WAKE UP: Before you jump for Atiku’s money over Obasanjo’s endorsement (PART II)
By BASHIR ADEFAKA
“They are the ones in charge of the economy, quote and unquote. They pulled all monies out from banks in protest against TSA, despite claiming that TSA achievement was not Buhari’s policy but theirs, and changed same to dollars and either buried them or pushed them in some 20-footer containers by land borders out of the country in preparation for this 2019 elections period. It was a plan they perfected since 2015 and now they believe that, knowing Nigerians for who they are, after they have caused hardship making prices go up and pushing Nigerians into hardship despite efforts the government has made, they would now come back and claim to be on rescue mission. Some Nigerians want to buy into their deceit but this article is to send a word of caution to them before they fall for them.”
Obasanjo, Atiku and those supposed religious leaders now ganging up together with other corrupt people to unseat Buhari at all cost have their main joker. They believe that economic problem the country has faced is due to what they claim as the President knowing nothing about national economy. That was exactly what Obasanjo meant to say when he said the candidate that knows about economy he would support for 2019 presidency and then he went on to endorse Atiku.
What Obasanjo however fails to realize is that, supporting a candidate against a clueless Jonathan, who called him a motor park tout in the buildup to 2015 elections, is not the same thing as supporting a candidate with whom Jonathan plunged the country to that sorry case against – this time – a Muhammadu Buhari.
Great to know that the former President and his Third Force members including those religious leaders believe that there is nothing the Buhari’s Administration and All Progressives Congress (APC) have to campaign against Atiku than corruption and so, they have mapped out their strategies to neutralize that campaign joker with claims that the President is sitting over a cabinet of many corrupt officials. They will then tell the world why corruption allegation against Atiku by the Buhari government should be discountenanced as pinch of salt.
They however would have to tarry a while and come out to tell Nigerians how Atiku is the trusted next man to rule Nigeria to prosperity, one, in the absence of plan and strategy for fighting corruption in the manifesto that he brings forward for himself and for his party. They will also have to tell the people how true it is that Atiku knows about economy to now warrant the switch of votes to him in the coming elections.
Yes they said Atiku has all the monies in all currencies and that he used the money to establish businesses and has employed people who work and get paid bigly by those employments. They are therefore trying to ask Buhari to tell what business has he, who served his country diligently as soldier, fine officer, brigade commander, corps commander, General Officer Commanding (GOC), Minister, Governor, Head of State, has ever established. They even lied that he has only three cows when he became President. It will however be pertinent to correct their falsehood of three cows that the President had three hundred cows when he became President and has disclosed amount of money and number of shares in two banks in Nigeria and is only Nigerian leader without a foreign account and no house in Abuja. This is necessary because those wailing politicians thrive on falsehood. They should appreciate Buhari’s sincere asset declaration and slash of salaries unlike their Saraki and even Obasanjo and others who never submitted themselves to doing same during their times.
To now use establishment of business as yardstick to judge who knows about economy will only be a means of self-ridicule by Obasanjo and his coalition. This is important because they are taking their “Baba Go-Slow” tag as while the economy has now translated to much food on the table of every Nigerian but they fail woefully and all the times to tell us how far and at what point did Obasanjo/Atiku and Jonathan/Namadi Sambo who knew about economy and who are “Baba Go-Fast” – all together – reach with Nigeria until the time Buhari now came on May 29, 2015 and took over the country as a rescue President.
Not only that, they are so proud of the fact that Atiku has come with big money to push out and that he is ready to buy the front-page of all the newspapers and airtimes on the broadcasting media and take over the space on social media from now through the February 2019 general elections. They have forgotten that any media conspiracy at this time would mean nothing to the APC/Buhari’s government because, most of the media they are talking about never supported the President from the day of his inauguration on May 29, 2015.
