The
President has been blasted for his decision to give urgent attention to
Gambia while his own people being killed by Boko Haram are abandoned.
President Muhammadu Buhari
President Muhammadu Buhari wants to intervene in The Gambia to
prevent a breakdown of law and order which will lead to a humanitarian
crisis.
The Gambia has a population of 1.8 million people, while Kaduna has
a population of 6 million people of which over 2 million of those are
in Southern Kaduna.
Till date, the only person who has died in The Gambia is President
elect Barrow's son, Habibu Barrow, who was bitten by a dog. But in
Southern Kaduna, hundreds of people have bitten the dust.
If in truth President Buhari really wants to prevent a humanitarian
crisis, the place he should be visiting and intervening in is Southern
Kaduna before The Gambia.
And the penchant of the President to delegate pressing domestic
problems to his subordinates while personally addressing foreign
challenges of lower priority is on the increase.
I have chosen to empathize with the Buhari administration over the
deaths of Internally Displaced Persons and international aid workers at
the Rann IDP camp in Borno state by a bomb mistakenly dropped on the
camp by a Nigerian Air Force Jet, but for the life of me I cannot
understand why the President, who heavily criticized former President
Jonathan's handling of the Boko Haram crisis, elected to delegate his
Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, and some ministers to visit the victims and
survivors of the Rann disaster to offer condolences and supposed
support.
And to the Borno state governor who cheekily said there was
progress because in his words there was no "blame game" as would have
happened in the previous administration of Jonathan, I would just say,
wake up and smell the coffee. I can see no excuse for this faux pas
except the Borno state Governor is sarcastically trying to call out the
Buhari government for its over indulgence in blaming previous
administrations.
If it was possible, the Buhari administration would have taken out a
registered trade mark on the phrase 'blame game'. Never in the history
of Nigeria, and perhaps contemporary Africa, has an administration
invested so much of its focus and time on blame gaming as the Buhari
government. So Governor Shettima would have to pull more fallacious
words out of his mischievous magical hat of illusions to be able to pin
such a false accusation on the Jonathan Government.
It may be necessary to remind Governor Shettima that the Jonathan
he so likes to blame visited Borno more than once as President during
the height of the Boko Haram insurgency. Has President Buhari even
bothered to drop by? That is how much the President thinks of him!
But in all this, we still must give God the glory that the mistake
by the air force did not occur while Oby Ezekwesili and Lai Mohammed
were combing Sambisa forest in search of the missing Chibok girls.
And let me speak directly to the President. President Muhammadu
Buhari, as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, don't you think you
owe it as a duty to be in Rann at this very moment to personally comfort
victims and survivors of the unfortunate mistaken bombing by our Armed
Forces?
This is more so when some of the dead include qualified doctors who
left their countries, homes and profitable businesses to volunteer
through Doctors Without Borders and the Red Cross.
If those foreigners could leave their countries to go to Rann, sir,
you can leave Aso Rock to go there. This bombing is not your fault, but
if you fail to visit Rann where lives have been lost, you will send a
very wrong message particularly as you just visited The Gambia where no
lives have been lost accidentally or deliberately due to Yahya Jammeh's
actions.
Why President Buhari Ran(n) to Gambia and ran away from Rann would
continue to be a mystery for a while. But the truth still remains that
you do not focus on putting out the fire in your neighbor's tiny hut
when your own massive estate is on fire.
In Nigeria's history no President has engaged in foreign travels
like President Muhammadu Buhari yet never before has foreign investment
dried up in Nigeria as it is today.
So bad has the situation degenerated to that Reuters, in a piece by
Paul Carsten and his colleagues published on January 18, 2017 detailed
how President Buhari's globetrotting efforts to secure foreign loans
have hit a brick wall.
The article cited failure to present a coherent economic recovery
program as the reason why foreign donors are wary of trusting the Buhari
administration with their hard earned money.
In fact, the article posited that the government of President
Muhammadu Buhari has been forced to work with a "consultancy" to patch
together a policy document that it hopes would be acceptable to foreign
lenders.
Now, Nigerians can understand why I questioned the wisdom in the
appointment of a polytechnic graduate by President Muhammadu Buhari as
Nigeria's finance minister at a time when we should be putting our best
foot forward. The finance minister, Kemi Adeosun, attended the
University of East London. The problem is not that this university is
one of the worst universities in the United Kingdom today. The issue is
that the 'university' was actually a polytechnic at the time Kemi
Adeosun attended it and was only upgraded to university status in 1992!
