Read his article below...
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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