Enough of the whining!

It is becoming increasingly nauseating to hear the incessant complaints by the present government against past administrations. Granted that past governments may not be justified for not saving for the rainy day, their short-sightedness, as it were, cannot be used as an alibi by the current government to shirk its responsibility.

Muhammadu Buhari spent so many years plotting to become a civilian president, he never spent one hour to plan the art and science of governance in a democratic setting. The All Progressives Congress (APC), a vehicle on which he rode to power equally did not prepare for governance but just about how to grab power. Before he became president on May 29 last year, Buhari knew that power supply was near zero, insecurity was at its worst, unemployment level had hit the roof, militancy and insurgency were almost becoming a culture in the country. In fact, Nigeria was unhealthy in every sense of the word, yet Buhari traversed the length and breadth of the country seeking votes and promising to make all things new. If the past administrations were perfect, Nigerians would not have voted out Jonathan and his party, but to have been voted in and the people are still daily being inundated with excuses is to say the least defeatist. Buhari, a few days ago in Daura, Katsina State during the Sallah celebration was in his element blaming Obasanjo, Yar’Adua, and Jonathan for his obvious failure. Enough of the insult on the sensibility of Nigerians, please! At the APC South-East rally in Owerri in 2015, Buhari declared he would make the naira equal to the dollar if voted into office. He continued: “It is sad that the value of the naira has dropped to more than 230 to one dollar. This does not speak well for the nation.” If N230 to one dollar is sad, what shall we say today of the exchange-rate inching N500 to one dollar under his administration?

The Sultan of Sokoto, Sa’ad Abubakar III, spoke like an ordinary man a few days ago when he said that the Fulani herdsmen moving with guns, causing mayhem, killing villagers and fighting farmers were not Nigerians but foreign terrorists. At his level and his rating internationally, the sultan represents a class that thinks and looks at issues all round before making any statement thereto. But on this very issue, the Grade I Monarch may have missed the mark. I hope he did not make such a statement before John Kerry, the US secretary of state who visited him recently. Granted that the herdsmen were foreigners; so they are free to move about with dangerous arms? Does that not suggest that there’s no government in a country where bearing of arms is not legalised? Has the Sultan pondered over the amazing silence from the seat of power in Abuja over the rampaging “foreign” herdsmen? Nigerians are becoming increasingly skeptical about a lot of things in the country and they easily draw their conclusions. For a respected traditional ruler of the sultan stature to say the herdsmen were foreigners freely parading with dangerous arms in a country we thought was under a government that claims to be fighting insecurity does not gel at all. I think Nigerians deserve an apology from the respected Sultan for this misrepresentation of facts.