By Mahdi Haliru
Because of a lot of ignorant
people (wailers) who are being misinformed out there, there’s need for an educated response.
For the records; before Buhari,
we’ve had the highest of oil prices – at a point amounting to about $140 a
barrel. Nonetheless, the then govt have made little or no savings. Instead, on
focusing on that, they went further to deplete the foreign reserves and excess
crude account – plus accrual of more debts. These monies were diverted to
private pockets.
We’ve had more than 20,000 deaths
resulted due to negligence by the relevant authorities in discharging their
duties of protecting lives and property. The deaths in 2014 alone represents
more than half of the total deaths. This, perhaps, was caused due to arms-lack by the military.
We’ve had $20b missing from the coffers of NNPC
without the ministers of petroleum and finance being questioned and dealt with;
rather, the cocky man who exposed them was sacked.
We’ve had our electricity DISCO’s supposedly
privatised, but it is as if we invested more money in buying more darkness to
Nigeria. On top of that, electricity tariff sky rocketed.
Despite all of its resources, Nigeria with a
population of about 200 million has a huge disparity between the rich and the
poor as:
-more than 70% of the total population live on less than
a dollar a day
-59.2% of Nigerian households live in a single room
-40.6% of Nigerian households consume ill-treated
water
-810,000 Nigerian children dies before reaching the
age of 5
-300,000 Nigerian children dies of malaria every year
-10.8million primary school-aged children are out of
school, and;
-an estimate of 15 million of them are working either
as domestic servants, hawkers or beggers.
Now in spite of all this mess, 2 female ministers we
once had spends N13bn on private jets maitainance and N250m on two cars
respectively. The NASS with less than 500 people budgets N150bn and spends it
all. With all of these, the govt wanted continuity.
Continuity of the aforementioned?
Nigerians said NO!! (the electioneering process is
another story)
Now Buhari assumed power when oil prices which
accounts for over 70% of Nigeria’s public finances has drastically fell –
currently at below $35 a barrel. This makes it very difficult for the country
to finance its expenses.
Nigeria currently commits over N1trn to total debt
service (about 25% of the total revenue). Debt service is the total monies
committed for a particular time period to cover the repayment of interest and
principal on a debt.
However with all the setbacks, our military are now more equipped and more determined
to get rid of terrorism of any sort as it seems they have ‘technically’
weakened the insurgents from carrying out conventional attacks. This,
technically, has shown we are beginning to see the light at the end of the
tunnel.
His (Buhari’s) most commendable job is the fight against
corruption. His efforts to preventing the goats from the yams by locking up the
barns through the TSA is really remarkable. Nigeria will now be able to garner
more funds to dedicate to the fight against insurgents and other key areas of
development among other things.
Despite all of these facts, some enemies of Nigeria
have now resulted to raining irrelevant criticisms against PMB calling him a
tyrant. This was just because of the fact that the ‘maniac’ Kanu of Biafra –
who technically, is a terrorist; and the Dasukis – who, more than adequate
evidences have shown diverted $2bn arms procurement monies to personal pockets –
haven’t been released.
Now I imagined if Nigeria were to continue with the
previous democratic-dictatorship to the current ‘tyranny’ and have come to the conclusion that if we have had made the mistake of re-electing ‘continuity’,
I currently won’t be able to write this piece, instead I would have been on the
run either to the coast of Libya to Europe or wherever!
I therefore urge the president that if they continue
the blot insults, we introduce the ‘Idiagbon solution’. This time around,
Buhari fanatics should do the doing – as for me, my Koboko is doing press-up! For every shameless action, there should be a disproportionate reaction.
