Between Jonathan, Buhari’s Cabinets, Facts Speak For Themselves!

By Reno Omokri

In a tweet he tweeted on January 9, 2012, the Kaduna State Governor, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, tagged Dr. Mrs. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala a “zero”. Not too long after, a nasty little child who was promoted by the same El-Rufai, tweeted that Dr. Okonjo-Iweala was ‘overrated’.

*Jonathan and Buhari 

The two characters aforementioned also spouted some of the vilest things about former President Goodluck Jonathan and his wife, with the nasty little El-Rufai social media sidekick comparing then President Jonathan to a “dead pig” and referring to his wife as a “natural disaster”.

To say El-rufai threw decorum to the wind would be the understatement of the year. He insulted former President Jonathan while he was praying, calling him “stupid” and “lazy” as he prayed to his God. El-Rufai’s ill-brought up children also joined the fray and used some of the most uncouth language on the then President. And then it became the turn of LaiMohammed and his principals, Muhammadu Buhari and pastor Yemi Osinbajo.

It seemed they were in a competition to outdo themselves in a bid to cast aspersions on the person of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan and his government. Clueless, useless, inept and incompetent were some of the choice words they used to describe either the then President or his administration. While campaigning in February 2014, then candidate Muhammadu Buhari said he ‘would not continue with the programmes and policies of President Jonathan’s administration, because to continue with the ideas of a government that does not have a clue signals danger’.

His deputy, Osinbajo accused the Jonathan administration of lacking ‘commitment’ and promised that their administration would do better. Not to be undone, Lai Mohammed called Dr. Jonathan ‘clueless’, “callous”, “insensitive” and “punch drunk”! All three of them promised to give Nigeria a better government and reverse the “rot” of the Jonathan years. Yet in three years of being in office, the Buhari administration has been unable to initiate, start and complete any project in three years. Where they met an economy that was growing at an unprecedented rate of 6.7%, they negatively turned the table and in six months, an economy that was officially cited as the third fastest growing economy in the world in 2015 and the largest economy in Africa, officially went into corruption!

Whereas, Nigeria gained 3 million new jobs in the last three years of Jonathan, we have lost 11 million jobs in the same period of review under Muhammadu Buhari. Do not look at me. Those figures came from the National Bureau of Statistics which is owned and controlled by the government Buhari heads! President Buhari, a man who claimed that then President Jonathan was weak on security has been faced with an ever increasing level of herdsmen killings.

There is a lot of press coverage over the fact that there has been 1,692 civilian deaths in Afghanistan in the first six months of 2018, which is the highest number in the war on terror to date. The sad fact is that this number is not up to the number of Nigerians who died in the first 10 weeks of 2018. Yet Nigeria is supposedly at peace while Afghanistan is at war!

Faced with these facts, you would expect the clueful Buhari to come up with strategies to stem the killings, instead, he had this to say: “There is nothing I can do to help the situation except to pray to God to help us out of the security challenges” (I am not making this up, Buhari actually said that). When bandits killed 34 people in Sokoto two week’s ago, the same President Buhari said Nigerians should be patient because ‘my security teams are cracking their brains’!

To think that this is the man who called Jonathan and his government clueless is so annoying! And to show you how jobless President Muhammadu Buhari is, he could not visit Sokoto State, where 32 Nigerians were killed by bandits, but he traveled to the Netherlands to attend the 20th anniversary of the International Criminal Court.

NO OTHER Head of State attended the anniversary other than Buhari! The man places no priority on his citizens’ life. How can he expect the world to value him when the world knows he does not value his own people? And the truth is that as long as Muhammadu Buhari and his All Progressive Congress are in power, Nigeria is not going to make any real progress. I mean look at the people who make up the Buhari cabinet!

Former President Goodluck Jonathan’s minister for finance got her PhD in regional economics and development from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. On Thursday July 19, Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter appointed Dr. Mrs. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala to the board of Twitter. She also seats on the boards of Lazard, Gavi and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. President Buhari’s minister of finance on the contrary went to a London Polytechnic, seats atop a recessed economy and is accused of forgery. Now tell me who is CLUELESS between Jonathan and Buhari?

