Setting The Records Straight: Nobody Is Misleading President Buhari
By
Ayantunji Benjamin Gbenro (PhD)
@bengbenro
This article is a response to Dele Momodu’s article titled “Before They Mislead President Buhari”. The article, like most of the writer’s recent articles, is a subtle castigation of Buhari’s administration and support for the corrupt and dirty past that brought us to this position as nation. To appeal to his audience, which presently is populated by the disciples of the old order and ignorant young men and women, the writer employs often half baked truths, intellectual manipulation and sometimes outright lies. These are what I intend to set straight.
Let me start by stating my respect for the person of Egbon Dele Momodu. I may not agree with him always but I respect his personality and brand. Here is a man who dragged himself from the lowest rungs of the society to the pinnacle of his career. I must confess that he is good at what he does. His work and talent has opened doors of kings and queens and have taken him to places where mere mortals can only dream of. As a Yoruba, I was brought up to respect elders. I hold the person of Dele Momodu in high esteem.
Saying I am a supporter of President Muhammadu Buhari will be stating the obvious. Anybody who follows me on any social media platform and read any of my articles during and after the last election will already know this. One thing that may not be known is that I have not always been Buhari’s supporter not because I don’t believe in him but because of other constraints that may have nothing to do with his ability to perform. My father is a politician and my family suffered the direct impact of Buhari’s tsunami in 1983.
I am an ardent reader of Dele Momodu’s Pendulum every Saturday. His grasp of national issues is apt. However, his write ups have significantly drifted in the past months. Sometimes, he tries so much to be politically correct that you are at a loss about his stand. This should not be a surprise–a man of his standing in PR should not be seen to be directly at loggerheads with potential clients.
His most recent article titled “Before They Mislead President Buhari” is a typical example of his recent misinformation riddled articles with subtle castigation of the current administration and support for the corrupt class the administration is trying to rid the nation of. In a divided society like ours, coupled with high degree of ignorance among the populace, any lie can fly. These lies should be demystified not for the sake of the mischievous, who sees anything against Buhari as a cause they must identify with, but for the sake of the ignorant, especially the young ones.
Lies often repeated begin to assume the semblance of truth. Every right thinking Nigeria should guide against allowing the enemies of progress dictate our narrative at this critical stage of our national development. The fight against corruption by the Buhari administration is not about the President alone. If anything, it’s more against the President, because, he is setting a very high moral standard on which he and his aides would be judged after leaving office. The fight is about the soul of the nation. What is going on is a class war. A war between the haves and the haves-not. A war between the privileged and the downtrodden. A war between the forces of evil and good. But the consolation is in the maxim that “The victory of evil over good is temporal”. In this battle, the good will definitely triumph.
The first fallacy in the said article is in the first sentence of the first paragraph where he said “let me say categorically and emphatically that our dear beloved country is dangerously hemorrhaging again and this perfidious drift must be halted urgently before we all end up in perdition”.
This statement is far from the truth. How can a nation where the financial leakage of the past is being blocked be said to be hemorrhaging? How can a nation recovering stolen assets be said to be drifting? When a nation that has just recovered its lost territories from Boko Haram is described as drifting, when a nation that is clearly steering its economy away from a single source of income and diversifying into hitherto neglected areas is described as drifting, it’s either the person making the description does not have the understanding of the unfolding events or chose to be mischievous. If the change mantra is misconstrued, it’s probably due to lack of understanding of what change actually means. Change means doing things differently. I also disagree with the insinuation that the world is worried about Nigeria. If what we read and saw in the international media is anything to go by, world leaders from America to Canada to UK have recently applauded the efforts of the present administration. Where the worry as expressed by the writer stems from, beats my imagination.
The writer also went further to say “Even those who did not vote for him (PMB) accepted him with unusual equanimity”. This is far from the truth. Those who didn’t vote for President Buhari never accepted him and I doubt if they will ever do. If they did, can the writer give a rationale behind the renewed insurgency in the South-South and the agitation for Biafra in the Southeast? If anyone accepted the other, the President should be given kudos for this. The President has flagged off the clean-up of Ogoniland. He refused to sign the 2016 appropriation bill because of the omission of the Calabar-Lagos rail project, Second Niger bridge has been appropriated for, Enugu-Onitsha road, Enugu-Portharcourt road etc. were all appropriated for. How many stand out projects were located in Katsina State were the President hails from? We should stop misinforming our gullible audience to score cheap political points.
Before alluding to what the President has done or not done since assumption of office, it’s pertinent that we examine his promises during the campaigns and where we were as a nation at the point of his assumption of office. The President’s campaign was based on the tripod of security, fight against corruption and job creation/economy. Let’s not forget also that at the point of assumption of office of the present administration, Boko Haram was ravaging the country, seventeen local governments were effectively under the control of the insurgents. Bombs were going off in various locations across Nigeria including Abuja, as if explosions were going out of vogue. On the economic front, 28 states of the federation were owing between three to eleven months in salary arrears, about 600billion naira was owed petrol importers in subsidy payments, the country’s reserve was almost completely depleted and oil price was spiraling downward at an alarming rate. Stealing was not corruption at the point of assumption of the administration and the ‘goats’ were having a field day with the ‘yams’. This was the summary of the state of the nation when Buhari came on board.
The current state of the Boko Haram insurgency will make every objective mind to agree that the President is doing something and did not take Nigerians for granted. We now consider it an aberration to talk about bomb blasts or Boko Haram attacks. This shows the President is actually doing something. New security challenges such as herdsmen attacks, militancy in the Niger Delta and Biafra in the Southeast have sprung up. The herdsmen case I believe is getting solved as is evident in the decrease in such attacks in recent times. Also attackers of Nimbo community in Enugu State have been apprehended, the attackers of the Igbo lady in Kano were also promptly apprehended, the killers of the kidnapped army Colonel in Kaduna have been apprehended. These are all taken for granted and we completely forget it has not always been like this. These are successes the administration should be praised rather than castigated for. This does not mean there is no room for improvement. On the militancy in the Niger Delta and Biafra agitations, these are more of political problems that are residues of the last election.
