₦airaland Forum

George Santayana says: “Those who cannot remember
the past are condemned to repeat it.” If Nigerians
were not so forgetful, we would not now be saddled
with the burdensome presidency of Muhammadu
Buhari.


In his first coming as military head-of-state in 1984,
Buhari took Nigeria’s economy from bad to worse.
Under him, our national debt rose from $14 billion to
$18 billion in less than two years; with the result that
Nigeria was no longer able to meet its financial
obligations to global bankers. We had to queue for
essential commodities, such as bread and milk, which
were hard to find. Raw materials and spare parts
needed to keep factories running were scarce. Rather
than create jobs, tens of thousands of workers lost
their jobs. Inflation rose to the astronomical level of
40%.
When Buhari seized power, Nigeria’s GDP was $444.
When he was overthrown in 1985, Nigeria’s GDP had
dropped dramatically to $344. When Buhari seized
power, one dollar exchanged for 0.724 naira. But by
the time he was overthrown, one dollar exchanged for
0.894 naira; a 23% devaluation in barely two years. It
was not surprising, therefore, that there was wild
jubilation throughout the length and breadth of
Nigeria when Buhari was overthrown.


Litany of failure
History is now repeating itself in Nigeria. Since
electing Buhari as president one year ago, Nigeria’s
GDP has plummeted, with the economy suffering a
negative growth in the first quarter of 2016; the
worst in 25 years. Prices have skyrocketed. Investors
have packed their bags and left Nigeria. Job losses
and lay-offs have increased geometrically. Petrol
stations have surreptitiously doubled their prices.
Nigeria is now on the cusp of a recession.
Buhari was handed over $30 billion in foreign
reserves by the Jonathan administration. He inherited
over $2.5 billion in the Sovereign Wealth Fund; $1.4
billion in the ECA; and $4.65 billion in back taxes
from NLNG. But virtually all of this has been
squandered in one year of gross incompetence.
The president took the illegal and ill-advised step of
providing N713 billion as bailout for insolvent state
governments, without the approval of the national
assembly, only to discover that those monies were
squandered and not even used as intended to pay
salary arrears. He squandered billions of dollars
defending doggedly an unrealistic official value of the
naira, only to finally admit defeat after the damage
had been done.
Billions of dollars were mopped up by corrupt
officials and shrewd middlemen who obtained dollars
at the official N200 to $1 rate, only to sell this for
huge profit at the N380 to $1 black market rate.


Babatunde Fashola boasted while in opposition that: “A
serious government will fix the power problem in six
months.” Now in office as Minister of Power for over
six months, power blackouts have been unprecedented
under his watch condemning the Buhari administration
by his own words as a most unserious government.
Change for worse
Goodluck Jonathan warned Nigerians about the
bankruptcy of Buhari and the APC. His words have
now become prophetic. He said in the heat of the 2015
election campaign: “The choice before Nigerians in the
coming election is simple. It is a choice between going
forward and backward, between the new ways and old
ways, between freedom and repression, between a
record of visible achievements and beneficial reforms
and desperate power seekers with empty promises.”
After 365 days of a disastrous Buhari presidency,
only diehard Buharimanics can deny that Jonathan’s
warning has not come true. Propaganda has an
expiration date, and it must now be abundantly clear
that the expiration date for the hot air of Buhari’s
government has long passed. Many of those like Dele
Sobowale, Oby Ezekwesili and Wole Soyinka, who sang
the praises of Buhari during the 2015 election, are
already having a buyer’s remorse. Most Nigerians
now realise they have been sold a fake bill of goods
by Buhari and the APC.



Buhari’s maladroit approach to Nigeria’s diversity has
created new fissures. Fulani herdsmen continue to kill
innocent farmers while Buhari sees no evil and hears
no evil. We are now saddled with a burgeoning
secessionist movement that gets more incendiary by
the day as the government continues to violate
Nigerians’ right to self-assembly by shooting down
pro-Biafra activists.


Even more devastating is the fact that Buhari’s body
language of Northern domination has energized an
irredentist movement in the Niger Delta dedicated to
blowing up Nigeria’s economic jugular of oil pipelines
and installations. As a result, Shell has had to shut
down its Forcados terminal. Chevron’s Escravos
operation has been breached. ENI and Exxon Mobil
have declared “force majeure.” The outcome is that
Nigeria’s oil production is now down from 2.2 million
barrels a day to 1.4 million.
Under the circumstances, how can the government
possibly celebrate its one-year anniversary except by
attempting to pull the wool over the eyes of
Nigerians? What precisely can Buhari claim credit
for in his one year of woeful, do-nothing presidency?
Sound and fury signaling nothing
In his speech to Nigerians on his anniversary, the
President claimed: “We identified forty-three thousand
ghost workers through the Integrated Payroll and
Personnel Information system.” This is a case of
taking credit where credit is not due because of
failure to achieve. The Integrated Payroll and
Personnel Information system is a legacy of the PDP
administration. It was introduced by Ngozi Okonjo-
Iwealla in 2007. Therefore, it is disingenuous for
Buhari to try to get credit for it.


