But communicators tell us why it is possible to hear ourselves in the marketplace. The solution is selective perception. So, I hear clearly in the marketplace and I know the songs oozing therefrom.
My mission is to alert your Excellency to the details of those songs, because I know that your close body allies have shut the music player around you, denying you the chance of hearing from the marketplace.
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The songs are a mix of old school tunes with contemporary Naija music. I see them rendering them with passion, sometimes with red eyes. The lyrics are not complicated. Not in anyway. Hear me sir, the music is all about three key agenda of your administration as you submitted in the pre-2015 election. The three pillars of your election campaign, which include uplifting the economy, ending corruption and ending insurgency. A number of your countrymen bought into your agenda. I am not sure they were compelled by circumstances to do so, even though many of them had condemned you for the demise of the Second Republic. That old era; when politicians scripted their own songs and shut down the cassette player belonging to the marketplace.
The songs are very simple to decode Sir. On your fight against downward slide of the economy, the market people have songs that claimed that you may be part of the cause of the recession of 2016 rather the being the solution. They waxed further, saying that your policies in late 2015/2016 which shut the door on the use of United States Dollar in the economy stifled the Naira and Kobo market and suffocated the Nigerian currently. The result, they claimed made the Naira salute the Dollar more than 200 times on its knees.
One curious aspect of the marketplace song involved what they claimed they heard of between you and your former ally in the All Progressives Congress (APC) party; that man from the Eastern part of Northern Nigeria called Atiku Abubakar. The market square claimed you held a meeting with him in the early days of your government and that he handed you a blueprint put together for him by some expert English-speaking Professors and technocrats. They said he was said to have told you that the document was put together for him as a contribution to enhancing the economy immediately after the 2015 elections.
The market square was again told that the document advised on how to utilise some billions of dollars in domiciliary accounts of Nigerians to government advantage and enhance Foreign Direct Investment. And the marketplace was again told that after you received the document, you thanked the North-Eastern man with a warm handshake. As the lyrics go, they also claimed that you then subjected the document to a committee, which immediately advised you to reject the submission.
One of the lyrics claimed you were even told that the savings in the domiciliary accounts belong to Atiku’s allies and that they would use the same to oust you in 2019.
The marketplace is powerless to ask you sir how near the story is to reality but they suddenly saw that your government’s policy was to stifle the availability of the US Dollar by banning payments into such accounts. Then they started hearing of Dollar smuggling across the former NADECO routes of Benin Republic and others. In no time, they saw the Naira prostrating before the Dollar more than 200 times.
Now the lyrics turned to lamentation; with claims that if you had observed the details of the document from the man of many parties, maybe the Naira would have been saved the shame.
On insecurity, the marketplace waxed a music hailing your Chief Policeman as a man of courage. They said he was the only man to defy the order of a Senior Commander and soldier like you and go scot-free. And they are also saying you have pampered the security chiefs who easily explain away all sorts of attacks on the citizens no matter the number of deaths.
The marketplace also waxed further. It said you have often been misled into giving lame excuses like claiming that the number of deaths in Zamfara was more than Plateau during your courtesy visit. The market square says your licensed gun carriers always looked away when killers of the people came calling. They gave examples of Taraba, Benue, Nasarawa, Zamfara, Kogi, Enugu and plenty places.
On your war against corruption, the market square returned damning lyrics that refused to praise your heroics, which I saw gave you the commendation of OAU (AU). I don’t know why. But the market square said those (O)AU leaders dare not lift a finger against corruption in their villages and that when they saw you talking about that vice, they simply said you must be a man of courage.
According to their songs, the anti-corruption war has been giving injection to malaria and allowing the incubation of mosquitoes around the house window. Even that window is torn long ago. They even said you condoned Maina’s Pension money man to return to his job with promotion, when they were told the tall gentleman from Otuoke in the oil region had sacked him. One music is saying the MTN scandal soiled the hands of people in your government and another is claiming that the $25 billion NNPC contract awards are doing them the more you look, the less you see.
Mr. President, these songs ended up getting me disheartened, I must confess.
and then