President Buhari, where do we go from here?

These times are hard. These times are bad. Nigerians are suffering. The economic recession facing our dear country,is recording casualties at alarming rates every day. Fellow countrymen and women the suffocation of our economic problems is leading to the deaths of many of our citizens.

This is not time to play politics. This is time to face squarely our difficulties and proffer solutions to the problem. President Muhammadu Buhari is a member of the APC. I am of the PDP. This is to say that the two of us do not belong to the same party. I have never discussed partisan politics on this page and will not do so now. I want to appeal to all those who may find my piece today offensive to kindly forgive me. I am forced by circumstances beyond my/our control to discuss today a grave situation that is currently decimating our people. I am not therefore attempting to score cheap political points. We just must find a way out of this sad and tragic situation.

We have been informed (and it is true) that Nigeria is now under a recession. We are informed by economists and those who are in a position to know would know that we may be under this situation till year 2020. Right now, hunger and famine are ravaging the land. If things therefore remain as they are now until we get to year 2020, then we have had it in this country.

We are forced to therefore ask our President, Muhammadu Buhari, where are we going now in Nigeria? We ask President Buhari because the buck stops on his table, what are we to do to bail our country out of this economic problem? Are the citizens doomed? President Muhammadu Buhari holds the ace to our economic  liberation by the socio-political policies he legislates for our country. Will Nigeria survive? The spending power of Nigerians has gone to low. Money is just not easy to come by. The market prices of food have sky rocketed.

A story was told to me not too long ago that brought instant tears to my eyes. A young boy was said to have been spanked by his father for not being able to answer some questions put to him by his father in a practice lesson with the boy. The young boy was said to have told his father the following: “Daddy, I have not eaten since yesterday.” The father who had no answer to what the boy had said because he (the father) had been unable to provide food for his family, simply withdrew from the presence of his son and went to the bedroom. The father simply committed suicide. It was the end of a tragic story.

The story above (very true) reflects the sufferings of many homes in Nigeria today. Both Muslim and Christian faiths profess it clearly that suicide is never tolerated by the two religions. It is a sin to attempt suicide. Thousands of our countrymen and women are now committing suicide in the face of the harsh economic realities facing our country.

Some have been saying that a political party (PDP to be precise) created these problems. Some have said the emptiness of the Buhari economic programmes to Nigeria has heightened the mess of our situation. I say with all the emphasis at my command that all of us are guilty. No one should be singled out for blame. We are therefore compelled to reason out the way out of this economic disaster together.

This situation therefore calls for a mature and realistic approach. We pray therefore for us to put politics aside. We have done it before in this country when in 1966, a coup took place leading us to a civil war in 1967. Nigeria’s economy simply failed. The then Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon, put aside his military uniform and invited the late Avatar, Papa Obafemi Awolowo to join an Executive Council to attempt solutions to the economic problems of the time.

Papa Awolowo as Vice Chairman of the then Federal Executive Council and Federal Commissioner for Finance led a united regime to bail Nigeria out of the economic misfortune. Nigeria came out of the economic recession of the time and with ease our economic recession was over.

We can still perform the Gowon/Awolowo magic today. I appeal to President Buhari to declare now, a State of Emergency in the management of our current economic recession. It should be an inclusive regime of all interest groups and individuals in the country. Let us assemble all political groups, labour, and working class groups, economists and socioeconomic managers to collectively solve this knotty economic crisis.

The declaration of Emergency in the management of this recession and the assemblage of all men and women who can collectively help solve our problem, will never diminish the Buhari regime. If anything, it will strengthen Buhari’s hands in the running of a government that cares for the people of Nigeria.

I wish to humbly remember what I have always told inquisitive Journalists in Nigeria who have interviewed me on the subject of our current economic situation that it will not be wrong for President Muhammadu Buhari to invite Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala to come and join government to assist in helping us solve this economic situation. (Let us in the name of God) put aside sentiments, we need Okonjo Iweala’s professional calling and International work experience to help us solve this situation. Believe me, Nigeria will be a beneficiary from the exercise.  No matter what eyes we may turn on Obasanjo, bailing us out of the burden of the debt situation is today one of the blessings of his administration.

Nigerians are dying! Nigerians are gradually being suffocated to death. You want to sell properties without success, most tenants are not able to pay their rents as at when due. Banks have been destroyed Oh me!! Where are we going in Nigeria? If things remain this way until 2019 or 2020, Nigeria may simply go out of existence.

Olodumare gba wa o- May God save us all!

In the words of Kayode Oluduro (my classmate at the University of Lagos in the civil war years (I don’t even know where he is now) “FROM THE BANALS OF LYCANTHROPY” (a kind of disease that makes a man imagine himself to be a beast) may the good Lord save us all. Amen.

ILULE – the country is indeed hard!

EBINO TOPSY – 0805-500-1735 (SMS ONLY PLEASE)

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