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| General Muhamadu Buhari is leading a country that is apparently dying |
That was when life was very sweet as an opposition party especially with
the tolerance level of Goodluck Jonathan. At least, Goodluck was
spending his time in the country even if, in the hyperbolic words of
Fashola, he was spending “most” of it in church.
However, fast forward to today, we have the same Fashola who is
currently serving as a minister under president Muhammadu Buhari who
would remain Nigeria’s most travelled president for a long time in our
history. So far, since his inauguration into office on May 29, 2015,
President Buhari has traversed 24 countries of the world within a short
period of 9 months.
Considering our scarce resources, this is too frequent, too costly and
is a disturbing development as the nation is in its worst economic
quagmire since independence. Never in the history of our nation even
when we thought we faced economic recession and hyper-inflation has our
exchange rate run on auto-devaluation as it is now. The prices of food
stuff and basic items are climbing higher and out of the reach of the
common man. The purchasing power of the citizens has been badly eroded
while people are not only not getting employed, those who are employed
are losing their jobs in droves.
The economy is at a standstill! No gainful economic activity going on
anywhere. Infrastructural development that characterised Goodluck
Jonathan’s administration has since been brought to a halt; our revived
agricultural sector is now in a speedy reverse course. While harmless
and armless youths protesting peacefully within their constitutional
rights are regularly mowed down by mindless security agencies in Zaria,
Aba, Onitsha etc, the supreme court has come under several severe
attacks from the ruling party as the Honourable Justices of the apex
court have resisted the “body language” charm and refused to do the
bidding of the party in some of the judgements given by the court
recently.
Kidnapping has not only returned but assumed a more dangerous and
fearful dimension, and the security agents seem overwhelmed. Power
supply has become more epileptic than ever even as the DISCO’s have
hiked their tariff by about 40% and they still expect Nigerians to pay
for darkness supplied in the midst of gross financial powerlessness.
There is general disenchantment in the land as the Buhari administration
has sufficiently demonstrated a total lack of idea on how to run our
economy to attain its full potentials at this time. This fact is further
strengthened by the shambolic and embarrassing preparation of a simple
budget that is a normal ritual of governments all over the world.
Nigerians believe that the budget was fraught with fraud and an
indication of the hypocrisy of the current government’s anti-corruption
stance. Having suffered so much, the Buhari budget is widely believed to
be the “most stolen”, “most missing”, “most padded”, “most denied”,
“most investigated”, “most withdrawn” and “most re-presented” budget,
yet, there is no outrage in the land over that garbage. If PDP had made
that “mistake” during its time, of course, the country would have been
on an uncontrollable conflagration, set on by APC.
Despite the rapid descent of the country into catastrophic and
unbelievable state of socio-political and economic anomie within a very
short period, President Buhari carries on as if nothing is wrong. There
is no sense of urgency or even needed level of concern for the state of
the nation. Buhari keeps globe-trotting as if the solutions to the
nation’s woes lie abroad.
The sophistry peddled by the administration’s spin doctors, as it was
during the presidential campaigns, that the president’s frequent travels
has already yielded much fruits for the country is only a lullaby-like
tale told to children in order to put them to sleep and prevent their
usual late night tantrums. Obviously, the complaints of Nigerians about
the worrying situation of things in the country would no doubt have been
sounding like tantrums to the ears of government.
Given Fashola’s lamentations about former president Jonathan’s frequent
presence in church, one would have expected this same man and his likes
to caution the president about his needless travels, sit back at home,
consult with his cabinet and concerned Nigerians on how we can all move
this country forward rather than junketing all over the world in search
of foreign solutions to local problems.
The argument that he is in talks with some oil producing countries to
see how they could help increase the value of oil in the international
market by scaling down on output is akin to pouring water in a basket
for the purpose of storage. If we are able to get Saudi Arabia to reduce
output will a country like Iran not take advantage of that and flood
the market with their own oil especially as they have a lot to unleash
on the market having been shut out from the international market for a
long time as a result of US sanctions until recently.
This is more so especially when one considers that Iran would be very
happy to do the exact opposite of what Saudi Arabia does even if it is
just to spite the Saudis owing to the frosty relations between the two
countries. In addition, the pro-Shiite Iranians expressed very strong
diplomatic reservations over the recent killings of Shiite Muslims in
Zaria by a band of military men led by the Chief of Army Staff, Lt Gen
Tukur Buratai. This might just be an opportunity for a pay back by them.
It is also instructive to note that a majority of our oil patrons have
either found new buyers or have embraced alternative sources of energy.
So, whichever way one looks at it, embarking on extensive and expensive
diplomatic shuttles majorly for this purpose is not only illogical, it
is also antithetic to common sense and beats the imagination of even
elementary economists. Little wonder then our president seems to be the
only president among the oil producing countries who think the best way
to shore up the price of oil worldwide is by diplomatic shuttles. No
other president worldwide is travelling for this purpose.
Our nation is dying, the president is travelling and his party is
parrying the truth about the situation of things and the true outcome of
the president’s frequent travels. Let the president return, sit back
and spend quality time at home and stop working like a distant learning
student!
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Jude Ndukwe (jrndukwe@yahoo.co.uk; Twitter: @stjudendukwe)
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