The Financial Times, on January 31, 2022, published an article titled “What is Nigeria’s Government For?”, where the writer, David Piling stated that, “The presidential elections of February 2023 will draw the curtain on eight years of the administration of Muhammadu Buhari, on whose somnolent watch Nigeria has sleepwalked closer to disaster.”
Piling continued, “Buhari has overseen two terms of economic slump, rising debt and a calamitous increase in kidnapping and banditry—the one thing you might have thought a former general could control.”
Reacting to the report, Omoyele Sowore has taken to social media to remind Financial Times of other incompetencies of the Buhari’s administration which were overlooked in the recent report.
In a Facebook post, Sowore wrote, “Financial Times forgot to include that Muhammadu Buhari engaged in unprecedented violation of human rights which included but not limited to extra-judicial killings, mass murders, enforced disappearances as well as religious bigotry/extremism, thuggery, election rigging, massive corruption and theft of state resources amongst others. Above all, Muhammadu Buhari is the most divisive figure the country of Nigeria has ever known.”
A human rights activist, Femi Falana has attributed the security challenges confronting the country and agitations for break-up by several groups to the several decades of the legacy of misrule, lopsided appointments, bad governance, corruption, and diversion of the commonwealth and anti-people’s policies.
He said killings and kidnapping were on the rise across the country due to the failure of the regime to control the violent attacks on farmers and the destruction of farms by the marauding herdsmen.
Falana stated this on Thursday in Abuja at a Commemorative Anniversary public lecture of 80th Birthday Anniversary of Prof. Omotoye Olorode title ” Labour and the quest for Nigeria’s National Development: Reflection and Prognosis on the Way Forward.
The human rights lawyer noted that it was obvious that the State was not capable of ending kidnapping or rescuing abducted citizens and foreigners thereby forcing family members and friends to pay ransom to the abductors to secure the release of their abducted love ones.
He said the Buhari-led government has run out of ideas and incapable of finding lasting solutions to the worsening security challenge facing the country.
Falana said ” The failure of the regime to control the violent attacks on farmers and destruction of farms by a group bearing AK 47 rifles operating as herders and lopsided appointments by the Buhari administration have fueled the separatist agenda of several groups.
“Despite the programme of its own party for restructuring or power devolution from the center to the other federating units, President Buhari has sworn to defend the status quo. A regime that had negotiated and granted amnesty to terrorists and bandits has rejected the call for dialogue with all separatist bodies in the recent past.
“It is our submission that several decades of a legacy of misrule and bad governance, corruption, and diversion of the commonwealth and anti-people’s policies have led to the ascendancy of insecurity in the country. No part of the country is safe as marauders have been abducting people including undergraduates, secondary school students, and even primary school pupils.
Falana said the country may either break up or engage in a full-scale civil war if the worsening insecurity in all states of the federation and the federal capital territory was not checked.
” Having been overwhelmed by the security challenge the ruling class will not hesitate to sabotage the democratic process or plunge the country into another civil war. No doubt, the central labour unions, and individual trade unions have routinely condemned the booming business of kidnapping.
“Since 2009, the armed forces have been waging the counter-insurgency operations in the northeast region. Realizing that the armed forces are ill-equipped and ill-motivated the immediate past Chief of Army Staff, General Yusuf Buratai has predicted that the war on terror will last for another period of 20 years.
“Since the Nigeria Police Force has been demobilized from maintaining law and order by successive regimes the overstretched armed forces have been deployed and mandated to free many communities that have been overrun by nihilist forces in the various states” Falana stated.
Thousands of Nigerians have started passing a Vote of No Confidence on President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration in a spontaneous social media campaign that started on Wednesday.
General Muhammadu Buhari
SaharaReporters observed that about 12,000 Nigerians had already tweeted, “Vote of No Confidence” on Twitter in a global demand aimed at ending Buhari’s inefficient and clueless administration under which kidnappings for ransom, killings, and terrorism have grown unchecked.
The campaign was started by human rights activist, Omoyele Sowore, who called on Nigerians who were tired of the precarious situation in the country to join in raising their voices to demand change.
Sowore tweeted, “If there is anyone still out there who hasn’t placed a ‘Vote of No Confidence’ on the @MBuhari regime, that person or group of person needs help! #BuhariMustGo #RevolutionNow
“Let’s all start by repudiation, let’s pass a Vote of No Confidence on the @MBuhari regime here on @twitter just write ‘No Confidence’ as your response and let’s see if we can get 100 responses! #BuhariMustGo
“Fellow Nigerians: We are passing a ‘Vote of No Confidence’ on President Muhammadu Buhari over his abysmal performance in office. We only need you to retweet this by writing. I hereby pass a Vote of No Confidence on President Muhammadu Buhari’s leadership. #Buharimustgo.
“What if a million Nigerians on Twitter paa a ‘Vote of No Confidence’ on President @MBuhari? It will change the game! Let’s keep going, let the world know we are tired of the tyrant, a bigot, a nepotistic ruler, an incompetent ex-general. Let’s go to work! #BuhariMustGo.”
