President Muhammadu Buhari’s 61st Independence Day address on Friday, his sixth as president, I concluded that his government is classified for persons 18 years of age and older Obaland magazine learnt.
The content of government addresses and statements from him, which takes all known credit and blames others for his failures while also making Trumpian claims, is unhealthy for those under 18. Therefore, all Nigerians under that age need parental guidance.
In his 3,427-word Independence speech, the president took credit for everything he thought was a success. On the other hand, he blamed others for the manifest failures of his government.
In the first five years of his rule, he blamed his government’s failures on his predecessors since the 1999 return to civilian rule. They are Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo, Musa Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan.
But Nigerians got tired of these excuses; for them, Buhari volunteered to lead as president and commander-in-chief, not chief plaintiff, therefore he should simply get the job done. So, when in his 2020 Independence Day speech, he again blamed: “Those in previous governments from 1999 to 2015 who presided over the near destruction of the country …” he received a barrage of verbal attacks from a citizenry whose patience it had been exhausted.
So, in 2021, President Buhari looked for a new bogeyman to hang over the apparent incompetence of leadership in the country. His choice was not surprising; the media, an institution he mistrusts since his days in the army. Indeed, in the first major interview he gave after his December 31, 1983, overthrow from the elected Shagari administration, then-General Buhari vowed to manipulate the press. This he did in one of the most infamous ways in history by promulgating Decree Four of 1984, according to which reporting falsehood or truth were punishable offences.
In last week’s speech, he first eluded his target, stating: “The seeds of violence are planted in people’s heads through words.” He then launched his missile attack: “Our media and commentators must stop reporting irresponsible remarks to investigate the truth behind all statements and present the facts to readers.”
One of the main crises in the country is the vertiginous increase in food prices. When Buhari came to power in 2015, a bag of rice cost less than N8,000. The then national minimum wage was N18,000. It means that the salary could buy only two bags and a quarter of rice, which in itself was outrageous. But today with the Minimum Wage increased to N30,000 – which some states are not paying – the same bag of rice costs N32,000. This means that the current highest salary cannot even buy a bag of rice!
Several factors are responsible for the criminally high cost of food. First is that large agricultural populations have been driven from farms in states like Katsina, Zamfara, Sokoto, Kaduna and Niger by bandits and kidnappers. A second reason is that many farmers in the Benue basin, known as the “country’s food basket,” have been displaced by marauders who have taken over towns and cities in the region and turned the farmers into internally displaced people. So instead of being on farms producing food, farmers are in IDP camps, depending on food donations.
A third reason is that in a growing number of towns and cities, criminals harvest farmers’ crops. In Abuja, where I live, I know many people who have stopped cultivating the very fertile lands of the country’s capital for this reason.
This, coupled with uncontrolled free-range grazing, which results in livestock entering farms and devouring crops without the scruples of herders or any form of compensation for the victims, is like a death sentence for agriculture. in these parts of the country. Of course, there is the old problem of increasing desertification.
When these calamities are added to rising prices for electricity, oil products, and the senseless devaluation of the Naira in an import-dependent country, we cannot help but experience hyperinflation, even for food products.
These factors, for me, are elementary. But this government does not seem to have such clues. President Buhari, trying to exonerate his administration of any blame, claims that the cause of the skyrocketing food prices is due “to artificial shortages created by middlemen who have been buying and hoarding these essential products for profit. “.
This was the same excuse he gave as Head of Military State 37 years ago. Trends is the lead story in the “Sunday Herald” newspaper of January 29, 1984, with the headline “Buhari blames middlemen for the bad economy.”
Over the years, virtually every nationality in the country has complained of being marginalized. In 2015, one of the main axes on which President Buhari set to reach power was the promise to restructure the country.
He disavowed and there was a backlash that included further agitation over restructuring in one form or another. More than an honest assessment, President Buhari is bombastic. In his speech last week, he repeated the platitude that: “Your unit of him (from Nigeria) is non-negotiable.”
He blamed “certain high-profile funders … including one identified as a sitting member of the National Assembly” for the renewed unrest
By the way, in the first four years of his rule, Buhari used to blame the Eighth National Assembly, NASS, led by Senator Bukola Saraki, for being responsible for the slowness of his government and most of his failures. Today, with a NASS rubber stamp, the situation has gotten a lot worse.
The COVID-19 virus is known to have been with humanity for two years. Where a country of about a dozen million people like Cuba produced four candidate vaccines and has vaccinated its population, a country of more than 200 million people like Nigeria not only did not figure in that race but in the last year, he could not do it. acquire vaccines; depends on donations. But President Buhari sees no flaws in this, rather he asserts himself, warning the “global community that the current state of access to COVID-19 vaccines is unacceptable.”
He then addressed the almost hapless Nigerian people and asked: “If another pandemic arises in the future, our question is simple; Will Nigeria be ready? I don’t have the answer, do I? It’s a JAMB question.
If you ask me, I don’t think President Buhari should be blamed for such an empty Independence Day speech, rather we should blame the speechwriters for him, but can we really blame them for not being able to give what they don’t have? If you ask me, who will I ask? As the comedian, Mr Macaroni will say, I think President Buhari “is doing very well.”
