Nigeria hasn’t moved one inch forward since 2015

THE streets are full of protests as hunger ravages the land, and I can’t help remembering the Jonathan years. The creators of the present calamity who have gone eerily quiet, the people the Yoruba call odaale-daale, deserve to be quartered for their falsehood. Prior to the then President Goodluck Jonathan’s exit from office, opposition elements cast him in the mould of Lucifer himself. Wole Soyinka, the Nobel Laureate whose tongue has now been seized by the gods of partisanship, threw caution to the wind and called the president’s wife an animal. Senior advocates dissected the economy and predicted a revolution with Jonathan’s ouster. Tam David West, a former minister, said there was no reason PMS, N87 under the vilified zoologist, should not be sold for N50 per litre . The proposed Messiah, Muhammadu Buhari, was asking sickeningly arrogant questions: “Who is subsidizing who?” Subsidy was mere corruption, he declared in his imperial majesty. Cicero was right: orators are most vehement when they have the weakest cause, as men get on horseback when they cannot walk.

The political commentariat descended on Jonathan and his men in vicious rage, dubbing them traitors. Books rolled out of the printing houses dubbing Reuben Abati, Jonathan’s spokesman, a turncoat, a fraud, etc; Jonathan’s ministers were said to have looted Nigeria’s present and future, if not the past. The critics who sweated as they spoke rode good cars, travelled the world with Jonathan’s good exchange rate, and enjoyed the democratic atmosphere he nurtured. Now that present suffering has exposed their buffoonery, it is time to look the orators in the face and tell them the truth. The quality of life of the Nigerian masses has not improved one bit since the Otuoke man left, and that is a tragedy. The Yoruba ask the orisa (god) that cannot benefit them to at least leave them the way they previously were. That is exactly the case with Nigeria.

Nigeria wasn’t an Eldorado when Jonathan was in Aso Rock, and it is not my aim to burnish his image. But the truth has a way of trouncing lies, and that is my point: everything we have done since Jonathan seems to be utter waste because our lives as Nigerians have been ruined, almost beyond repair. Hunger stalks the land and wretchedness is palpable: the arrogance of 2015, even among academics, has disappeared. Gari that was N200 or thereabouts per congo is now 1,000. I used to buy a bag of rice for N7,500. It is now N74,000. The bunch of depraved lunatics who brought the current calamity on Nigeria are trying their level best to rationalize the tragedy they caused but their arguments are too insultingly watery to even bother about. To buy the two cows used during my wedding in December 2011 now, you need around N900,000. I paid N130,000.

During his re-election campaign, Jonathan touted the 200,000 jobs created through YOUWIN and SURE-P; the revival of the auto industry, with auto giants like Peugeot, Nissan and Hyundai either assembling or wholly manufacturing  vehicles, and with Innoson, Nigeria’s flagship indigenous automaker, coming on board; the conduct of free and fair elections, the liberalization of the press; freedom of speech; Nigeria’s status as Africa’s number one investment destination ; the rebasing of Nigeria’s GDP and Nigeria’s emergence as the largest economy in Africa; the construction and beautification of the Lagos-Benin expressway, Abuja-Lokoja expressway, Enugu-Abakiliki expressway, Onitsha-Owerri highway and most parts of the Enugu-Port Harcourt expressway; revival of the comatose railway system; remodeling  and standardization of airports; establishment of nine federal universities and computerization of education in the country with the introduction of the computer-based test (CBT); construction of the Abuja – Kaduna rail track, the reduction of 20 million litres a day in subsidy fraud using technology (Operation Aquila) and dry season Fadama farming, etc.

Buhari and his men dismissed Jonathan’s record, promising Nigerians a massive turnaround, but they then made Nigeria the global poverty capital. They depleted the treasury and got embroiled in financial scandals that made anything Jonathan and his men were accused of to sound like a mere joke. The Buhari government wholly embraced falsehood as a tool of statecraft. Nigerians can never forget the unconscionable lies:  “I belong to everybody and I belong to nobody. Nigerians’ suffering will end in 3 months. Treasury almost empty. (Buhari actually inherited $30 billion).  Power generation now 7000mw—Buhari in his January 1, 2018 national broadcast (The actual figure was 4,108MW). A serious government will solve power problem in six months. A US senator told me (Oshiomhole) that a minister stole $6billion under Jonathan. Nigeria under Buhari is polio-free. GEJ did not buy a single weapon to fight Boko Haram. Buhari built all the four refineries in Nigeria today. EFCC found over N2.5 billion in the account of Stella Oduah’s maid.

“We were soft on Igbo during Civil War. IPOB is more dangerous than Boko Haram. Buhari body’s language improved power supply in 2015. I borrowed N27 million to buy APC nomination form. Boko Haram technically defeated. (So why use $1 million in ECA funds to fight it?). Buhari’s Economic Growth and Recovery Plan (EGRP) is targeted towards creating an average of 3.7 million jobs yearly—Okechukwu Enelama (But according to NBS, 10 million Nigerians had lost their jobs by December 2017!). We have established a new national carrier, Nigeria Air. We have reduced inflation (inflation increased by 50%).”

As hunger ravaged the land under Buhari, one knave wrote on Facebook: “We are now seeing the real economy. The economy under Jonathan was bogus.” Of course, Buhari had infrastructure projects, including in road and rail network, but his overall performance was disastrous. He gave free reign to Fulani herdsmen to butcher Nigerians and hunted down individuals like Sunday Igboho who were opposed to their murderous activities. But perhaps Nigerians would have overlooked these if poverty was not so pervasive. Sadly, since the coming on board of Bola Ahmed Tinubu, things have gone from bad to worse, although the president must be commended for being quite receptive to criticism. The removal of fuel subsidy without a backup plan has backfired spectacularly. Inflation has rendered the naira useless and amid the crisis, the CBN is discouraging diaspora remittances by saying that beneficiaries will only be paid in naira.

If Jonathan’s successors were not going to be better than him, at least they shouldn’t have made things worse. But they have, and that is a tragedy. Yet all hope is not lost. It is time to address the dollar and PMS question and reduce the agony in the land. The floating of the naira and “removal of subsidy” must be dispensed with forthwith. Nigerians would give everything in the world to enjoy half of the comfort they enjoyed before May 29, 2015!