By: Ifeanyi Izeze
How else do you describe the bunch of hitherto distressed men and women
under the auspices of Buhari Media Office if not to say they are simply
struggling for relevance in this narrow- minded, criminally nepotic and
blood-letting administration?
It is a pitiable state to find yourself in a position where all you do
for a bowl of porridge is to rubbish the finger(s) that once fed you.
When your job is the burden of fighting for a gormless administration
with a terribly demented headman, you tend to rub mud on anybody who has
an iota of ability to think straight far better than not only your _oga_
but also the bunch of adult _almajiris_ masquerading everywhere you look
in this government.
BMO’s only stock in trade now is insulting the former Vice President,
Atiku Abubakar, simply because the PDP presidential candidate in the
last general election once in a while as patriot and elderstatesman,
makes useful suggestions to their _zombi_ government on the direction to
go in their ‘plagiarised idea’ of privatising some critical national
assets especially in the nation’s moribund downstream oil and gas
sector.
These same men and women of BMO were hosted for months in the Atiku
Media Office obviously because _Maigaskiya_ had no single structure not
even a makeshift one to run even a local government campaign. True to
type, the conducts and disposition of these same people in an office
that volunteered to rehabilitate them, were not different from the spate
of herders banditry we have across the country today. Is that the kind
of people you take seriously as speaking for a living president and his
government?
You’re insulting Atiku, a man who has successfully ran chains of
businesses at home and abroad that span almost every sector of the
economy just because you work for a clueless, incapacitated and
murderous administration.
It is outrightly vexing that in a media statement signed by its
Chairman, Niyi Akinsiju and Secretary, Cassidy Madueke, the Buhari Media
Office (BMO), could say it was not totally surprising that the former
presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) would
resort to grandstanding when he heard of the government’s
privatization plans.
“We were so sure that Atiku Abubakar would try to position himself as
an expert in privatization when media outlets reported the
government’s intention to sell off some moribund non-oil assets, and
indeed we were proved right when he issued that statement.”
BMO also dismissed the former Vice President’s attempt to equate the
planned privatization of the refineries to his own plan for the Nigeria
National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) as self-serving.
Now, being true to ourselves as Nigerians, has this government any
single idea of its own on how to better the Nigerian economy? Whether
they accept it or not, the recently announced planned privatisation of
some of our national assets was hijacked from the Atiku Policy document
that’s available both at home and abroad. It is disheartening
therefore that a wise and patriotic counsel of an elderstatesman in the
calibre of a former vice president of the country could be turned into
an opportunity to insult and abuse him by nonstarters.
Is the bunch in BMO not aware that several globally acclaimed
organisations including Transparency International and the Civil Society
Coalition Against Corruption And Bad Governance(CACOBAG) have serially
declared that despite reduction in payments of public funds into private
accounts, corruption and opaque transactions is more pervasive in this
government of Major General Muhammadu Buhari (rtd) than any government
we have ever had in Nigeria?
This is a recent CACOBAG statement: “We have noted the propaganda in
some quarters that reduction in payments of public funds to private
purses is a testament that corruption has reduced under this government.
“It’s a fallacy that is known even to those at the helm of affairs.
“We at CACOBAG do agree that public funds are been paid into
government accounts but vehemently disagree that corruption has reduced.
Infact, it’s not only worse under this government but going to an
alarming rate and drastic action has to be taken to combat it.
“Government funds may be going into government purse but it’s
obvious the corrupt elements in the government have devised means to
continue to embezzle the funds.
“Ongoing Massive corruption under this government despite public funds
been paid into government accounts is another magic by the corrupt
elements in this government.
“The more public funds paid into government accounts, the more the
other means they adopt to perpetrate fraud. It’s unfortunate, with the
glaring corruption in the country; some Nigerians are still bent on
being used to promote the propaganda of this government.”
If government funds being paid into government accounts have any
significance in the fight against corruption by this government, how
come corruption is more pervasive under this government than other
successive governments?
And if Atiku Abubakar is not in a position to advice General Buhari on
privatization and commercialization, is it the_ Maikaskiya_ president
whose only idea of investment and privatisation is rearing 50 cows that
has remained 50 since 2003 as if the males use condoms to mate? People
should learn to think before they open their mouth to talk.
What tangible impact can the hitherto distressed men and women in BMO
confidently point at as achievement of the government they set out to
polish? Is Miyetti Allah spokesman not doing a far better job defending
this cattle government than this bunch of food-is-ready internally
displaced image makers in the BMO resettlement centre?
Has this government ever had any idea of its own aside running oil
pipelines and natural gas transmission infrastructures from the
oilfields in the Niger Delta to Niger Republic; building refineries,
railway projects in Maradi, and military infrastructures all in Niger
Republic?
What else can Nigerians point at except flooding the entire country with
murderous Fulani bandits and terrorists from other countries of the
sub-region?
Maybe the only idea we can attribute to the credit of this
administration is that it has well succeeded in making cows a priority
over the unity of this nation and far and above over the lives and
wellbeing of Nigerians (northerners, southerners). When one cow is
killed anywhere, the presidency will unleash battalions of armed
soldiers to crush the entire area where it happened.
But on daily basis villages are being wiped out. Men, women and children
slaughtered like fowls by murderous Fulani bandits as if Nigerian lives
no longer matters. Farmers including those in my area of Niger Delta no
longer go to their farms for fear of being killed or kidnapped and women
being raped in their farms while the president looks the other way with
pathological indifference as if this has become the acceptable _status
quo_.
Now let’s even look at it: Since the onset of this Democratic
dispensation, which government compares to the Obasanjo- Atiku
administration in terms of economic policy framing and implementation?
Is it in ideas, creativity or even in doggedness of implementing
policies and programmes that had direct bearing and tangibility on the
welfare and wellbeing of the citizenry?
The achievements of that administration are still loudly speaking for
themselves even till today and made even louder as a result of the
docility and the confirmed cluelessness of this directionless
administration.
Even the Jonathan administration far outshined this bandit government
despite the massive propaganda campaign to rubbish him and his
administration. This is the truth that can be boldly told by some of us
who were privy to what was done to Jonathan and his government.
Is it not interesting that the ‘ Gen Buahri administration is very
transparent and non-corrupt’ but it is known that the president’s
‘men’ who are the _defacto_ rulers, as the president has always been
incapacitated and bereft of ideas, can sit at the Presidency and order
their cousins heading the NNPC to package a $25 billion crude oil sale
contract? Was that not why this clueless and bandit government sacked my
brother Ibe Kachikwu as petroleum minister, a vibrant brain that could
have given this nation a positive turnaround in its oil and gas
industry?
We also know that under this transparent administration, the nation’s
daily domestic consumption of premium motor spirit (petrol) overnight
jumped from less than 20 million litres a day to almost 80 million
litres with the subsidy bills escalating by almost 1000 percent, all in
a bid to rake and pocket subsidy monies.
Is it in this transparent administration that grasses in IDP camps in
the northeast were cut with billions of naira or in another government?
_Na my mouth you wan hear the name_!
What of the hundreds of billions of Pension funds or is it the devouring
of all the savings in our Excess Crude Accounts or the crooked
fertiliser bills rackets; the school feeding projects where billions of
naira were said to have been spent feeding children who we know were on
lockdown in their parents houses? How many _we go fit count_ but we will
still count them.
It is stupid to engage in a fight where you know you’re grossly
handicapped or rather outrightly incapacitated. A word of advice to BMO!
God bless Nigeria!