By Charles Okoh
It is completely heart-rending and morally incomprehensible the level some Nigerians can go to excuse President Muhammadu Buhari for the wreck that his administration has made of Nigeria and Nigerians. His spin doctors would blame anything and everything under the sun for his sloppy performance in office, except the culprits himself. Buhari’s failure is self-inflicted and he should completely take responsibility for the failure of his government.
Today, everybody is in one queue or the other. The perennial fuel scarcity has remained with the country for virtually all of the President’s seven-and-half years’ tenure, so far, and everybody and association or union, is blamed for the failure of the petroleum sector, except the substantive minister of petroleum, who happens to be President Buhari.
On Wednesday, Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State accused some fifth-columnists of working against the aspirations of the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu.
He claimed that certain unnamed individuals in the presidency do not want the APC presidential standard bearer to win the February 25 poll. Their grouse, he said, is that their preferred candidate did win the party’s primaries.
“I believe that there are elements in the Villa that want us to lose the elections because they didn’t get their way.
“They had their candidate. Their candidate did not win the primary,” El-Rufai said on Channels Tv,” the governor said.
Recall that Asiwaju had last week cried of plots to scuttle his ambition. He accused the Buhari government of weakening his chances with its recent policy on new notes and the lingering fuel scarcity which the Jagaban Borgu believes are targeted at making his ticket unpopular with the electorate.
So, El-Rufai in corroborating the allegation of the former Lagos State governor is only stating the obvious.
And just like we argued last week, Asiwaju, with the clendenstine plots of the Abdullahi Adamu-led APC, was not the preferred candidate of the party leadership. Adamu had preferred the Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, to Tinubu. Adamu had claimed that Lawan was the choice of the presidency. Although, the presidency was to later deny it. Who would believe that Adamu can on his own come up with that choice without consulting with Buhari?
Again, the President’s half-hearted identification with Tinubu’s campaign is pointer to that fact. Buhari’s disposition to Tinubu’s ambition is not our concern for this week, because we risk repeating our commentary of last week. Rather, one is disturbed by the fact that the El-Rufais of this world may be thinking they can fool Nigerians by claiming that Buhari is ignorant of the activities of these so-called fifth columnists.
Hear Gov El-Rufai: “The retention of the fuel subsidy and the naira redesign policy are instances of decisions taken without recourse to the party. They are trying to get us to lose the election, and they are hiding behind the president’s desire to do what he thinks is right.
“I will give two examples: this petroleum subsidy, which is costing the country trillions of naira, was something that we all agreed would be removed.
“In fact, I had a discussion with the President and showed him why it had to go.
“How can you have a capital budget of N200 billion for federal roads and then spend N2 trillion on petroleum subsidies?
“This was a conversation I had with the President in 2021 when the subsidy thing started rising. He was convinced. We left. It changed. Everyone in the government agreed, and it changed.
“The second example I will give is this currency redesign. You have to understand the President. People are blaming the Governor of the Central Bank for the currency redesign, but No. You have to go back and look at the first outing of Buhari as president. He did this.
“The Buhari/Idiagbon regime changed our currency and did it in secrecy with a view to catching those stashing away illicit funds. It’s a very good intention – very clear intention. The President’s heart is white.
“But, doing it at this time, within the time allotted, just doesn’t make any political or economic sense.And for such a programme to work, we have to be involved as governors, as sub-nationals.
“We totally support the redesign of the Naira. We know that there are politicians who have stashes of money, but in the process, we must not make the ordinary people suffer or ignite the anger of voters and make it look as if it is our party’s policy. It is not. It is the policy of a few people.”
Are you confused? If you are, you’re not alone. El-Rufai is even more confused than we all are. He claims that changing currency is not new to Buhari, as he had done that before as a military head of state in secret with the intention of catching those stashing away illicit funds by surprise. So what is different from what we are currently experiencing? Is it not the same suddenness and lack of adequate planning that has now put the common man in the dire circumstances we now find ourselves?
If Buhari did it then and is now following the same pattern about 40 years after, is that not consistent with the character of Buhari? How is it now the problem of the so-called fifth columnists and not Buhari’s? Or is El-Rufai saying if this same naira change was planned and implemented the same way, any other time than now, the hardship and sufferings Nigerians now face would have been different?
Buhari’s apologists like the Kaduna governor should spare us this bunkum. They, including Tinubu, all knew that Buhari had always outsourced his responsibilities in whatever capacity or task given to him, yet they sold him to the Nigerian electorate, for selfish reasons, as a hands-on leader who would not shirk his responsibility.
Let’s even give them the benefit of doubt that they may have made a mistake, but where were they when Buhari’s wife, Aisha, cried out prior to the 2019 elections that Buhari’s presidency had been hijacked?
Did some of them not call the press to discountenance and ignore the First Lady as crying over nothing and being disrespectful to her husband? They even accused her of being over ambitious.
Aisha has been more consistent with her warnings, but those now crying were trying to make her look like a witch. She did it again last week while endorsing the position of El-Rufai when she uploaded clips of El-Rufai’s interview on her Instagram account.
On the lingering crisis in the petroleum sector, hear El-Rufai again: “The APC did not promise to retain the petrol subsidy. The President retained the subsidy because he believed its removal would adversely affect Nigerians. The problem is not the APC government but the people of Nigerians who are not willing to face the truth.
“People are paying N300 to N500 per litre in parts of the country and they have to queue for hours to get this all because of this unsustainable and broken-down subsidy regime that we have chosen to maintain for the past 50 years. It has not worked.
“It is not an APC problem. It is a Nigerian problem because today if President Buhari says ‘remove subsidy’, the NLC (Nigeria Labour Congress) will be out on the street protesting. We have had that anytime the price slightly increases.”
See what it means to speak with both sides of one’s mouth? My question for El-Rufai and his cohorts is, those who occupied Ojota when the Goodluck Jonathan government attempted to remove subsidy were they only NLC members; were pastors, APC bigwigs etc not part of them? Have they apologised for their indiscretions and sabotage against the country? How was it then the problem of Jonathan and the PDP but now the fault of Nigerians and not that APC and Buhari?
We know it’s not in the character of our politicians to accept faults or offer apologies for wrongdoings but they should stop fooling themselves by thinking they can pull a wool over our eyes. Buhari and the APC government he leads have failed and they must take responsibility for this. Anything short of this is unacceptable.
*Okoh is a commentator on public issues
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