The administration had to bail out about 28 States owing salaries immediately it assumed office. Though there has been slight improvements in oil price, the militancy in the Niger Delta has seriously brought down national oil production. This coupled with low reserve means the country is short of foreign exchange. To cater for the shortfall, the administration introduced several fiscal policies to ration the available foreign exchange to cater for priority areas. This means there will be more demand for foreign exchange on the parallel market.
The increased demand has led to rise in exchange rate at the parallel market. The administration cannot be said to be doing nothing about the economy. The process of recruiting ten thousand Nigerians into the Nigerian police, five hundred thousand volunteer teachers, one hundred thousand entrepreneurs, school feeding for over twenty million children and mobilization of contractors to site for massive infrastructural developments, have all commenced. If this is not a way of reflating the economy, then I don’t know what is.
The administration’s anti corruption fight is surely progressing well. List of funds recovered and frozen in various accounts across the globe was recently released. It’s mind boggling. Several individuals are also being prosecuted for corruption across the country. Everything pointed out here shows that the country is not being taken for granted as alluded by Dele Momodu, but that the administration is methodically building a country we can all be proud of.
It’s also a fallacy to say the President has not been communicating to Nigerians. At the last count, the Presidency has five media aides in addition to the minister of information, with the mandate of communicating to Nigerians through the new and traditional media. The aides have been actively engaging Nigerians on government policies and programs. However, Nigerians sometimes choose what they listen to and what they don’t listen to. Fixation with the past has also meant some Nigerians will also not be satisfied except the President addresses the media on every issue. If the President will have to communicate directly with Nigerians on every issue, then probably the aides are not needed. Part of the change mantra is doing things the right way. If the President established a system of communicating to Nigerians, the system should be allowed to take root so that it will go beyond the life of the administration.
The steps taken by the President to unite Nigerians have been highlighted earlier. The issue of unity is not only for the President but the prerogative of all Nigerians. Some sections of the country are not ready to accept the President as their leader. The President has done a lot to pacify these sections of the country but will they be pacified? That’s a big question. The selection of ministers was criticized because of the fixation with former standards. The President took time to reorganize the civil service which needed serious reorganization. Even with the reorganization, the civil service almost ruined the President’s budget. What would have happened if the reorganization was not carried out, can only be imagined.
What Dele Momodu referred to as war of attrition is simply war against corruption. Corruption is a monster that must be annihilated if we must progress as a nation. I have not heard of any of the accused so far denying the accusation, rather, they’ve all tried to explain why the money was taken. I don’t also know of anybody detained without a court order. Dasuki’s case has always been a point of reference but the federal government has always maintained he is a security risk. Even in the USA, there is Guantanamo. With the recent calls by Niger Delta militants that the release of Dasuki is the only condition for a ceasefire, objective minds can start drawing conclusions. It’s obvious that the writer is uncomfortable with the war against corruption hence the need to jump from Shiite case to former President Goodluck Jonathan being humiliated, to Biafra demonstrators being killed etc. What the writer failed to establish in each case is if the laws of the land were breached before the incidents he highlighted. If the law was breached, the writer should have pointed out an alternative way of solving the problem without recourse to the use of force. The blackmail of the President by subtly referring to him as a military dictator cannot hold water.
The stand of the writer when it comes to the fight against corruption is understandable, considering the fact that his business thrives on promoting affluence. How much of the affluence promoted by the writer is actually acquired in a legitimate way? If the fight against corruption continues in the manner it is going, many of his clients will be affected and that means less business. The writer also advocated the application of “Carrot and stick” in the fight against corruption. Will that not be an incentive for further corruption? If an individual stole public funds and negotiated his/her way by returning a fraction to evade prosecution, where is the deterrent? Every right thinking Nigerian should encourage the government to not only recover looted funds but prosecute the looters to serve as a deterrent.
If the writer is suggesting that the blowing up of pipelines is as a result of President Jonathan being investigated or other corruption battles, then the government should not allow itself to be blackmailed, even if oil production is brought to zero. After-all, if government does not trade in oil, everybody including the States and those bombing will also have no money to share. The shortfall in federal government income has already encouraged States like Kebbi and Lagos to develop alternative sources of income. Necessity is the mother of invention.
The writer should however advise those blowing up pipelines that they cannot take on a serious government. Boko Haram tried it and today they have been routed. That’s a group that is ready to die. The Shiite the writer also referred to, held Kaduna State, especially Zaria, to ransom for decades. The government is offering an opportunity for negotiation and I advice that it should be taken. The population density in the Niger Delta will lead to high collateral damage if government is left with no other option than military action. Those destroying the pipelines should also be advised about the adverse effect on the environment. Oil economy is gradually winding up globally and there may be need to go back to the land for sustenance in the near future.
Every nation has lived through its terrible moments, but no nation progresses by pretending that the terrible moments never existed as has been suggested. Nigeria must internalize our recent past. We must learn from the mistakes made, punish those who took the country for a ride and put in place a system that ensures the mistakes will never be repeated.
“We have a President that stands head and shoulders above all else and he clearly leads the way”. We owe the country the duty of supporting the President irrespective of ethnic, religious or party affiliations. All it takes for evil to thrive is for men and women of goodwill to look away while evil is perpetrated. Nigeria is certainly on its way to greatness once more.
The post Nobody is misleading President Buhari | A rejoinder to Dele Momodu’s piece appeared first on Ekekeee.