By Bashir Adefaka
Truth is, Obasanjo, it was gathered, wanted to control the economy of Nigeria but President Muhammadu Buhari refused him. Hence the sudden change against the President, who had earlier in the starting time of his administration been warned by several eminent Nigerians not to allow Obasanjo near him. Are those people warning Buhari against Obasanjo at that time not now vindicated? If Obasanjo and Ayodele Fayose joined with Goodluck Jonathan that called him motor park tout can now be united against Buhari as common enemy that must be crushed at any cost, who needs to ask further question about the sincerity or not of the new Ph.D. holder’s love for Nigeria?
Continuing from where I stopped on Tuesday, I was raising an issue about elder statesmen joined with their cohorts among politicians in the opposition in the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), National Assembly and in other places and pointing out that their anti-government activities are not acceptable to commonsense because they have no sincere intention to truly rescue Nigerians from any sitting President since there is no wicked or dictatorial leader in power that Nigerians would require their struggle to be freed from. This is the part II.
They all agreed within themselves, ab-initio, that Jonathan’s failure to impact Nigeria as President and Commander-in-Chief of the Federal Republic was the handiwork of Muhammadu Buhari and so that they would do all that they could to make sure that Buhari, now elected President, would not succeed. Findings revealed that it was the reason all of the unrests that greeted the starting point of President Buhari’s Administration from those sides of the country occurred. They started with the Niger Delta Avengers, who claimed to be fighting for their rights, they said, having been deprived and been incapacitated by their waters and land made unable to support their wellbeing.
They started with the Avengers who, filled with feeling that the only means of sustenance by which Buhari could make Nigeria better was oil, engaged in the bombing of oil installations that cost the Buhari’s Administration extra-budget expenses of having to repair the facilities destroyed by those Nigerians working against Nigeria. Recall since Buhari built the Nigeria’s four refineries as Federal Commissioner of Petroleum Resources and so left office and the touching he asserted when he came to power as Military Head of State (1984 – mid-1985), no government has ever improved on what he put in place of the those refineries. They therefore went moribund until he returned as elected President on May 29, 2015 when he now fixed the moribund refineries and lifting the nation’s power generation from the 2,600 megawatts he inherited from the government the same PDP people who are now working assiduously to collapse Nigeria to prove a point that they hate the Daura, Katsina State-born President.
He upped the power capacity to 5,001 megawatts, which made them feel that, “Waoh! This Malam will expose us as truly failure if they don’t sabotage his power system”. This the bombing of pipelines that supplied crude to those revamped refineries by the politicians’ sponsored militants began. They bombed oil installations and too hostages and attacked military personnel and the rest of those things that economic terrorists do. Then, Nigeria in recession and, “Yeah!”, they began to jubilate, “Buhari is a failure!” thinking that Nigerians were still where they left them. Much as they continue to maintain their foot soldiers, who would tell any lie on social and even traditional media to keep them afloat, there have been Nigerians who were getting no kobo from the government Muhammadu Buhari and yet were ready to go to any length blocking the falsehood and hypocrisies of these “enemies of Nigeria” from thriving. They are the same people who make Nigeria look like now drifting towards conflicts which is big lie. They are the same people who make it look like Nigeria is now more divided than never, which is a big lie. They are the same people who make it look like Nigeria is under the siege of herdsmen because Buhari, a Fulani man, is backing them, which is a big lie. They would cause and sponsor chaotic situation and make themselves available as rescuers. So hypocritical of a people!
But saner Nigerians have sat down and ask: “Why did you elder statesmen and Retired Christian Generals have to wait till now that Buhari is about three years of seriously fixing Nigeria achieving great things that you failed to achieve all together in 16 years before you now know that you actually need a coalition of Nigerians to unseat the President?” Truth is, Obasanjo, it was gathered, wanted to control the economy of Nigeria but President Muhammadu Buhari refused him. Hence the sudden change against the President, who had earlier in the starting time of his administration been warned by several eminent Nigerians not to allow Obasanjo near him. Are those people warning Buhari against Obasanjo at that time not now vindicated? If Obasanjo and Ayodele Fayose joined with Goodluck Jonathan that called him motor park tout can now be united against Buhari as common enemy that must be crushed at any cost, who needs to ask further question about the sincerity or not of the new Ph.D. holder’s love for Nigeria?
