprise from its outcome may be the victory of the nation, as opposed to that of the Jonathan administration, the architect of the conference, which undoubtedly designed it in a way that it must fail.
In its short but memorable history, this country has had the fortune of so far surviving all the acts of brinkmanship by its rulers. We have gone through a civil war and survived it, and we have overcome countless other schemes to change the constitution for selfish reasons, mostly for the purpose of self-perpetuation by leaders.
It is inconceivable that the membership of a major conference of his nature would, in the first place be based on appointive representation, rather than elective one. But beyond this, the composition was so stacked against the North and Muslims in the country, that many thought, upon reading the breakdown, that it was intended to annoy these groups so that they would not agree to attend. There are about 300 Southerners to 200 Northerners. All past censuses put North-South population figures roughly at 54-46 percent. Sixty-two percent (62%) of the delegates are Christian, with Muslims and followers of traditional religions making up the balance of thirty-eight percent (38%). Christians make up 294 of the Conference membership.
The President had himself dilly-dallied for many years on whether to convene a conference or not to. In the beginning, he stoutly stood against it. Much later, he saw it as an opportunity to deflect attention from the woeful performance of his administration which had in turn generated tons of trenchant criticism on everyday basis.
Up to Seventy percent of membership of the conference was directly and indirectly appointed by the same administration. And they didn’t disappoint anyone by the way and manner they chose them. I must make clear that there are very several of them with undying passion for Nigeria, who are unimpeachably honest and hardworking; who are men and women championing the unity of the country. These are those who paved the way to Nigeria’s victory that I am celebrating this morning. They realized early enough that a President who had turned his party into rubble must not be allowed to do the same for the country.
Government made sure that there was not any one anti-national element left out that was not nominated to come to the conference. All those AGIPs – Any Government in power; the nation’s known “yes men” and “yes women”; the famous hacks tamed by government for barking in English; the political prostitutes selling their English speaking and articulation skills to criminally-inclined political masters over the past many years were the government’s first set of choices for the conference.
Many of those appointed delegates have no other jobs but are known for unsustainable life-styles that they desperately seek to hang onto.
In addition to the lopsided representation, the North’s leaders were skeptical about the Conference because government’s list was full of people seen as renegades and turn-coats, who had been associated with the unpopular policies of past regimes. In the South-West, many of their delegates were the self-styled sentinels of the republic, nearing expiry; people who have been dumped in the electoral garbage bin. The list was drawn up to spite the reigning leaders of politics in the region. In real politik, you can’t do political business in the South-West today without talking to Asiwaju Bola Tinubu. A Conference that set aside 15 slots for the President’s Ijaw and none at the beginning for their Itsekiri traditional rivals did not set out to be fair in any respect. After they cried out aloud, the Itsekiri were awarded a nominal representation of one member.
Little wonder many of the government delegates ended up presenting trivial, meaningless, contrived, divisive, illogical and fallacious arguments.
Many of the so-called issues that the President copied and pasted from newspapers over the years as being Nigeria’s problems were settled issues. That is why they ended up being rejected as non-issues.
Delegates from the North surprised themselves in the same way they surprised many of their critics. In an era of 5G corruption and 10G insecurity, many believed that they will cave in to the greed and avarice of a given section of the country who wanted to gobble up the entire wealth of the nation. In the end, those of them seen as the usual suspects, the likes of Jerry Gana and John Dara may end up among the North’s real heroes. That the President’s religion-centered politics had failed to sunder the North is yet another key success of this get-together.
A loss by a government that chooses to throw the chance at history by playing the same set of drums of religion and ethnicity instead of rising above everything is a huge gain for the Nigerian nation. But celebrations over this victory will, however, pass for a short respite in view of the government’s growing provocation using the army through newspapers seizures, profiling of citizens on the bases of ethnicity and religion and the heat and cacophony on Northerners in the Eastern parts of the country.

