Buhari Needs No Recession Experts

By Paul Onomuakpokpo  

In their tepid search for solutions to the current economic crisis, our political leaders are fixated on two culprits that gnaw at the nation’s wellbeing.

It is either the past that is chastised for not catering for its future or the militancy in the Niger Delta that has driven oil revenue to its nadir.

*Buhari 

Our current leaders can keep avoiding culpability for the nation’s economic recession. The danger is that any optimism about overcoming the crisis in a short time may soon evaporate as long as our political leaders fail to recognise that it is not only the past that is sullied by the administration of Goodluck Jonathan and his predecessors that should be blamed, but the present that is anchored on the current administration is equally complicit.

We are on the right path to economic redemption only when we appreciate the fact that the affliction that is the source of the recession is simply that our politics reeks of a crude conflation of national and personal interests by political leaders. Actuated by the credo of politics that negates national interest, politicians pursue purely selfish goals and present them to the citizens as targeted at engendering national transformation.

Thus no matter how potentially workable the recommendations from the citizens for the development of their nation, most political leaders do not have that capacity to accommodate them. And this is why all ideas about development, no matter how ill-bred , must come from their cronies because they would not pose any threat to their interests. Or why have all the great proposals for the development of the nation for over five decades not launched it into the league of the developed?

Now that there is a flurry of suggestions from the citizens as regards how to overcome the recession, our leaders may only take the ones that would not threaten their personal interests. President Muhammadu Buhari has been asked to invite experts to help him salvage the economy. Some citizens want him to invite the nation’s best economists to proffer solutions to the economic problems. Some have even canvassed the return of former Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. The former minister has already said she would not be ready to serve under the Buhari government when she is invited as she wants other people to contribute their own quota to development. Okonjo-Iweala may not even be an acceptable choice having been tainted by her association with the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) when she served its government. She is still subjected to excoriation for triggering the crisis in the first place by her feckless economic management.

Where is Muhammadu Buhari?

By Chuks Iloegbunam 
Yes, indeed. That is the question. Where is the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC)? The man left Nigeria in mysterious circumstances sometime between February 15 and 19, 2015. His manner of disappearing raised eyebrows across the country, for he suddenly melted into ether. To divert the attention of the curious, his handlers posted numerous false pictures on the Internet and planted same in national newspapers. There, suddenly, was Muhammadu Buhari, confidently emerging from airport formalities at either Heathrow or Gatwick! There, suddenly, was a relaxed Buhari in some well-appointed London studio, granting a press interview. 

*Muhammadu Buhari 

It didn’t take a century for the pack of lies to crumble. It turned out the pictures released of Buhari by his handlers were of the man on a UK visit during 2013. It turned out that the Buhari interview was years old, and had been conducted not anywhere in Europe but inside an Abuja Transcorp Hilton suite. Ekiti State Governor Ayo Fayose personally visited the suite and demonstrated beyond every iota of doubt that it was the venue of the so-called interview the APC claimed its presidential candidate had granted in London. Eagle-eyed journalists supported Fayose’s findings by detailing features of the interview picture that pinned its origin to the Transcorp Hilton, Abuja.