It has been so glaring that an eminent Nigeria asked an advert officer of a frontline newspaper when she came to ask to be supported with adverts, “Are you now a PDP newspaper?” Although he asked with some laughter but he meant deep within him a great deal of disappointment. It was so much that a particular newspaper on Lagos-Ibadan Expressway joined in the anti-APC/Buhari struggle WITH ITS EDITORIAL COMMENT! Most of the television stations would make sure they invite antagonists to come on air and reign insults, abuses, condemnation and disparages and even cast fake information against the APC/Buhari government. So, how much of impact any media conspiracy at this time would make to the disfavour of the Buhari administration in the struggle for the heart of Nigeria come February 2019 remains a thing for us to see. No one should lose the fact that the government is not completely without media which have resolved to take the path of patriotism and have decided to be fair to all sides and in being fair to all sides it has always been natural that they report the achievements of the Administration and even do not stop at that but also report efforts of the desperate opposition and leave the judgment to Nigerians who now see for themselves how far the PDP and Obasanjo’s Coalition have been the cause of Nigeria’s backwardness since 1999.
Their belief is that, Nigerians are hungry. They believe that it is because Buhari has no knowledge of economy that he is deliberately “making them hungry” by withholding money away from circulation. They are now happy and the same media practitioners who have never been seen supporting Buhari since 2015 are now saying that it is Atiku who has come with money to spend to finance adverts on their stables that they would give prominence, it has been gathered. For these reasons, they believe that the popularity between Buhari and Atiku has reached an equilibrium of like 50:50 and that between now and end of October Nigerians would be talking Atiku to drop the balance from 50:50 to like 30:70 meaning that Buhari, from the look of the scale, will lose the 2019 presidential contest to Atiku who they glorify has the money to push out. If I had stayed for one and a half years in this country without job and I did not die, I will not die without taking Atiku money because the report of hunger that we are told is overbloated since there is no society where everybody at all times satisfy his or her want without having to draw a scale of preference. When the mouth is too wide to manage one’s self economy, the cry of hardship is the next thing that sets in. May Allah save us all evil conspiracy against one’s nation.
They even say with Atiku’s INTEL, American University of Nigeria, a university where the school fee is over N3 million and managers are 56 percent foreigners and Presidents (VCs) never made from among Nigerians, that he has been making his big money from his days in customs building the money to execute the presidential project that he is now embarking upon.
They even refer to how General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida pushed out the money in his own times without them bothering about how the Babangida’s style became the beginning of official corruption in Nigeria’s economic life that has continued to ruin the country until Buhari returned in Agbada. They did not bother to talk about how – from then till Buhari’s return – Nigeria stopped being production/export based economy but rather moved from that to being consumption/import based economy thereby killing completely the nation’s industry such the textile mills, the Dunlop Tyres, the Michellin Tyres making company, the agro-economy that had once made Nigeria truly Giant of Africa.
To these promoters of Atiku and a party that only three years ago they closed their eyes to send out of powers for ruining the nation economically, security wise, morally/spiritually and even infrastructurally with highest degree of corruption, it does not matter how it happens, the stomach must be full, as if before the coming of maize there was nothing chicken was feeding on. They keep saying people are hungry as if “hunger” has at any point in history ever ceased to be on the tongues of Nigerians even in time of colonial masters. It is because of that they say Buhari is empty and knows nothing about economy and reason he must be voted out of power as if they see Buhari as somebody who is desperate about staying put in power like they are.
If they are not desperate about staying put in power, why should it be that since they came to power in 1999, Nigeria never knew free, fair and credible elections? Why and how did do-or-die find its way into our national electioneering process? How did we have road infrastructure deficit as much as over 1,600 abandoned projects yet having huge debt profile at the mercy of road contractors and there was no particular road project started, ongoing or completed handed over to Buhari? Why did electric power generation become like impossible thing that Nigeria swung between 2,000 megawatts and 4,000 megawatts until Buhari came with Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN) and broke the jinx now upping Nigeria’s generating capacity to between 5,400 megawatts and 7,000 megawatts, never experienced in the country? Why did they have to sell power distribution franchise as DisCos to themselves as PDP members and yet refused to make Nigerians enjoy power supply when it was not that they did not have generated power to buy from the GenCos?