Read More Articles From This Author: Garba Shehu

[myad]

Obasanjo Prevails On President Jonathan To Stop Govenor Nyako’s Impeachment

Greenbarge Reporters

July 8, 2014

There were indications that former President Olusegun Obasanjo prevailed on President Goodluck Jonathan to stop Adamawa state House of Assembly from going ahead with impeachment process on Governor Murtala Nyako.
Observers concluded that the presence of Obasanjo, for the first time in a long time, at the National Council of State meeting in the Presidential Villa, Abuja today was not a coincidence as the embattled governor also made a surprised presence.
Political watchers said that Obasanjo personally asked Governor Nyako to come for the meeting so that he would seize the opportunity to speak to President Jonathan on his behalf.
It would be recalled that the emergence of Governor Nyako and President Jonathan was the handiwork of Obasanjo, who believe that he still has a big role to play in the official lives of the two personalities.
Governor Nyako, who left the immediately after the meeting, refused to speak to newsmen.
“I don’t want to talk please,” Nyako said as he walked briskly pass the journalists.

[myad]

Chibok Girls: Obasanjo, Babangida, Gowon Others Agree Jonathan Is On Top Of Situation

Greenbarge Reporters

July 8, 2014

Former Nigerian leaders, including General Yakubu Gowon, Alhaji Shehu Shagari, Olusegun Obasanjo, Ibrahim Babangida, Ernest Shonekan and others have been convinced that the security operatives have found the whereabouts of the female students of Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok in Borno state who were abducted in April by members of Boko Haram.
The leaders, who converged on the Presidential Aso Villa, Abuja today, to meet with President Goodluck Jonathan under the aegis of National Council of State, also agreed that President Jonathan is on top of the sordid security situation in the country.
Breifing newsmen shortly after the meeting, the governors of Akwa Ibom state, Godswill Akpabio, Edo state, Adams Oshiomhole and Kaduna state, Lamaran Yero said that the meeting started with President Jonathan briefing the leaders on the measures he had so far taken to address the worsening security situation, particularly the abducted Chibok female students.
They said that the National Security Adviser (NSA), Colonel Dasuki (rtd) also briefed the leaders, upon which the former Nigerian Presidents and Heads of States in attendant expressed satisfaction.
“We are satisfied that security people know where the girls are right now and have to be meticulous in bringing them from their captors in a way that none of them would be killed in the process.
“We are satisfied that the military authority and other security agents are on top of the situation.”
The leaders then asked Nigerians to be patient with President Jonathan and the security people to continue with their good work to bring back the girls and bring Nigeria back to the path of peace and unity.
They made it clear that terrorism involving suicide bombing is a new security phenomena which the nation’s conventional security people were not used to, saying that such war in which there is no defined enemies is difficult to fight.
The leaders also appealed to news media not to celebrate terrorism even as they also called on the politicians avoid partisanship in the type of security challenges in the nation is going through.
The leaders who attended today’s Council of State meeting were the former Heads of State, Generals Yakubu Gowon, Ibrahim Babangida and Abdulsalami Abubakar, former head of the National Interim Government, Chief Ernest Shenekan as well as former Presidents Shehu Shagari and Olusegun Obasanjo.
Former Head of State General Muhammadu Buhari (Rtd) is conspicuously absent at the meeting.
The governors at the meeting include Murtala Nyako of Adamawa state, that of
Bayelsa, Delta, Enugu, Abia, Ebonyi, Taraba, Edo, Akwa Ibom, Gombe, Kebbi, Kaduna, Cross River, Niger and
Kogi states.
Vice President Mohammed Namadi Sambo as well as Senate President, David Mark and Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal were also in attendance.‬

[myad]

