By Hector-Roosevelt Ukegbu
Early last year, in
the run-up to the 2015 general elections, this writer argued in two newspaper
articles that Nigerians should vote for then presidential candidate Muhammadu
Buhari and against Dr. Goodluck Jonathan and the then-ruling PDP. I pointed to
the massive systemic corruption in the Jonathan government and how this was
seriously impeding economic growth and miring the hapless citizens in poverty.
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| *President Buhari and VP Osinbajo |
I called the entire
Nigerian government system a vast criminal enterprise. In truth, my whole
premise of advocating support for Mr. Buhari was not for his vaunted economic
management skills, but for his self-discipline, for his circumspect way of
life, for his nationalism. My belief was and still is, that Mr. Buhari was the
lone person in Nigeria’s
political firmament capable of slaying the hydra-headed monster called Nigerian
corruption.
My belief remains
that if corruption is crushed, economic recovery will come, and so will improve
all other indices of human growth among the people. President Muhammadu Buhari
while he met with the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury and the most senior bishop
in the Church of England, Justin Portal Welby, Monday. The crash in world oil
prices has thrown a wrench in the wheel of Nigeria’s
economic recovery even as the battle against corruption proceeds. It pains me,
as I am sure it pains lovers of the Nigerian people, that the Buhari/APC
government appears to be willy-nilly trying to snatch defeat from the jaws of
victory.
The people are
groaning under the unfamiliar burdens of severe fuel scarcity (something that
the Jonathan government had largely gotten rid of in the recent past). They
also contend with declining electricity generation, making worse an output that
was already abysmal (reportedly from sabotage of gas pipelines that send
feedstock to generating plants), and serious shortages of hard currency (due to
reduced oil export revenue inflows). Which way out now for the Buhari/APC
government?