Since Buhari came to power, student who started university in 2015 is now rounding up, getting set to graduate. But in their time, they should tell us what the education situation was. Apart from the University of Ilorin, in the last 18 years, no Nigerian graduate could boast of not going to spend six or eight years against his normal four years programme before graduating. Why are they hiding all of these facts about their atrocities, which Buhari has come not only to expose but more effectively to correct, normalize and improve upon, if not that they are just too desperate about staying put in power doing nothing but to continue to assert their position as “We the Owners of Nigeria”?
The unfortunate points that any reasonable Nigerian must look out for against all of these coalition politicians using Atiku as consensus after they had earlier disagreed to have him are: One, a candidate that spend $15,000 on each of over 3,500 delegates just to get party ticket at presidential primaries, how much would it cost him to buy votes of the outside-party voters? Why choosing to dollarize economy of a nation you want to govern thereby neutralizing the strength of the Naira of that country just because of intra-party contest? Where did you see the dollars that you so spent and which bureau de change handled the exchange? Why did you do all of these? Just to impress on Nigerians that you love to serve them for their own good and nothing else? How then would you fight corruption if eventually you get into that seat?
Two, Atiku is said to have a major share if not the sole owner of a particular generators’ company that imports generators it produces in other economy only to bring them into the consuming economy they have turned Nigeria to be for their own self-good and which has been reason Nigeria’s electricity system never worked the fullest they we all expected until recently that the Buhari Administration is making frantic effort to subdue that self-based economy of theirs and power supply is even felt to be on the average now although the PDP owners of DisCos who know their presidential candidate is Atiku, the generators producer and merchant (in foreign land) have tried not to make electricity supply available to give themselves reason to campaign against the performing President.
If electricity system in Nigeria works, how would business of that generators’ producing/merchant presidential candidate boom? Yet Nigerians do not need generators but electricity supply through the cheaper and more effective means that government under their PDP administration sold to party members before it packed out in 2015.
Consistently till today, with Bukola Saraki planted as Senate President by this same Atiku, a Bill to ban generators and really attack problems militating against effective electricity system in the country has continued to be buried and disallowed reading in the National Assembly. And they are doing that well because they know that rule of law chosen to govern by Buhari benefits not even Buhari or any Nigerian but themselves the corrupt politicians.
They are also talking about state police but Bills Buhari and other concerned Nigerians sponsored for police reforms have been swept under the carpet by Saraki as Senate President. Same thing all the Bills, to completely incapacitate corrupt politicians among whom Atiku, Saraki and the rest are alleged to be, have continued to be swept under the carpet at the Senate since December 2015. They knew what they were doing and it was working towards this time.
They are the ones in charge of the economy, quote and unquote. They pulled all monies out from banks in protest against TSA, despite claiming that TSA achievement was not Buhari’s policy but theirs, and changed same to dollars and either buried them or pushed them in some 20-footer containers by land borders out of the country in preparation for this 2019 elections period. It was a plan they perfected since 2015 and now they believe that, knowing Nigerians for who they are, after they have caused hardship making prices go up and pushing Nigerians into hardship despite efforts the government has made, they would now come back and claim to be on rescue mission. Some Nigerians want to buy into their deceit but this article is to send a word of caution to them before they fall for them.
As major stake in that generator company, Atiku has capacity to crash the prices of generators and Nigerians would be happy that generators are now cheaper without knowing that their “President” is using their money to subsidise his own family business in order to destroy their future further while they, as poor masses, will continue to depend on his questionable wealth at elections. The shameful outing they made in Osun and later at their presidential primaries in Port Harcourt, Rivers State is enough for any discerning and non-energetic Nigerian youths and elders to know why Atiku or PDP is not their next President as told by the now no-longer relevant Obasanjo.
By crashing by subsidy generators’ prices, the people will therefore be enmeshed in generator-based electricity system and then the main power system in the country would collapse just as the PDP politicians would continue to collapse public school system for their private schools to thrive.
Will Nigerians realize these before it is too late?
