New Telegraph

Everybody agrees Nigeria is in bad shape

S uddenly and for no apparent reason, anarchy is loose upon Anambra State. The people are in shock and wondering why? Why is there too much violence in the streets now that we have a governor with a great vision and determination to reposition the state and reset development for the benefit of the people? Who sets his house ablaze because his neighbour’s house is on fire?

 

Prof. Charles Soludo is passionate about his vision to transform the state beyond petroleum into the digital world of the 4th Industrial Revolution. He has been methodical and vocal about the direction he is headed. But, the state is challenged by insecurity.

 

The primary purpose of government is to provide security without which government will be of no value. The governor himself had been a direct victim of attack during one of his campaigns. Some police officers attached to him were killed. It’s therefore not surprising that he found that rebuilding the state’s security architecture is an urgent need which cannot be achieved without the cooperation and participation of the people. The criminals causing violence in the state are not fallen angels.

 

Masking under the guise of any form of agitation does not make them less evil. We have lost many lives and wasted so much blood between 1966-to date. We do not have any more Igbo blood to give. I urge those killing people to stop the killings. This is not us! The shameful murder of Fatima Jubril remains fresh and made me more critical of our descent into anarchy. Fatima was murdered along with her four children as follows: Fatima, nine years; Aisha, seven years; Hadiza, five years, and Zaituna, two years.

 

The killing of this innocent woman and her little children reminded me of the challenges that lie ahead of us. The dastardly act is unacceptable and condemnable. There is no mistake that the killers of Fatima and her children are criminals. I share in the grief of Harira Jubril, the bereaved husband and father. Only God can console and comfort him in this moment of grief because what he is going through is one of the worst experiences for anyone. It’s heart wrenching to lose a pregnant wife and four children all at a go. May their souls Rest in Peace – Amen. The perpetrators do not represent us or our values and they will never find peace.

 

The state must spare nothing to fish the monsters out and bring them to justice. We the people must support the governor and show the monsters that we can neither be cowed, divided or be defeated by their terror. Insecurity is not peculiar to Anambra.

 

Nigeria is in a bad shape. President Muhammadu Buhari was APC’s ‘knight in shining armour’ in 2015, but they were wrong; the growing list of failures of the Buhari-led administration manifested early in the life of the administration.

 

By the end of his first term of four years in 2019, the party found out the hard way that the president was a flop, but they could do nothing about it; they continued to hail him as their hero, champion of all things, the defeater of ‘clueless’ Goodluck Jonathan and conqueror of the PDP.

 

To his pig-headed followers, he could do no wrong. He was the retired general who would save Nigeria from insecurity, corruption and collapse. But, with less than 12 months to the end of his second term in office, things have predictably grown from bad to worse. The administration has failed miserably across the board, particularly on its key agendas – fighting corruption, ending insecurity, growing the economy and implementing robust infrastructural development. Seven years ago,

 

 

 

 

 

 

I wrote an opinion titled: ‘Buhari, not the messiah’ and seven years into the administration, you cannot point to a single thing that he has done well. You can’t find the roads or the rail lines. Energy crisis has worsened. Businesses have taken flight. Nigerians are completely fed up. Northern elders asked him to resign if he cannot fix the insecurity in the region. Not even his home state of Katsina is safe, as bandits are killing people there too. Inflation is biting so hard that people can barely survive.

The only profitable business is corruption which has become pervasive coupled with banditry and kidnapping. 80% -90% of our crude oil production is stolen. NNPC remains the only oil company in the world reporting zero profit. The Accountant General of the Federation allegedly stole over N80bn, and another of the president’s appointees reportedly stole trillions.

 

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) remains on strike as tertiary education is disrupted. In absence of jobs, the youths are recruited by bandits, insurgents and ‘Unknown Gunmen’. Despite our differences and polarization which make it impossible for us to agree on anything, yet everybody agrees on one thing – that the country is in bad shape! Even the president’s party has turned against him to the extent that almost ten of his ministers resigned to contest to succeed him, with all of them promising to transform the country. What will they change that they couldn’t change in seven years?

 

Does it mean that Buhari is the one standing by the way? But if we say that the president is the problem, his foot soldiers like Lai Mohammed will tell us to shut up. My friend Femi Adesina, who is his spokesman, will tell us to be grateful that Buhari is the president and that without him, Nigeria would have collapsed. Every day, you are just inundated with seemingly negative headlines that leave you in a sour mood. Yet, the leader wonders why we are unhappy and why the youths are restive. He is not aware that he has ruined our country, our politics, our faith, our social cohesion, unity and economy.

 

Some people are fearful that the country will soon collapse because the leader is a complete definition of incompetence. On the political terrain, things are chang- ON POLITICS with CLEM AGUIYI totalpolitics@ymail.com 0803-474-7898(sms only) ing fast. You know how fast things are changing the way people talk about it. Just a few days ago, one of my heroes in PDP dumped the party to join a fractured Labour Party.

 

That ‘smart’ move immediately changed the way people now viewed the next election, especially the Igbo who have very deep feelings of political marginalisation. Rightly or wrongly, they think the two major parties APC and PDP have been immoral in handling the Igbo question and that the much-anticipated people’s revolution has started with Peter Obi dumping PDP for the Labour Party. I don’t want to rush into any quick conclusion about the fate of the two major parties, but Obi’s move is going to create some nightmares for PDP as an opposition party.

 

Obi is a moral force and the party should have done everything to keep him on the ballot. However, as for APC, I don’t know how the party intends to successfully navigate the 2023 election given the abysmal record of this administration which has impoverished the people. And there is no evidence that if given another chance, it will improve the lives of Nigerians.

 

Every promise the party made in 2015 turned out to end in disaster. Now some of them who served in the disastrous regime are saying ‘give us another mandate’ and we will turn Nigeria around. I doubt if anyone believes them. You could put half of the APC leaders into a basket of deplorable liars, hacks, bigots and failures. Adjusting adults learn from humiliating failures but not so can be said of APC leaders because they hardly accept responsibility for their failures.

 

To adjust as adults, they need to accept that the mannequin they foisted on Nigerians is a failure.

 

They need to accept that instead of fixing the country, they destroyed it. At his inauguration, President Buhari promised ‘to be for everyone but for no one’, but in the end, he delivered division and rage. Nigerians are today killing each other with no fear of consequences.

 

That’s why Deborah Samuel was murdered in Sokoto by extremists, Imoh Joseph lynched in Lagos, Fatimah Jubril and her four gifted children killed and Hon Okechuku Okoye beheaded in Anambra State. Nigeria indeed is in very bad shape.

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