Everybody in Nigeria today points to the Muhammadu Buhari eight years- from 2015 to 2023- as the darkest period of Nigeria since 1999. From insecurity, economic mismanagement, high level of unemployment, wanton killings across the country, the consensus is that his eight-year reign was a disaster.
Even the current administration that is under his party still refers to his tenure in office as the years of locusts and caterpillars.
The delinquent economy that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is battling to steady today was caused by Buhari’s inefficient management and laissez-faire attitude to important state matters.
One year after leaving behind a shattered economy compounded by the inability of citizens to access their farmlands as herdsmen have since chased them away, Buhari has now put on a toga of professor of agriculture.
He is lecturing Nigerians on the need to go to their farms. The question to ask is, “which farms?”
A good number of farmers are now in the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs)’ homes across the country, and government is spending a lot of money to take care of them in those settlements. Their inability to go back to their farm for cultivation has endangered food security in Nigeria. This was as a result of the monsters President Buhari allowed to fester when he occupied the exalted seat in Abuja as president.
During the Sallah, a statement was issued in his name. What did he say? “Let me use this occasion to make an appeal to all citizens to make Nigeria self-reliant. Let us grow our own food. We have shown that we can do it. This is not the time to relent when we see prices going up. Let us buy what is produced in the country.”
Can you beat that? This was the same man, when as president, whenever farmers cried out over the constant harassment and killings from invading herdsmen; he was always looking the other way.
It was during his regime that many farmers abandoned their farms. Many of them lost their lives inside their farms. Women were molested before their husbands by the invaders. The sanctity of young ladies was vulgarised right in their own homes. At that time, Buhari was telling the natives to accommodate their invading killers in order to enjoy peace.
His body language towards the killings warranted the then governor of Benue State, Samuel Ortom to pointedly accuse him of sponsoring the killers. It was also this allegation that made the Presidency at that time to declare Ortom persona non grata in Aso Rock. These things are still fresh in our memory.
The monsters that were cultured in his administration are still on rampage across the country. So, what moral high ground does the former president have to advise a return to agriculture when the mines that were laid in the farmlands in his days are still potent? Or was it just to say his voice was heard during the Sallah? Too bad!
