THE QUESTION: Did Goodluck Jonathan really promise to create UNEMPLOYMENT?

A video of President Goodluck Jonathan promising to “create unemployment” is trending in the cyberspace.

That video, approximately 15 seconds in length, may end up becoming the next-best Twitter/Facebook talking point ahead of the coming election, following in the shadows of the ‘statement of secondary school result’ released on Wednesday by Muhammadu Buhari’s school.

Jonathan was already talking when the video opened. Flanked by Namadi Sambo, his ever-loyal vice president, and other officials whose faces were not visible, the president says: “Let me just stop there. Since I’ve mentioned it, I’d try to be disciplined, to keep to the time.

“But let me assure Nigerian youths that we are going to create jobs; we are going to create unemployment…”

The video, which was recorded on the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA),  ends there. Apparently, the moment where the president spoke about creating unemployment was all the recorder needed.

THE ARGUMENTS

Within 19 hours of the posting of the video on Facebook, it received 29, 308 views. And with this increasing traction has come shades of argument on its authenticity and why anyone should take it seriously. Let’s attempt to group all the arguments into three: the supporting team, the opposing team, and the neutrals.

THE SUPPORTING TEAM

A video doesn’t lie, like the line in 9ice’s famous Gbamu Gbamu track: ireje o si ninu photo (no cheating in photo), as you pose na so you go show. This is not just a video; this is a video captured on NTA, the one television network never to side with a sitting president’s opponent. So it could never have been false.

Tell this group that it was a ‘slip of tongue’ from Jonathan, just like Buhari slipped when he introduced his running mate, Yemi Osinbajo, as Yemi Osungbade, at a presidential rally, but they argue that the president has never managed to solve the nation’s unemployment woes, anyway, so no surprise if he says he would create more! Rigid team.

THE OPPOSING TEAM

This video is fake! Members of this team are cock sure. Two decades ago, they would not have questioned the veracity of the video. But this is the 21st century and advancing technological innovations continue to prove that nothing is now impossible. That video was doctored by Jonathan’s ‘political enemies’. Its recorder and distributors are people from the Buhari camp who are desperate to take attention off Buhari’s failure to provide his original certificate and instead resort to circulating a “forged” statement of result.

THE NEUTRALS

The video is real, they say. But they add: “So, what?”

Jonathan erroneously said he would create “unemployment” when he meant to say he would create “employment”. What’s the big deal? Everyone makes mistakes. No one is perfect. No one is infallible. This video is another needless distraction from the more important issues relating to competence of the two leading presidential candidates.

To toe the no-one-is-above-mistakes line is to inadvertently exonerate Buhari of his Osungbade blunder as well. To join the supporting team is to side with the opposition party and its candidate. Accepting the arguments of the opposing team is to campaign for the president’s re-election.

So, will the president come out again to tell us what exactly he wants to create: employment or unemployment? Anyone who doubts him afterwards is all out for mischief and should be dismissed with a wave of the hand.