It is commonly said, show me your friends and I will tell you who you are. A good leader knows that he or she is a product of his or her environment so they surround themselves with the best people. This is a principle that Jonathan lived by. Can the same be said about President Buhari? A leader should surround himself with those who are on the same mission as himself. Looking at President Buhari and the people he has surrounded himself with, I am tempted to believe that the mission the President has chosen for himself is a mission to fail!

Ex President Jonathan’s former health minister is now a Professor at America’s Duke University. His former agriculture minister is now the President of the African Development Bank. His former finance minister sits on the board of Twitter, Gavi, Lazard and the Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank. His communications minister is now the Chairperson of the global Alliance for Affordable Internet. All this is happening while President Buhari and his finance minister are still looking for their certificates!

Buhari’s Director General of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Mr. Mounir Gwarzo, was fingered for high level fraud and was so incompetent that Nigeria’s equity markets kept shrinking under him. Compare this with Arunma Oteh, who tripled the net worth of our capital market to $150 billion and was so good at her job that she was appointed a vice president and treasurer at the World Bank. Now take all these in and again ask yourself who is truly clueless between Jonathan and Buhari? Back to Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, my response to him on his ‘zero’ tweet is as follows-Thank God Twitter, GAVI, Lazard and the Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank do not think that Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is a zero.

But the curious thing is that El-Rufai, who thinks that he is a hero, has not accomplished anything worthwhile as Governor of Kaduna state. He had saddled his state with debt, pays herdsmen by his own admission, while internal strife kills his own citizens. After six years, we now know who the real zero is. ‪As for Lai Mohammed, the man who told Nigerians that President Buhari’s achievements have ‘exceeded his promises to Nigerians’, Nigerians laughed when he launched ‘A National Campaign Against Fake News’.

This is like satan opening a church. Lai Mohammed and fake news are 5 and 6. They are Siamese twins! Lai should buy a mirror and arrest the person he sees there and by so doing he will reduce fake news in Nigeria by half! The truth is that when you compare and contrast Jonathan’s cabinet with Buhari’s cabinet, the facts speak for themselves?

-------------------

RELATED POST

Lai Mohammed: An Unmanageable Mistake!

Killings: Blame Buhari Not Service Chiefs!

By Richard Maduku

Despite a presidential appointee’s numerous enviable privileges, there are persons who don’t wish to become one today under President Muhammadu Buhari. A few even pity his aides. This is not because contractors will not build houses or buy cars for them because of the anti-corruption stance of the man. It is also not because they detest being referred to as usurpers, hyenas or jackals by the first lady whose outspokenness could sometimes be more critical of the government than that of a spokesperson of the rival political party. Neither are those who feel this way nursing presidential ambition come 2019 general elections. Rather it is because of the shortcomings of the government for which, whether out of fear or reverence for the President, the aides are always being blamed. 

For instance, the exasperating ineptitude if not sleaze that plagues the Ministry of Petroleum Resources which the President has appropriated for himself despite his enormous responsibilities are never attributed to him. It is the Junior Minister and the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company that always take the flak for everything including the frequent scarcity of petrol all over the country especially at Christmas/New year periods.

Is Nigeria Heading For Food Riots?

By Steve Onyeiwu

Nigeria is no stranger to riots and demonstrations. From the days of “Ali Must Go” in the late 1970s, the SAP riots in 1989, the June 12, 1993 protests and the perennial outbursts by the various militant groups in Nigeria, the country appears to have become accustomed to riots. While the Nigerian state has managed to weather these storms, the country can ill-afford food riots. As the saying goes, a hungry man is an angry man. Nigerians are already very angry about the high level of corruption in the country, the ongoing recession, the lack of inclusive growth, the high unemployment rate, chronic poverty, infrastructural decay and the lack of economic opportunities. For many Nigerians, a persistent increase in food prices would be the last straw that would jolt them into food riots.

(pix: WB)

Professor Yemi Osinbajo, Nigeria’s Vice President, understood the severity of the problem when he established a Presidential Task Force last February to address the problem of escalating food prices. But long-term solutions require much more than the mere setting up of a task force. Some of those solutions will be discussed later in this article.