The ease with which human memory fades cannot but amaze any right-thinking individual. Less than 10 months into the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, a good number of Nigerians, seemingly bitten by the bug of amnesia, seems to have forgotten the clear and present danger the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan constituted to our collective future.
They are therefore pandering to the propaganda machinery of a section of the political class which since the build-up to the last general election has sworn never to see anything good in the former head of state.
The reason, of course, is understandable. His ways are not their ways. He would not condone the rot that gave some mindless Nigerians the courage to pocket billions of dollars meant to purchase arms for the fight against Boko Haram, the soulless gang responsible for the senseless murder of no fewer than 15,000 innocent Nigerians in the North East, Abuja and elsewhere in the country, and the maiming of thousands of other hapless souls.
To be sure, President Buhari has had his imperfections—a fact of life that is true of every mortal. For instance, it is hard to justify the fact that it took him seven odd months to constitute his cabinet after he was sworn in as president on May 29 last year, particularly because the names he came up with in the end did not emanate from Mars. Not a few people think, and rightly so, that Chris Ngige, Rotimi Amaechi, Audu Ogbe, Babatunde Fashola, Abubakar Malami and Udo Udoma are not names that should have taken the President eternity to compile. Their screening by the Directorate of State Service (DSS) should also not have taken more than a week or two, such that in a space of two or three months, a government would be in place.
It is also indefensible that 10 months into Buhari’s tenure the contractors in charge of the death traps we call roads across the country are yet to return to site for the construction works they have long abandoned because the previous administration would not fulfill its contractual obligations to them. It should not have been difficult for the government to call a meeting with the contractors to strike a deal with them to return to site with the assurance that the sums due to them would be paid once the National Assembly passed the 2016 budget. Instead, the government waited and waited till the rains are back.
But these few lapses cannot deny the Buhari administration credit for the good works it has done towards righting the wrongs that drew us from the zenith of prosperity to the nadir of misery. Its massive achievements in such areas as security, anti-corruption war, the restructuring of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), improved power generation, reduction in the cost of governance and enhanced image of Nigeria in the international community would only go unnoticed by negative-minded individuals who would rather see the cup as half-empty than see it as half-full.
Only diehard cynics would deny the fact that the strength of Boko Haram, the killer sect that once constituted veritable danger to our collective existence, has been decimated since Buhari became president. Not only has most of the territories occupied by the sect in the North East been reclaimed by our resurgent troops the frequency of explosions masterminded by the sect in different parts of the country has drastically reduced. Gone now are the days when residents of Abuja, the nation’s capital city, slept with an eye open.
The President has not only arrested the rot in the all-important NNPC, it has also restructured the organisation for better efficiency and transparency. He has resuscitated some refineries with a view to reducing the nation’s dependence on imported fuel. The knotty issue of subsidy removal has also been addressed without the anticipated fuss.
For obvious reasons, however, diehard critics of Buhari would rather harp on the few things he has failed to do than highlight his numerous achievements. Having failed to stop his emergence as president with such issues as his age, religious disposition and certificates, they believe that the next thing they should do is rubbish his achievements and dramatise his failures in order to discredit him and his party. Hence, rather than commend the President for the trips on account of which Nigeria is being restored to its pride of place in the comity of nations, the trips that resulted in the formation of the multi-national force that has been dealing deadly blows on Boko Haram, attracting foreign investors and facilitating financial aid from wealthier nations, they say he is globe-trotting and wasting the nation’s resources on foreign trips.
The cynics would blame the President for fuel scarcity and blackout rather than question the activities of pipeline vandals and Niger Delta militants who think the best way to express their grievances with government is to blow up oil and gas installations. Rather than question the exotic taste of Nigerians who would not touch a toothpick except it is imported, they blame the high exchange rate of the naira on President Buhari’s government. Rather than credit the administration for detecting an ungodly practice the nation has been living with for ages, the cynics are holding up Buhari and his party for the padding of the 2016 budget masterminded by some civil servants.
Unfortunately, many unsuspecting members of the public cannot see through the masochist plans of anti-Buhari elements. Rather than look into the future with hope, they have joined the murmuring crowd that says Buhari must turn the economic fortune of the nation around in less than 10 months in spite of the pillaging it has undergone for decades.
God help Nigeria.
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