NIGERIANS AND THE APOTHEOSIS OF FALSEHOOD (Part Three) And the lies and falsehood continued unabated! There was no strike during the days of Buhari because of good governance. Which good governance? Do you move in front of a moving train? Anyone that dared say anything against the government was a goner, not to talk of protesting! Those were days when Nigerians had not learnt how to defy the gun. Such bravery only came with the annulment of the June 12, 2013 elections. But, even at that, my mentor in the Civil Rights Movement, Beko Ransome-Kuti braved the lion’s den to lead doctors on strike based on the collapse of the health sector. He never forgot the treatment that followed or the ripple effect on his brother, Fela, who was sentenced to prison, only for the judge to come and beg later, that his life was in danger, if he had not carried out the judgment decreed by the Head of State! There are too many strikes because of Jonathan’s incompetence. Majority of the strikes we’ve had under Jonathan were premised on the non-fulfillment of agreements reached with trade unions by the Obasanjo administration. Of course, if they had pressed for the fulfillment of the promises then, they would have been SET UP and the EFCC sent after them for more political trials labeled as anti-corruption crusades! The strikes are the true demonstration of democracy and the freedom we never enjoyed since the Buhari regime struck in 1983! Buhari promised at his campaign to rehabilitate Federal Roads. Which favour will that translate to, when the present administration had already rehabilitated 75% of Federal Roads nationwide in less than 4 years! Or he doesn’t know that only 4,500km of the 35,000km federal roads were motorable in 2011, while the Jonathan administration has rehabilitated additional 25,000km in 4 years! Thank God he did not promise to rehabilitate the already functional railway that the military regimes killed and the aviation sector that finally got government attention after 30 years of neglect! Maybe, he wants power so as to claim credit when the $13billion hi-speed 650km coastal railway line from Calabar-Port Harcourt-Benin-Lagos with trains moving at 120km/h comes into operation! Buhari promised to revive agriculture. Does he even know the present state of the agricultural system; that by end of this year, Nigeria could be self-sufficient in rice and sugar production and soon begin to export both commodities; that the import bill on agricultural produce had dropped from #1.1billion in 2011 to around #400billion; that farmers now get FREE farm inputs including tractors; that over 6 million farmers now receive subsidized farm inputs, including fertilizer without middlemen, thereby saving the country over #25billion per year since 2012; an amount that was previously lost to fraud in that sector; that over $4billion investments had been attracted to the agricultural sector in the last two years due to the reforms; that the silo capacity in Nigeria increased by over 400% under the present government; that the Jonathan administration has made dry season farming a reality thereby increasing yields dramatically; that wheat importation is now at its lowest ebb; that thousands of youths that were hitherto jobless are now employers of labour, in the agriculture sector? Let him tell us in concrete terms how he hopes to better all the achievements in the agriculture sector, rather than giving us vague promises! At his campaign in Calabar, Buhari promised to ensure stable power supply and develop the nation’s economy if elected president. That is a continuation of the Jonathan transformation, not the Change being promised. We presently have stable power supply, what we’re working towards is uninterrupted power supply! Nigeria’s economy had grown at an unprecedented rate in the last 3 years, so why just dust up PDP actions and present it as your programme; why not outline something that speaks of CHANGE! On 7 May 1984, Buhari announced his administrations 1984 National Budget and the major talking point was a ban on recruitment of federal public sector workers. This January alone, thousands of new workers resumed as Federal Government workers under the Jonathan administration. Who is fooling who? Buhari promised to pay poor people in Nigeria #5,000 allowance. Has he done a census yet on the number of poor people and work out modalities for reaching them? How do they determine the poor and those to benefit, or is this a conduit pipe for giving contracts for those who donated to his campaign? We’re talking of industrialization and someone is thinking of how to give ‘sara’ as peanut to people who may not be poor after all! He said 25million people in Nigeria are poor. Considering the population of Nigeria, he has just praised the Federal Government for the certificate given to Nigeria in 2013 by the UN for beating the 2015 date for the eradication of extreme poverty. Buhari promised to pay unemployed Graduates allowances for 12 months, and to start enrolling Graduates for skills and entrepreneurial development programmes! Can’t the Professor ask his boss to include that training in their school curricula and the government gives them loans on Graduation to set up? Must people learn furniture or hairdressing skills after graduating from the University? Also, this plan is just a very poor photocopy of the Graduates Internship Scheme GIS of the present government. He should stop copying Transformation Agenda and give us his change Agenda. Moreover, GIS is far better as it places the Graduates in reputable organizations, while the government pays them subsistence allowances to gain the experience needed to start their own businesses with loans available from the Bank of Industry at 9% interest! Moreover, is it dashing money to those who are not working that will build the new economy he promised, or creating jobs for them and paying them the equivalent of workers?! Buhari should please explain to us how much these two programmes translate to in monetary terms? Let him explain to us, how he hopes to generate the Trillions of naira that will be required for that exercise, more so that oil prices is fast fading off, as we’re no longer gullible to swallow all these fake promises hook, line and sinker!
Posted on: Thu, 08 Jan 2015 19:29:28 +0000
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