A staff of Shell once told how much it cost the Federal Government to get those destroyed oil facilities their sponsored militants bombed in the Niger Delta back on stream. He said, “For every pipeline destroyed, Shell is required to contribute 40 percent of the total cost of repair while the remaining 60 percent cost is borne by the Federal Government. Each of this facilities cost N500 million. You can therefore see how Nigerians are the same people that destroying Nigeria,” he said, adding at that time that, “what I do know now is that most of the foreign investors operating those oil facilities being destroyed have stopped work.”
Another contributor said, “To me, it will not make sense for the Federal Government to continue to repair facilities that Avengers will come again to destroy.” That was when the government started opening its eyes and began to look inward, not that it never looked inward but, look inward to now tapping on other oil deposits in other parts of the country. In the next few months or years, many will see that Niger Delta will no longer be the only land that God bestowed with the favour of oil that is not even owned by any tribe but by the Government of the country. That is how President Muhammadu Buhari has tackled that aspect. But before leaving this branch of discourse, let the question be asked: Is it true that Niger Delta region has ever been cheated either by the North or the Federal Government as the people, who only under the civilian government of Buhari were just waking up to knowing about that cheating, want the world to know?
Truth is, Niger Delta has always been the most favoured region in Nigeria in terms of fair sharing of the proceeds from the economic cash cow of the nation being, of course, that they are host communities. Obasanjo, who is today leading the plots to cause nation’s collapse because he and his coalition of some retired Generals, former military or civilian presidents want Buhari out at all cost, gave the Niger Delta that is the oil producing communities 13 percent derivation. When the Katsina, Katsina State-born President Umar Musa Yar’Adau came, he thought of the best way to develop the Niger Delta that has been the area where the nation’s known divine favour of oil was coming from and make a Dubai out of the region. And to achieve that, he put all the militants agitating in the area together, appointed his Minister of Defence, Major General Godwin Abbey, to lead the group that recovered arms from them, gave them amnesty and started paying them monthly allowances even as they were equally put in different trainings home and abroad. Many of the militants became aircraft pilots, many engineers and so on and so forth.
Thinking further, Yar’Adau established the Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs and appointed Niger Delta indigene as Minister. It is expected that with a whole ministry therefore apportioned to the Niger Delta development, to get the region out of the woods even as their restive youths that had made the place globally recognized as crisis region were now being paid and trained. Far before then, Obasanjo had given the region the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) and, with the roadmap of NDDC alone, Niger Delta should be better than Dubai. But alas! It failed to achieve the aspiration of the intentions of the Federal Government, despite that all of those allocations by government were made to be under the control of Niger Delta people as Minister and Director-General, aside the Federal allocations that went into the control of their governors and constituency allowances manned by their Federal lawmakers. That is not to talk about royalties that also go to the people from the companies that operate in the region. That is not to talk about general Federal Allocations, like just stated, that go to all 36 states of the Federation, all states in the Niger Delta inclusive. Then, where is the cheating, where is the deprivation, where is the shortchanging by the Federal Government?
All of these misrepresentations were on ground for a long time and they were reasons for which Niger Delta people and those sympathizing with them in other parts of the country and around the world had believed and supported their agitations saying, “Nigeria is the only country where oil is taken from the land of a people to develop the land of other people and the place where the oil is taken is rendered useless.” But is that impression correct in a country of many professors, researchers, great journalists and even many very active civil societies?
But that is the same impression that all of our learned people including the elites, without leaving these elder statesmen aside, have carried abroad. Great enough that a United Nations convention agreed on the Cleanup of Ogoni Land as the best solution, which was signed during the Presidency of a man who is from the core of the Niger Delta, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, Ph.D, but who never implemented the agreement until the time he left. It was even gathered that pipe-borne water did not run to his Otu-Oke town in Bayelsa, even as President, talk less of any river in the entire state could sustain fish or land sustain crops. Ironically, a daughter of the region, Diezani Allison-Madueke, said to be financially most trusted of then President Jonathan, is facing trial over 13 billion pounds sterling in the United Kingdom today. Over $200 million has been confiscated and forfeited from her and taken back to the coffers of the Federal Government, just as properties making it look like that single woman had bought virtually all Lagos with high profile houses said to belong to her alone in Banana Estate, Lagos have been forfeited to the Federal Government courtesy Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). Little therefore would anybody ask if it is not because of the fight against these reckless economic misbehaviours that Bukola Saraki/Ike Ekweremadu Senate is working hard to demystify the office and person of Ibrahim Mustaha Magu and make him appear to Nigerians and world as unworthy to be Chairman of the anti-graft agency; Saraki and Ekweremadu themselves being members of the anti-Buhari group.
*To be continued.
