State of the Nation: Between General Buhari and BMO, his attack dogs

By Ifeanyi Izeze

How else do you describe the bunch of hitherto distressed men and women under the auspices of Buhari Media Office if not to say they are simply struggling for relevance in this narrow- minded, criminally nepotic and blood-letting administration?

It is a pitiable state to find yourself in a position where all you do for a bowl of porridge is to rubbish the finger(s) that once fed you.

When your job is the burden of fighting for a gormless administration with a terribly demented headman, you tend to rub mud on anybody who has an iota of ability to think straight far better than not only your oga but also the bunch of adult almajiris masquerading everywhere you look in this government.

BMO’s only stock in trade now is insulting the former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, simply because the PDP presidential candidate in the last general election once in a while as patriot and elderstatesman, makes useful suggestions to their zombi government on the direction to go in their ‘plagiarised idea’ of privatising some critical national assets especially in the nation’s moribund downstream oil and gas sector.

These same men and women of BMO were hosted for months in the Atiku Media Office obviously because Maigaskiya had no single structure not even a makeshift one to run even a local government campaign.  True to type, the conducts and disposition of these same people  in an office that volunteered to rehabilitate them, were not different from the spate of herders banditry we have across the country today. Is that the kind of people you take seriously as speaking for a living president and his government?

You’re insulting Atiku, a man who has successfully ran chains of businesses at home and abroad that span almost every sector of the economy just because you work for a clueless, incapacitated and murderous administration.

It is outrightly vexing that in a media statement signed by its Chairman, Niyi Akinsiju and Secretary, Cassidy Madueke, the Buhari Media Office (BMO), could say it was not totally surprising that the former presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) would resort to grandstanding when he heard of the government’s privatization plans.

“We were so sure that Atiku Abubakar would try to position himself as an expert in privatization when media outlets reported the government’s intention to sell off some moribund non-oil assets, and indeed we were proved right when he issued that statement.”

BMO also dismissed the former Vice President’s attempt to equate the planned privatization of the refineries to his own plan for the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) as self-serving.

Now, being true to ourselves as Nigerians, has this government any single idea of its own on how to better the Nigerian economy? Whether they accept it or not, the recently announced planned privatisation of some of our national assets was hijacked from the Atiku Policy document that’s available both at home and abroad. It is disheartening therefore that a wise and patriotic counsel of an elderstatesman in the calibre of a former vice president of the country could be turned into an opportunity to insult and abuse him by nonstarters.

Is the bunch in BMO not aware that several globally acclaimed organisations including Transparency International and the Civil Society Coalition Against Corruption And Bad Governance(CACOBAG) have serially declared that despite reduction in payments of public funds into private accounts, corruption and opaque transactions is more pervasive in this government of Major General Muhammadu Buhari (rtd) than any government we have ever had in Nigeria?

This is a  recent CACOBAG statement: “We have noted the propaganda in some quarters that reduction in payments of public funds to private purses is a testament that corruption has reduced under this government.

“It’s a fallacy that is known even to those at the helm of affairs.

“We at CACOBAG do agree that public funds are been paid into government accounts but vehemently disagree that corruption has reduced. Infact, it’s not only worse under this government but going to an alarming rate and drastic action has to be taken to combat it.

“Government funds may be going into government purse but it’s obvious the corrupt elements in the government have devised means to continue to embezzle the funds.

“Ongoing Massive corruption under this government despite public funds been paid into government accounts is another magic by the corrupt elements in this government.

“The more public funds paid into government accounts, the more the other means they adopt to perpetrate fraud. It’s unfortunate, with the glaring corruption in the country; some Nigerians are still bent on being used to promote the propaganda of this government.”

If government funds being paid into government accounts have any significance in the fight against corruption by this government, how come corruption is more pervasive under this government than other successive governments?

And if Atiku Abubakar is not in a position to advice General Buhari on privatization and commercialization, is it the Maikaskiya president whose only idea of investment and privatisation is rearing 50 cows that has remained 50 since 2003 as if the males use condoms to mate? People should learn to think before they open their mouth to talk.

What tangible impact can the hitherto distressed men and women in BMO confidently point at as achievement of the government they set out to polish? Is Miyetti Allah spokesman not doing a far better job defending this cattle government than this bunch of food-is-ready internally displaced image makers in the BMO resettlement centre?

Has this government ever had any idea of its own aside running oil pipelines and natural gas transmission infrastructures from the oilfields in the Niger Delta to Niger Republic; building refineries, railway projects in Maradi, and military infrastructures all in Niger Republic?

What else can Nigerians point at except flooding the entire country with murderous Fulani bandits and terrorists from other countries of the sub-region?

Maybe the only idea we can attribute to the credit of this administration is that it has well succeeded in making cows a priority over the unity of this nation and far and above over the lives and wellbeing of Nigerians (northerners, southerners). When one cow is killed anywhere, the presidency will unleash battalions of armed soldiers to crush the entire area where it happened.

But on daily basis villages are being wiped out. Men, women and children slaughtered like fowls by murderous Fulani bandits as if Nigerian lives no longer matters. Farmers including those in my area of Niger Delta no longer go to their farms for fear of being killed or kidnapped and women being raped in their farms while the president looks the other way with pathological indifference as if this has become the acceptable status quo.

Now let’s even look at it: Since the onset of this Democratic dispensation, which government compares to the Obasanjo- Atiku administration in terms of economic policy framing and implementation? Is it in ideas, creativity or even in doggedness of implementing policies and programmes that had direct bearing and tangibility on the welfare and wellbeing of the citizenry?

The achievements of that administration are still loudly speaking for themselves even till today and made even louder as a result of the docility and the confirmed cluelessness of this directionless administration.

Even the Jonathan administration far outshined this bandit government despite the massive propaganda campaign to rubbish him and his administration. This is the truth that can be boldly told by some of us who were privy to what was done to Jonathan and his government.

Is it not interesting that the ‘ Gen Buahri administration is very transparent and non-corrupt’ but it is known that the president’s ‘men’ who are the defacto rulers, as the president has always been incapacitated and bereft of ideas, can sit at the Presidency and order their cousins heading the NNPC to package a $25 billion crude oil sale contract? Was that not why this clueless and bandit government sacked my brother Ibe Kachikwu as petroleum minister, a vibrant brain that could have given this nation a positive turnaround in its oil and gas industry?

We also know that under this transparent administration, the nation’s daily domestic consumption of premium motor spirit (petrol) overnight jumped from less than 20 million litres a day to almost 80 million litres with the subsidy bills escalating by almost 1000 percent, all in a bid to rake and pocket subsidy monies.

Is it in this transparent administration that grasses in IDP camps in the northeast were cut with billions of naira or in another government? Na my mouth you wan hear the name!

What of the hundreds of billions of Pension funds or is it the devouring of all the savings in our Excess Crude Accounts or the crooked fertiliser bills rackets; the school feeding projects where billions of naira were said to have been spent feeding children who we know were on lockdown in their parents houses? How many we go fit count but we will still count them.

It is stupid to engage in a fight where you know you’re grossly handicapped or rather outrightly incapacitated. A word of advice to BMO! God bless Nigeria!

• Izeze is a National Daily Guest Columnist; Email: [email protected]; SMS: +234-8033043009