Showing posts with label Joe Iniodu. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Joe Iniodu. Show all posts

Saturday, April 2, 2016

Nigeria: Change In Chains

By Joe Iniodu
The change mantra that the All Progressive Congress (APC) used so profusely to blackmail Nigerians into its deceitful contraption seems to be manacled in chains. Ten months on, there is no evidence of governance except reports of arrest coarsely alluding them to corruption that are neither substantiated nor culprits convicted. Real governance is in flight and hardship is upon the land. The question on the lips of many is: where is the change that was used to lure the people? The change has remained a ruse.
(pix:voa)
Ten months of the government of APC, the Boko Haram insurgency that was to be considered an anathema upon its ascension into power is still festering and perhaps more emboldened; the jejune pledge by PMB to stabilize oil price in favour of the country which was a strong pointer to his lack of grasp of the current dynamics in the oil industry remains unfulfilled; equally a woeful failure is the non realization of his campaign promise to force dollar and naira into convenient parity but which today finds the two currencies at yawning gaps; its failure to arrest the prices of goods and services which are currently at astronomical levels; its tardy treatment of students abroad and Nigerians on medical tourism who are today said to be in a lurch. These and a myriad of other acts of ineptitude have combined to make life brutish in this once great Nation that was wealthy in hope. I make bold to say that until the end of former President Jonathan’s administration, the Nation did not slide to such precipice of despair.
Yes, admitted, impunity reigned supreme. Corruption sadly was rife with leadership unfortunately looking the other way. But the wheel of governance continued to grind even when some aspects were mired in corruption. Leadership, despite its moral deficiency continued to give hope, it continued to demonstrate capacity and vision. It was the combination of these attributes that made the people to reckon that if the monster of corruption could be termed, the Nation can rise again to its old glory. And in the last days before its exit, PDP showed itself as a visionary party that could pull itself from the brink. It identified grey areas where corruptions were starkly perpetrated and set about introducing mechanisms of checks. Perhaps the approach was muffled and not very radical. With little or no publicity of its renewed efforts in tackling the monster, some Nigerians considered the party and its leadership at the centre as complicit in the denudation of the Nation. The APC latched on this misconception using its brazen tool of propaganda and blackmail. The rest is history.