Buhari Regime Is A Complete Disaster - Arthur Nwankwo

Former Presidential candidate and Chancellor of the Eastern Mandate Union (EMU), Dr. Arthur Agwuncha Nwankwo is not a man of many words. In this interview with LAWRENCE NJOKU, Southeast Bureau Chief, he bares his mind on some nagging issues in the country.

What is your take on President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration in the last one year?
The Muhammadu Buhari administration has been a complete disaster. I knew from the outset that his presidency was a tragedy waiting to happen. My conclusions are anchored on observable and incontrovertible facts. The first is Buhari’s penchant for religiously implementing a policy of exclusion. You possibly cannot expect anything good from a man, who expressed the desire to run a segregative administration from the very beginning, based on the voting patterns in the 2015 presidential elections.

For him to say on several occasions that his government would treat differently areas that gave his party 95 percent vote from the areas that gave only five percent indicated that he did not and still does not understand what political contest is all about. As far as I know, the beauty of democracy is located in the freedom of the electorate to make a choice from an array of political contestants. At the end of the contest, whoever emerges the winner sees himself as the leader of all and not only of those that voted for him. Buhari has failed this litmus test of democratic inclusion.

Like I have always said about the Buhari presidency, you don’t give what you don’t have. Any discerning person would have identified the ineptitude of this administration from the content of Muhammadu Buhari’s inaugural address on May 29 2015. It is from such address that a focused leader hints on his vision and policy direction in governance. His inaugural speech was empty. I urge you to pick a copy of that address and go through it again. You will be shocked at how drab and uninspiring it was for such a big occasion. So much noise has been made about a line in that address, which said that, “he belonged to everybody and belonged to nobody.” While many of his apologists sought to convince Nigerians of what he meant by that statement, I warned of the deceit and dictatorial import of that comment.

Today, Buhari has taken Nigeria back by almost 40 years and has proven beyond doubt that he is an ethnic and religious irredentist. The economy has collapsed and with it our collective destiny. Insecurity has not abated and poverty rate has tripled. The picture of things to come is gloomy and frightening. Buhari is, indeed, a colossal failure and his administration is a significant threat to the continued existence of this country as a corporate entity.

Could the reasons you outlined be responsible for the heightened clamour for restructuring of the country?
It is instructive that many Nigerians have come to the realisation that the only way for the survival of the country is through restructuring. This is heartwarming. This is what I have canvassed over the past three decades at great risk to my personal safety.
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Buhari Is Championing Nepotism – Junaid Mohammed

 …His Relatives Dictate Aso Rock policy

*President Buhari 

Interview by Ishaya Ibrahim (Acting News Editor)

Muhammadu Buhari’s relatives are the ones dictating policy in Aso Rock for 170 million Nigerians, adding nepotism to the festering allegation of narrow mindedness levelled against the president, who critics say surrounds himself with Northerners in running national affairs.

Junaid Mohammed, radical politician and Second Republic lawmaker, named at least seven relatives of the president who are the power behind the throne in the Villa – apart from the heads of all vital security agencies who are from the from the North.
In a telephone interview from his base in Kano, Mohammed accused Buhari of giving key positions to his cousins, nephews, and in-laws, and is therefore guilty of the corruption he is trying to fight.
Mohammed, a virulent critic of former President Goodluck Jonathan, and originally a supporter of Buhari, said nepotism compromises Buhari’s ability to rule the country well, fight corruption, and deal with rogue lawmakers who pose a threat to his administration.

Junaid Mohammed 

His words: “As far as I am concerned, nothing will come by way of contention with the National Assembly (NASS) and the executive branch, because both of them have a mindset which is completely antithetical to democracy. Both the president, particularly his principal adviser, his nephew, one nonentity called Mamman Daura; then the Chief of Staff [Abba Kyari], who in fact was brought up by Mamman Daura; and the scoundrel who is the Secretary to the Government of Federation [Babachir David], including most of the incompetent ministers, are not cut out to work harmoniously in a political environment with the legislature. On the legislative side, they want to continue business as usual; that will mean impunity, blackmail, open corruption to extort money from ministries, departments and agencies of federal and state governments, because they did not come into politics to serve. They came to make money. That is the basic fact. 

"You can see why it is impossible for anybody, no matter how reasonable, to work with the National Assembly, especially the Senate, because unless you are prepared to open up the national treasury and offer it to them, there is going to be no peace between the executive branch and them. And of course, there is the unfortunate, additional bad luck of Buhari being surrounded by his own relations who are not politicians. They are not even members of the APC (All Progressives Congress) but dictate policy, especially Mamman Daura. So I can see no peace, I can see no cooperation, and God save Nigeria.”

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President Buhari’s Politics Of Exclusion

By Ikechukwu Amaechi

Let me make a confession from the outset. I have always been a fan of President Muhammadu Buhari and I didn’t hide my admiration for him.

On the four occasions he contested for the Presidency, I voted for him except in 2007. And that was because I left the country late 2006 for my Chevening Scholarship programme at Cardiff University, United Kingdom and returned after the 2007 polls. Had I been around, I would have voted for him.

Not only did I vote for him, I wrote articles extolling what I thought were his unassailable qualities.

*Buhari 

Yes, no man is a saint and I never deluded myself that Buhari was one. In any case, angels and saints don’t populate this space with us. They populate the outer space called heaven where, we are told, they are in perpetual camaraderie with God.

But if there was any former Nigerian leader I thought was inherently a good man, it was Buhari. I saw him as a man of integrity, incorruptible – and a man who believes in Nigeria and the greatness it can aspire to and, in fact, achieve if all its potentials are harnessed and aggregated.

I believed Buhari when he said he was a changed man, a democracy convert who has no place in his heart for vendetta. I looked forward to a man who would be president of all Nigerians and not president of only those areas where he got his fabled 95 per cent of the votes by hook or crook.

I looked forward to a man who would transcend the limitations of partisan politics, who would stop being the presidential candidate of a political party with all the shenanigans, to being a statesman, president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, and father of all.

His age, 72, qualifies him to be exactly that – father of the nation.

I expected so much from Buhari, not the least a man who would govern Nigeria and deal with fellow citizens on the basis of equity, justice and fair play. But I must confess again that Buhari has greatly disappointed me.