The trending social media campaign is coming a day after parents of some abducted students of the Federal College of Forestry Mechanisation, Afaka, Kaduna State, protested at the National Assembly, Abuja.
Sowore who also joined the protest had accused the government of being insensitive to the plight of the parents who have been traumatised as a result of the incident.
The activist had lambasted the Nigerian government for failing in its constitutional responsibility of protecting life and property and has no moral justification to manage the affairs of the country.
Sowore had said, “The only thing the Department of State Services can tell you is that if you are speaking out at this time, they will come after you but they can’t come after kidnappers. They can’t come after bandits and they can’t come after terrorists including those in government, they can’t go after them but they are very happy to go after you if you speak your mind.
“I feel sad for Nigeria, I feel sad for all these students in captivity; students who wanted a bright future. They could as well have taken to kidnapping themselves so that they can make quick money but they opted to go to school and look at what our government has done to them.
“As a person who has been kidnapped before by the Nigerian government, I know what it means to be in captivity. I know what it means to have zero expectation of when you will leave and when you will join your family.
“Nobody is doing anything about your plight. They are not interested. The Federal Government does not care about you. The Kaduna State Governor does not care about you, I heard him say he will never negotiate with terrorists. The same El-Rufai who was blaming former President Goodluck Jonathan for not negotiating with the Boko Haram when Chibok girls were kidnapped has suddenly realised that he can’t negotiate with terrorists.
“I am not here to appeal to the government. The Nigerian government has failed the Nigerian people. It is up to the Nigerian people to decide how long they want to continue to tolerate this failure. Don’t be afraid of security agents because they have failed too. Soldiers are being kidnapped. A DSS operative was kidnapped, they paid the ransom and they killed him and nothing happened.
“The reason they will not negotiate with terrorists is because the government itself is a terrorist government. Otherwise, they don’t know how to negotiate with terrorists.”
Senator Ndume who’s a member of the President’s political party, the APC has accused General Muhammadu Buhari’s regime of rationing ammunition for frontline soldiers.
Nigerian Army
The APC Senator accused the Nigerian government of arms rationing, citing that frontline soldiers are only provided with old weapons to fight bandits, Boko Haram, and ISWAP terrorists.
“I interact with the soldiers, I have gone through the formation, I cannot see a soldier holding brand new AK47. It is so bad that the Nigerian Army is rationing ammunition among soldiers. I can be quoted.
“In a budget of N13 trillion, you are allocating the N30 billion,” said Ali Ndume, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Army, to the finance minister Zainab Ahmed on the issue of financing the Nigerian military.
During an interactive session of his committee, Mr. Ndume stated this during an interactive session with representatives of the chief of defense staff and the chief of army staff.
The senator is a member of the country’s ruling party, All Progressives Congress, along with Mr. Buhari. The APC rose to power in 2015 on the wave of a pledge that it would end Nigeria’s protracted war against terrorists in the North.
Lamenting the poor funding of the army, Mr. Ndume wondered why the Nigerian Army received only N30 billion out of the nation’s 2021 budget of N13 trillion, describing it as unreasonable.
The senator further stated that the only place he saw well-kitted military men armed with new AK47 rifles in the country was in Abuja.
“As I said, I can be quoted: the only place I see new AK47 is in Abuja. That is necessary because that is the image of Nigeria.
“Nigerians are looking forward to this meeting hoping that we can resolve it, in terms of addressing the challenges of the Nigerian Army,” he explained.
Mr. Ndume disclosed that Mr. Buhari’s regime spent about N54 billion to fund operations of the Nigerian Army between 2019 and 2021.
Nigeria’s Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Ameachi was caught on tape admitting that President Muhammadu Buhari has always ordered the Central Bank of Nigeria to keep printing money since the APC assumed office in 2015.
Mr. Buhari who vowed to revamp the Nigerian economy in his campaign promises has been criticized for worsening the economic situation of the country over the past six years of his regime.
In an interview with journalists prior to the 2019 general elections in which Mr. Buhari was re-elected, Mr. Amaechi disclosed that they (Nigerian politicians) swore an oath never to publicly admit to Nigerians that the government was on a printing spree of the national currency;
“And most of you didn’t know at the time we took over, most Nigerians don’t even know because we have sworn to an oath not to tell anybody we were printing money,” Mr. Amaechi said.
“Do you know when a country prints money? When it has no money at all,” he said. “We were just printing money to pay the debt.”
Mr. Amaechi’s comments further exposed the cover-up that has followed Mr. Buhari’s widely condemned approach to the country’s economy, as millions of citizens continue to plunge into poverty. Nigeria has since emerged as the country with the highest number of poor people in the world. The country also has the poorest electricity supply, and the second country with the most jobless people worldwide.
Earlier this year, renowned credit rating institution Fitch said the Nigerian central bank under Mr. Buhari has been printing money at an alarming rate, warning that such tactics could engender additional economic woes for the country’s 200 million people.
Last month, Governor Godwin Obaseki expressed concerns on crude oil revenue, disclosing that the federal government printed an extra N60 billion for states to share in March.