If you Google this university, you will find that it's graduates are one
of the least likely to get a job on the strength of their degree of any
university in the United Kingdom.
I guess the guidance and counseling department of the University of
East London should by now have found a fix for this problem-if you
cannot find U.K. employment with your UEL degree, just relocate to
Nigeria. Chances are you would be made a cabinet minister!
The funniest thing is that when President Buhari ran against then
President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2003 one of his prominent campaign
posters had the promise and I quote "what we will not do-spend 110 days
in a year globetrotting". As I write this and as you read it, President
Muhammadu Buhari has globe-trotted all the way to London. In fact, by
his first anniversary as President on May 29, 2016, President Buhari had
made 30 foreign trips with very little by way of returns to the country
from them. So much for his promises. Would the President be man enough
to apologize to former President Obasanjo who was the subject of his
particular criticism in 2003? Your guess is as good as mine!
So my advise to the President is that he should spend less time
blaming past administrations especially as he is now more guilty than
them of the things he accused them of.
I give this advise because I am aware that each time President
Muhammadu Buhari blames previous administrations, what foreign and
domestic investors see is a leader who loves the perks and privilege of
his office but hates the responsibility attached to it. They see a ruler
who likes to bask in the glory of his predecessors achievements like
the Abuja-Kaduna rail and the Treasury Single Account, yet refuses to
give them any credit. And they will not invest their money in a country
whose leader focuses on blaming instead of leading. Blame is the cause
of the Naira losing value not falling oil price. An economy can survive a
price crash but it cannot survive a crash in leadership.
Now, on to other matters. Two weeks ago I commended the President
for fulfilling at least one of his campaign promises. By this I meant
the promise to pay ₦5,000 to the poorest Nigerians. Again I commend
the President. However, since I gave my commendation I have gotten some
feedback.
It would seem that many Nigerians are not impressed by the ₦5,000
handout from the APC led Federal Government because they are already on
their own fulfilling President Buhari's campaign promise of one meal
per day because food is too costly and kerosene to cook it is too
expensive!
If you are still talking of gas then you must be a super elite
because the price of gas has skyrocketed beyond belief! From a price of
₦1,800 for a 12.5kg cylinder of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) under
former President Jonathan the price is now ₦4,200 under President
Buhari and rising.
Under former President Jonathan, Nigeria had many fast rising
political, business music and acting stars but under President Buhari
the only thing that is fast rising is the price of food, electric, gas,
petrol, kerosene and dollars! What a fast rising government!
And it seems Nigerians also misunderstood the President's promise
to make ₦1 equal to $1. It was perhaps a typo. The printer probably
forgot three zeros. He may have meant make ₦1000 equal to $1!
And the President's promise to be fair to all Nigerians is now
sounding hollow although the fault is not entirely his. State
governments have their own fair share in the blame although one could
argue that they took their cue from the President's body language
especially after his famous '97% versus 5%' speech at the United States
Institute for Peace in July of 2015.
Today (Wednesday 18th of January, 2017), the police brought
Joachim, the man who named his dog Buhari, to court for prosecution.
This is the same police that has not yet prosecuted any of the killers
of hundreds of Southern Kaduna people. This is the same police that last
week released the suspected killers of Mrs. Elisha, the RCCG pastor
killed in Kubwa. We are not even talking of the suspected beheaders of
evangelist Bridget Agbahime who were acquitted in Kano two months ago.
As I always say, welcome to the new and improved Nigeria under President
Muhammadu Buhari!
In the new and improved Nigeria, you are more likely to be
prosecuted if you misname a dog and if you steal or kill cattle than if
you kill or behead a Christian Evangelist or pastor.
This is even as a Governor admits to paying self admitted foreign
killers of Nigerian citizens with tax payer funds to induce them not to
kill again. Again I say, welcome to the new and improved Nigeria under
President Muhammadu Buhari!
-Omokri is the founder of the
Mind of Christ Christian Center in California, author of Shunpiking: No
Shortcuts to God and Why Jesus Wept and the host of Transformation with
Reno Omokri
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