Buhari also said: “The first steps along the path of
self-sufficiency in rice, wheat and sugar, big users of
our scarce foreign exchange, have been taken.” But
Mr. President, the first steps were not taken by your
government. If we are well on the way to self-
sufficiency in food production, it is because of steps
taken by the Jonathan administration, under the
transformative leadership of the Akinwunmi Adesina
as Minister of Agriculture.
It was under Jonathan that dry-season rice farming
was introduced, enabling Nigeria to reach 60% self-
sufficiency in rice production. It was under Jonathan
in 2014, and not under your administration in 2015/16,
that Olam Rice Farm, the biggest rice-processing mill
in Africa, with 105,000 metric tons capacity, was
commissioned in Rukubi, Nasarawa State.
The president said furthermore: “We are projecting
non-oil revenues to surpass proceeds from oil.” Again,
this would not be as a result of any government-
induced improvement in the non-oil sector of the
economy but would simply be as a result of the decline
in oil prices.
Buhari acolytes fanned out in the media, giving him
credit for the TSA, even though it was the brainchild
of the Jonathan administration. They credit him with
the TSA, not realising its imprudent timing has
provoked the widespread sacking of bank employees.
They claim bombastically that as much as N2.2 trillion
has been saved through the TSA. At the same time,
Lai Mohammed and Rotimi Amaechi are sent to
convince Nigerians the country is broke.


Buharimaniacs even claim the president’s outrageous
30 junkets abroad within the year of Nigeria’s
economic adversity has ensured Nigeria is no longer a
pariah nation. However, Nigeria was not a pariah
nation before Buhari came: Nigeria has become a
pariah nation since the coming of Buhari. Before
Buhari, Nigeria was the number one destination-
country for foreign investments in Africa. Since
Buhari’s arrival, foreign investor have left in droves.
Goodbye to change
To demonstrate to Nigerians that his anti-corruption
policy is achieving great success, Buhari promised to
publish the names of those who had returned looted
money to the government. This would confirm once
and for all that the government’s anti-corruption
program is an effective tool for re-harnessing the
nation’s lost resources.


But having won plaudits for this pledge, the
government no longer had any need for it. It soon
became another casualty of its APC (All Promises
Cancelled) tendency. No sooner had the promise been
made than the announcement came that the
government would no longer be releasing the names.
But should a president make promises without first
thinking it through? Would this tendency not
convince the international community that the
government of Nigeria cannot be trusted?
The government’s last-minute excuse that it changed
its mind because it does not want to embarrass those
returning the monies is not credible. This
administration routinely leaks to the press the names
of those under investigation by EFCC. That means it
names publicly those accused of corruption even when
they have not been convicted of corruption. Now it
wants us to believe it is reticent about naming those
who took government money and agreed to return
them.


The government’s disdain for promises made continued.
On 30 May, 2016, while hosting State House
correspondents in Aso Rock, the president told
Nigerians the change mantra on which he fought and
won the 2015 election has been thrown out of the
window. He said: “We recently just found out that we
are poor because we don’t have anything to fall back
to. This is the condition we found ourselves and this
change mantra had to go through hell up till
yesterday.”
Having suddenly discovered, after one year in office,
that rich Nigeria is actually poor, the president then
sent Lai Mohammed to tell Nigerians the government
has recovered a whopping $9 billion of loot from PDP
politicians. Just how poor does that make the
government?
Contradictions galore
It is more than abundantly clear that the Buhari
administration simply cannot be truthful. How can
the government be poor, and at the same time have $9
billion recovered from looters? How can the
government have $9 billion recovered, yet it went cap-
in-hand to the Chinese seeking a loan of $2 billion?
If $9 billion has been recovered, then Nigeria is not
broke. If $9 billion has been recovered, the
government should now be able to fulfil its failed
campaign promises.


This is what the president said one year earlier: “The
monies we realise from anti-corruption campaign will
be adequately used to improve education in the
country.” “The money saved will finance jobs, health-
care and the provision of social safety net for the
needy, weak and vulnerable of our land.” In which
case, many of our problems should soon be over if in
fact the government’s anti-corruption campaign has
been as effective as we are now meant to believe.
But if you believe the government has actually
recovered $9 billion from treasury looters, then you
have learnt nothing about this government in the past
year. The truth of the matter is that whatever this
government says must be taken with a very large grain
of salt. Adams Oshiomhole had told Nigerians a U.S.
government official revealed to him that one single
Nigerian stole a massive $6 billion under the Jonathan
administration. So how come the government has only
managed to recover $9 billion from the entire country
after one year of highfalutin media hype?
The government’s approach of revealing unverifiable
figures of recovered loot without the names of those
from whom they were recovered reeks of corruption
for lack of transparency. If, as I have maintained
elsewhere, Lai Mohammed is Nigeria’s version of
Iraq’s Comical Ali, then the recovered $9 billion must
be synonymous to Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction
which could nowhere be found.
There is no way of knowing if the figures released by
the government are true or fiction, because the names
of those allegedly returning the money are not
mentioned alongside how much they returned.
If they are named and shamed, the looters themselves can
verify if the amount declared is more or less than
what they returned. Covering up the names simply
provides avenues for whatever loot is recovered to be
re-looted by government accomplices.
http://www.femiaribisala.com/the-worst-government-in-the-history-of-nigeria-2/

HungerBAD:
Exactly what we were complaining about earlier.

Between Christianity and Islam,I actually don't know which is worse. I am a Christian,and I know the bible teaches us not to lie.

But these Christian Elders,are not only lying openly,but are going against the Doctrine of the Bible by bearing false witness.

How did you Elders know he wants to use the back door to Islamize this Country?where in the bible does it even say some Christians are Elders?

You guys trying to give Buhari a bad name by all means.

Jokers.

Why are you not proud of your religion "islam a BAD" Must you lie to make us believe u are a Christian?
Now tell us is it not so obvious that Dulladinho is indirectly trying to islamize Nigeria with his numerous anti Christian policies?

abuayman:
This is a very big fat lie from the pit of Hell. I live in Kano, and Kofar Wambai Market is trek able from my place of stay. Nothing like this ever happened. May God punish any person or group of persons that are trying to create division within the people by coming up with this nonsense. Amen

You must be an alien in your own home town.
I personally know the said woman that was kill, she is a Deeper Life member and her husband is a senior Pastor in the Church. She is around 60+ yrs old.