Ladies and gentlemen, please lend me your ears!
I need to awaken your intellectual reasoning.
I need to first establish it I don’t belong to the APC neither am I a member or sympathizer of any political party.
Indeed I hate partisan politics and view it as past time of devil worshippers.
Yes, devil worshippers because what do you u say of the back stabbing and betrayals going on?
How do you place the mindless looting of our collective money in the light of the word of God?
I am fired by patriotic instincts and the need to set the record straight and educate our youths who are at the receiving end of the fraud.
This piece may be lengthy but please read to the end. You need to be alerted to the antics of some Jackals now gathering with the aim of destroying our common patrimony and eroding the gains we made in the last three years.
$1 exchanged for N72 when PDP took over power from the military in 1999.
By divine operation, the price of oil shot through the roofs and our oil was in great demand all over the world..
We made loads and loads of dollars. But PDP didn’t think of investing the money or showing financial foresight.
Nigerians were busy importing all manners of items including tooth pick.. Yes, tooth pick! Nobody thought of stopping the mindless importation or stimulating local production.
They put immense pressure on demand for dollar without correspondingly supplying dollars we all demand for.
They left the Naira exchange rate at N235 to a dollar.
• A 50kg of rice was N800 in 1999. We were busy importing and allowed all manners of Smuggling.
While the mass importation and smuggling was on, production of local rice varieties like Gboko rice, Abakaliki rice, Ofada rice etc suffered neglect.
Thousands quit our rice plantations in frustration and joined the mad rush to smuggle rice.
But While Unemployment soars in Nigeria, we were busy creating jobs in Thailand and Indonesia as new rice mills were being opened.
After 16 years, the PDP left 50kg of rice at N8000.
•In 1999 when the PDP took over the reins of power, national assets like NITEL, NEPA, NIPOST, Nigerian Airways, NRC, Nigerian SHIPPING LINE, Nigeria Machine Tools, DELTA STEEL, OSTM, National OIL, DUNLOP TYRES, Nitex, Nascon, Dicon, MICHELIN TYRES,ASABA TEXTILE, KADUNA TEXTILE, Nichemtex and NIC were all alive in 1999.
Millions of Nigerians were working in those firms and contributing to the GDP. Poverty level was far lower..
But by 2015, the PDP have killed and buried all the companies and wiped off over 1 million jobs and creating an army of unemployed in place.
Annoyingly, the assets of the companies they stripped and shared amongst themselves through some dubious privatization exercise overseen by a particularly desperate ex-custom man.
My fellow young Nigerians, please think deep before you write attacking President Buhari.
Some things may be well beyond your understanding and comprehension.
Have you heard of many of those companies I listed above before?
Do you know their history and their contributions to the national economy?
You may be too young to know. Ask your brothers and older cousins.They will tell you.
The poverty we are talking about started decades back.it is not just starting today.
The seed was sown long before Muhammadu
Buhari/ Yemi Osinbajo government came on board.
PMB is not the genesis of your woes. He is not Nigerias problem. He is to fix the problems created by the PDP.. He is to fix the broken bones of the economy of Nigeria.
And putting fractured and broken bones together won’t be a week’s job. It can’t be done in a jiffy. It comes with a lot of initial pains.
North Eastern Nigerian almost lost it completely to Boko Haram insurgency!
Boko Haram was a creation of the PDPs impunity. It was as a result of the crisis and power play in PDP.
The powers that be that time failed to deal with it promptly.. And before they were shoved out of power, 14 local governments, out of the 774 LGs in Nigeria were under the control of Boko Haram.
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) said it was the size of Belgium that some rascals operating under Boko Haram cut out of Nigeria!
Over 20,000 Nigerians were killed.
Thousands of soldiers lost their lives and many of their children became orphans.
But While the killings was on, Nigeria decided to borrow $2bn to procure weapons to equip its armed forces in the fight against the insurgents.
But the person they gave the money to turned himself to modem day father Christmas sharing the money among friends and family.
Bombs were exploding at motor parks and in sensitive buildings while political assassinations and violence was commonplace while PDP was on the seat.
What’s our treasury saying?
We made tonnes of dollars from oil but they squandered it and refused to save for the rainy days. Yet our fathers always counsel us to learn to be frugal and save.
PDP who managed us surely don’t have such moral lessons!
While they didn’t put money aside for Nigeria, their personal bank balances and those of their families kept soaring!
One was recorded to have left prison with just N20,000 in his bank account and by the time he left office eight year after was a multi-billionaire in several currency denominations!
While his government underfunded public universities, he and his Deputy quickly set up private Universities to benefit from the rot they deliberately created in public universities.
Today, If we say our public universities are like glorified secondary schools, look no further than at the doorsteps of those that we gave power to but used the office to feather their own person nests.
