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Like it was when Muhammadu Buhari administration marked its one year anniversary in Aso Rock, it is still lamentation time for Nigerians, including some former presidential candidates who contested the 2015 election with the President as the regime marks its second year in office tomorrow.
According to official results announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), President Buhari had won the presidential election by 2.57 million votes, garnering 15,424,921 votes or 53.95 percent of the 28,587,564 total valid votes cast; his nearest rival who was the incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), got 12,853,162 (44.96 percent) at the rescheduled election.
Baring his mind on Nigeria’s journey so far under the All Progressives Congress (APC) government,Martins Onovo, presidential candidate of the National Conscience Party (NCP) in that 2015 presidential election, said Nigerians should first take the blame for the declining state of the country for electing a man he said would have long been retired were he to be a civil servant, adding that he is not surprised by the President’s frequent visit to the UK for medical reasons.
“His first medical trip abroad was his ear problem; the second one was the one when he spent over 50 days in the UK and the entire country was kept in the dark and now, the latest trip. But unfortunately, the President, before leaving, wrote the Senate that Osinbajo will ‘coordinate’ in his absence, a term alien to our Constitution. It took the Senate to make Osinbajo Acting President.
“During our presidential debate, I told Nigerians that Buhari was old and sickning and that he cannot be the best option for Nigeria but the media shied away from telling Nigerians the truth because they have taken side. But why are we complaining now that Buhari is going to hospital too frequent and not available to rule? The man is 75 years old. The deceit is continuing because his party said he will run in 2019,” he said, rather furiously.
Asked to set agenda for the APC in the next two years, he said his advice for leaders of the party is to first and foremost confess their sins of lying and deceit during election campaign and start on a clean slate by seeking forgiveness of Nigerians who are the sufferers of government’s unfriendly policies.
He said: “Apparently, Buhari was very unclear about his vision for the country as seen in his delay to assemble his cabinet five months after he was sworn-in. What the President is doing now is radically different from what he promised, like the issue of fuel subsidy removal; and right now, we are not even sure which direction he is going.
“In leadership, you must come with integrity. General Buhari is also surrounded by questionable people who may have misled him. The competence of Buhari and those working with him are questionable.”
“The government also has no strategy to fight corruption before it came to power. Why do I say so? The Itse Sagay-led anti-corruption committee answered my question. Buhari came and established the Sagay’s committee with the mandate to tell him how to fight corruption. That is the point. If you know what you are doing you will not be mandating a committee to tell you what to do. Even now, the committee is still developing a strategy; they are yet to put out one”, Onovo, a petroleum engineer, said.
According to him, the only way the Buhari-led anti-corruption crusade can be said be successful is for the regime to recover at least, four percent of Nigeria’s stolen money since independence, arguing that what has happened so far in the last two years is ‘activities without result’.
“To truly fight corruption, you need to first identify the biggest cases of corruption in Nigeria and go after them with federal might; not just selective campaign targeted at opposition politicians who didn’t like you, while you shield corrupt officials who are in your camp.
“The United Nations department on drugs and crime states that $400 billion has been stolen from Nigeria since 1960. How much of it have you recovered and put yourself in a percentage? But Buhari’s administration cannot score one percent which is $4 billion, in terms of money recovered. In management, that is what you call ‘key performance indexes’. All that has happened with the EFCC in the last two years is at the best Nollywood movie,” said the national leader of the Strategic Union of Professionals for the Advancement of Nigeria.
In her assessment of the APC-led Federal Government, Oluremi Sonaiya, Nigeria’s only female presidential candidate in the 2015 presidential election, who contested on the platform of the KOWA Party, told BDSUNDAY that until big politicians who milked the country’s treasury are jailed by the government, giving the anti-corruption campaign a pass mark would be tantamount to celebrating mediocrity.
Sonaiya noted that elective political office holders in Nigeria has a lot to learn from Emmanuel Macron, French newly sworn-in president, who immediately hit the ground running by making appointments minutes after he took the oath of office, unlike President Buhari who waited for over five months before putting his cabinet in place.
Sonaiya, who is an astute educationist and writer, said: “We have no time to waste anymore in Nigeria because the world has left us behind for too long. There was no need for the President to wait that long and end up giving us the same party people who he could have named from day one of his government. This slow manner of taking decision is not what we need now.
“But President Buhari appointing his cabinet members too late can also be blamed on our overbearing party system. Political parties in Nigeria are too overbearing; but mine is not. But again, I can’t really say my party is not overbearing because we have not been in government. There is this political culture in Nigeria where ruling party leaders impose candidates on the president for appointments. That is not good for us because at the end of the day, credible and qualified Nigerians don’t get appointed into offices. This is the very reason why we hear everyday how Nigerians are doing well globally but these Nigerians can’t be placed in government and the repercussion is underdevelopment”.
Asked to rate the government’s performance in the last two years, she said she cannot score it any point, since the situation of power, water, education, corruption, standard of living is either the same or worse , since the APC took power at the centre.
“Larger percent of Nigerians are still hungry; water is not running; the country is still in darkness; security has not improved with killings of herdsmen all over the country; the economy is pretty bad; no big politician who stole government’s money is in jail; and the list is endless. My expectation is very high and so, it will be difficult for me to score the government anything,” said Sonaiya, who is a professor.
NATHANIEL AKHIGBE