Chibok Girls: Jonathan Will Not Dance To The Gallery, Says Dr. Abati

Greenbarge Reporters

July 8, 2014

Special adviser to President Goodluck Jonathan on media and Publicity, Dr. Reuben Abati has made it clear that the President has no business trying to go public to reveal the position of the female students of the Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok in Borno state abducted in April by Boko Haram, simply to please anybody and risk the lives of the girls.
Abati said, in reaction to editor Karren Attiah of the Washington Post today: “Mr. Jonathan won’t put the lives of these girls at risk by publicly revealing details of the recovery operation for the sake of satisfying his critics.”
Karren Attiah had written on what he said
“President Goodluck Jonathan should have written,“ but which Abati defended in his letter to the editor.
“Nigeria,” the Presidential spokesman said, “is aggressively confronting the Boko Haram threat.”
Calling Karen Attiah’s write up as misinformed, Dr, Abati said that the claim that the president has a “do-nothing” attitude toward rescuing the girls is not different than what was written about President Obama’s decision not to disclose his efforts to seize and arrest the alleged ringleader of the 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans — until he did just that.
“Despite Ms. Attiah’s claims to the contrary, even before the abductions, the president was engaged in international intelligence-sharing involving West Africa, Europe and the United States, and he had also launched the Counter-Terrorism Centre in Nigeria.
“He has been working intensely on the very challenging situation posed by Boko Haram since assuming office, including declaring a state of emergency in May 2013 in the three most affected northern states.”

[myad]

Governor Oshiomhole Accuses PDP, Police Of Celebrating Lawlessness In Edo- Says He Can’t Be Intimidated

Greenbarge Reporters

July 8, 2014

Governor Adams Oshimhole of Edo state has lamented the lawlessness that is being perpetrated by four Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) members in the state House of Assembly with full connivance and back up of men and officers of the Nigeria police in the state.
Oshiomhole, who spoke to newsmen at the side of the National Council of State meeting held at the Presidential Aso Villa today, said the PDP members have chosen to disregard a High Court ruling barring them from entering the Assembly even as the police continue to give them cover to disrupt peace in the state.
The governor said that as a unionist who had spent most parts of his adult life fighting the government and bad system, he would not allow himself to be intimidated by the federal government, using Police and four renegade members of the state House of Assembly.
He narrated how the four members decided to create unnecessary confusion in the governance of the state simply because they wanted to show their masters in Abuja that they are strong.
“The good people of Edo state know their antics and have placed them where they belong. They even asked the High Court that barred them from the premises of the Assembly to go to hell. That no court can stop them from doing what they want to do.
“What is happening in Edo state is a celebration of lawlessness by just four suspended PDP members of the House of Assembly with police providing them support.”

[myad]

President Jonathan’s PR Offensive Backfires In Nigeria And Abroad, By Tim Cocks

Greenbarge Reporters

July 8, 2014

Facing censure at home and overseas for a perceived failure to protect civilians from violent Islamists, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan has launched an international media offensive to try to turn the tide of public opinion in his favour.

But those efforts have backfired abroad, where many greet his defence with scepticism, and at home, where he was slated for hiring U.S. public relations (PR) firm Levick for $1.2 million, in what critics called a waste of money.

Jonathan, and Nigeria as a whole, have suffered a worsening image problem since Islamist militant group Boko Haram kidnapped more than 276 school girls from the northeast village of Chibok, Borno state, in mid-April. Over 200 remain in captivity.

The attack overshadowed Nigeria becoming Africa’s biggest economy after a GDP rebasing in April, and its hosting of the World Economic Forum in May. Security is a major headache ahead of national elections in February that are likely to be the closest-fought since democracy returned in 1999.

An opinion piece by Jonathan in the Washington Post last month – in which the president wrote “nothing is more important than bringing home Nigeria’s missing girls,” but added that he had to “remain quiet” for their safety – drew open scorn.

Soon after, the Washington Post’s Karen Attiah published a satirical send-up of Jonathan’s op-ed. Her piece included lines such as: “Nothing is more important than stopping the machinations of Boko Haram, except maybe my desire to keep up appearances and show the international community that Nigeria was winning the war against the group.”

Analyst Bismarck Rewane, CEO of Lagos-based consultancy Financial Derivatives, thinks the president’s timing was wrong.