They simply decided to share our money!
PDP even rubbed it on our faces during their 2015 presidential primaries.
They openly used our petro-dollars to bribe voters.
*They looted the treasury!*
PMB took over a badly battered nation.
He got on the scene and decided to bring back sanity and discipline.
We all voted for him because we feel he is the man Nigeria needs.
I can assure you he is still the man needed to fix the ruins.
When Buhari assumed office, he didn’t reckon with what he is up against because of the many lies PDP told us.
They told us Nigeria has the best economy in Africa when actually we were on the verge of recession!
We were told all was well with our economy when actually the Federal Government was already borrowing to pay its workers salary!
Professor Charles Soludo warned we were on economic precipice but he was shouted down!
We thought they were telling us the truth but they were deceiving us.
When the reality dawns on us we decided to change them.
Do you think changing such negative variances wont bring along some inconveniences?
No pain, no gains!
*Do you think its an Indian movie we are watching?*
PMB has the discipline, the will, the courage and integrity to do the needful. No One yet on parade comes close.
Think well and think straight!
Don’t be deceived by these jackals again! They have deceived us before!
When you see the same set of people that brought Nigeria to its kneels gather and talk of redeeming Nigeria, you need to ask them what they plan to do differently from the ones they did for 16 years!
We have seen their best! They have nothing left in the tank to offer!
What they are after now is how to set Nigeria back to the path of ruins they left us in 2015!
They are broke and want to loot the treasury again.
Ask probing questions from them.
Don’t let them bribe you or play on your emotions.
Ask them why they ruined Nigeria when they had all the opportunities to make us great!
They will tell you about the current price of rice and that the price was lower in 2015.
They like to play on our sentiment and emotion.
Ask them why they failed to make Nigeria a rice producing nation when they had the opportunity?
Ask them why they failed to stimulate local production of rice?
Ask them how many rice farmers they empowered in the 16 years they were in power?
Buhari has empowered over 100,.000 new rice farmers within 3 years. Ask them how many they did in 16 years.
Buhari is determined to make Nigeria a rice producing nation and so imported several new rice processing and harvesting machines.
Nigeria today has over 20 rice processing mills. Yes, It is not enough to meet our rice consumption needs, but it is a good start.
Ask those gathering against president Buhari questions! Ask them which sector of the economy they stimulated for 16 years.
Ask those jackals who are gathering, what were they looking at when all the textile firms that were in operation before they took over in 1999 collapsed under their care?
Ask them why Dunlop and Michellin Tyre producing firms folded up?
Ask them why Nestlé moved its production line to Ghana and just truck finished products to Nigeria for selling?
Ask them why they failed to diversify the nations economy for 16 years despite paying lip service to it.
Ask them where is all the money they budgeted for the diversification of the economy.
Ask them why it is only crude oil that keeps bringing in foreign exchange for Nigeria when there are multiple sources they refused to open up.
Ask them why despite spending over $20bn on electricity and also privatizing our power distribution firms, we still don’t have power?
Someone who spent the single largest amounts of our money to fix electricity said the power we need for our refrigerator and run our company is in the book he wrote!
Funny people! They thought Niger is their private property.
Yes, we might not be where we desire to be, but we have left the path of ruins. We have left Egypt.
We cannot afford to return to the path of perdition again. PDP is the path of perdition.
If we grudgingly agree APC hasn’t lived up to expectations, (and this is debatable) then PDP is not the one to correct the misdeeds of APC!
PDP created the problems we are complaining about in the first instance.
Muhammad Buhari is Not Nigeria’s problem.
He found himself on the most difficult job in the world! He cannot reverse the mismanagement of 16 years in 4 years. That will be asking him to perform magic.
Lets be patient with him.
Renowned automobile manufacturers like Mazda and Toyota are already constructing assembly plants in Nigeria. They will employ over 17,000 workers when they are throgh. The biggest brewery in Africa, South Africa Breweries, is already in Nigeria. It took in over 2,000 workers.
President Buhari inherited an economy in recession and pulled back the negatives variance that even the World Bank acknowledged he got it right.
Why do you think European and American governments are rolling out red carpet before President Buhari? They saw the sincerity of his government and are offering hands of fellowship to Nigeria.
A honest leader is what Nigeria has been lacking all these while, not people that preaches piety but are rotten themselves! Not people with questionable wealth. Not those who are scared of looking at the western world in the face when talking about corruption.
Muhammadu Buhari is honest and sincere! Let’s be patient with him. Let’s back him.
You can take it to the bank that in as much as we don’t stop doing the right things. Nigeria will successfully pull through.
We are on the right path of prosperity again. No pain, No gain! Think Nigeria!
*Aniete Etim Udobong writes from Uyo, Akwa Ibom State