“That op-ed backfired partly because the negative narrative was still so strong,” he told Reuters. “But often the PR guys advising want the upfront fees and don’t care about the result.”

Jonathan’s media team declined to comment on their PR strategy. A presidency source confirmed Levick’s contract but said such PR initiatives were standard practice for governments.

“All over the world governments engage PR firms and lobbyists to achieve certain objectives within a particular time frame,” the source, who declined to be named, told Reuters.

In this case those objectives involve reversing months of damaging publicity over the Chibok girls’ abduction, magnified by a #BringBackOurGirls Twitter campaign that drew in celebrities including Michelle Obama and Angelina Jolie.

In the past week Jonathan’s articulate and Washington-savvy Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has toured the world doing press interviews, for example with CNN’s Christine Amanpour.

These often include earnest assertions that the Nigerian president is “doing his best” to get the girls back.

Ultimately, the bad publicity is unlikely to doom Jonathan’s 2015 re-election chances. In Nigeria, patronage can produce a ballot win more reliably than perceived performance, analysts say, as was proved in last month’s governorship poll in southwestern Ekiti state.

There, incumbent Kayode Fayemi, a well-spoken reformer with a track record of improving services was ousted by a populist former governor from the ruling party whose team gave out tens of thousands of bags of rice to voters ahead of the poll.

“BATTERED IMAGE”

Jonathan’s supporters and the army – the defense spokesman did not respond to a request for comment – see PR as a key part of the war against Boko Haram. They view each negative report on the security forces or president as a psychological victory to the “terrorists”. And there have been a lot of them.

First the military was pilloried for not protecting the Chibok school or responding quickly enough to a distress call. Then the absence of information on the girls’ whereabouts – and a bungled statement from the military briefly claiming to have rescued them from which it later edged away – worsened things.

Footage circulating showing Jonathan dancing at a political rally in the northern city of Kano shortly after the mass abduction didn’t help, neither did comments from Jonathan’s wife Patience, in which she publicly told the protesting parents of the abducted girls in the capital Abuja to “go back to Borno.”

“No PR firm can save Jonathan’s battered image,” Jibrin Ibrahim, director of the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), a Nigerian NGO, wrote in the local Premium Times website. “Forget the public relations firm and concentrate on the task … The government did nothing for over three weeks.”

Jonathan’s administration says that is unfair, arguing it faces an enemy that is mobile over a wide, remote area and with a track record of wanton killing of civilians, so any rushed rescue could end up in a bloodbath. But few are convinced.

“Best wishes to Levick, merely the latest in a long line of Western image consultants that Nigerian governments have been known to routinely engage for miracle-working purposes,” popular blogger Tolu Ogunlesi wrote in local daily The Punch last week.

Ogunlesi told Reuters that “this time the stakes are so much higher. You’re dealing with a major national embarrassment.”

A weak response is to always deflect blame for Nigeria’s problems onto foreign elements, Ogunlesi added, such as Jonathan describing Boko Haram as al Qaeda in West Africa.

REVERSED PERCEPTIONS

Ironically, many of the characteristics for which Jonathan is now being publicly vilified – a perceived indecisiveness and weakness in the face of a determined foe – were what initially attracted voters fatigued with decades of bullying strongmen.

His initial humility, quiet demeanor, apparent openness to listening and an unpolished manner of speaking may at first have won Nigerians over. Now they cringe when he mumbles on international TV.

“He was something refreshing at the beginning,” Nigerian columnist Cheta Nwanze told Reuters. “But the office of the president is supposed to carry a lot of weight. Damage has been done by his being exposed to ridicule.”

[myad]

Council Of State Meeting At Presidential Villa, Abuja, Today

Greenbarge Reporters

July 8, 2014

COUNCIL OF STATE, OBJ AND CO — Former Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Alhaji Shehu Shagari, Chief Ernest Shonekan, General Ibrahim Babangida and General Abdulsalami Abubakar at the Council of State Meeting in the Presidential Villa, Abuja, today.

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