Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Soludo, Fayemi and Buhari’s ‘experts’

By Chuks Iloegbunam
Did I hear that APC promises a welfare system that will pay between N5,000 and N10,000 per month to the poorest 25 million Nigerians? Just this programme alone will cost between N1.5 and N3 trillion per annum. (Soludo wondered where the APC proposed to source the money from.)
*Prof. Chukwuma Charles Soludo
*Prof. Chukwuma Charles Soludo
I must confess that I expected APC as a party aspiring to take over from PDP to come up with a knock-out punch. Evidently, from what we have read from the various versions of its manifesto as well as the depth of promises being made, it does not seem that it has a better offer.
I have not heard anything from the APC or Buhari regarding the national conference report or what kind of federalism they envisage for Nigeria. The APC promises to create 20,000 jobs per state in the first year, totaling a mere 720,000 jobs.
This sounds like a quota system and for a country where the new entrants into the labour market per annum exceed two million. If it was intended as a joke, APC must please get serious.
Most people I have spoken to who have decided to vote for Buhari do not necessarily know the specifics of what he would offer or how Nigeria would be different under him. As a first point, Buhari and his team must realize that they do not yet have a coherent, credible agenda that is consistent with the fundamentals of the economy currently. The APC manifesto contains some good principles and wish-lists, but as a blue print for Nigeria’s security and prosperity, it is largely hollow. The numbers do not add up.
The second key challenge for Buhari and his team will be to transit and transform from a group of what I largely refer to as aggrieved people’s congregation to build a true political party with a soul from the patchwork of political associations. It is surely easier to oppose than to govern. Well, the seven Soludo points above mean two things. One, that Buhari’s presidential candidacy is a nonstarter and, two, that the APC is not a serious political party.
In the face of this damnation, Buhari experts, who are in the legion, should have risen to the defence of their party and its presidential candidate. Instead, it was only Kayode Fayemi, the head of the Policy, Research and Strategy Directorate of the APC Presidential Campaign, who responded by curiously commending Soludo for his “insightful and incisive article”!
Put baldly, the APC officially lauded Professor Charles Soludo for eviscerating it and its presidential candidate. The other remarkable point in Dr. Fayemi’s response is the reproduction of Buhari’s promise to “assemble a competent team of Nigerians to efficiently manage this country.” To support this “promise”, Fayemi reminded his readers that, as a military dictator 35 years ago, Buhari had appointed the likes of Dr. Onaolapo Soleye, Professor Tam David-West and Professor Ibrahim Gambari into his junta’s cabinet.
But, it was under Gambari’s watch as Foreign Minister that Buhari voted against Nigerian candidate, Dr. Peter Onu, when he ran for the secretary-generalship of the OAU against Niger Republic’s Ide Oumarou. If Fayemi wanted his recourse to the country’s distasteful past to have made any meaning, he would have gone beyond name- dropping to list the spellbinding achievements registered by Nigeria as a result of the miraculous contributions of people like David-West and Soleye. But he did not.
Kayode’s disappointing intervention raises the whole question of the calibre of people surrounding and advising Buhari. The turbulent Olusegun Obasanjo is one of Buhari’s principal advisers. Obasanjo was the dictatorial wolf in sheep’s democratic clothing who deployed expeditionary forces to wipe out the inhabitants of Odi and Zaki Biam. He was the one who created a penal island to which hapless Nigerians were dumped without trial. What kind of advice is this man giving to Buhari, a military dictator who not only toppled a democratically elected government but also executed a number of his fellow countrymen on the strength of a retroactive decree?
Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the APC leader and key Buhari adviser, has never said a word on CORRUPTION, one of the two planks on which Buhari claims to be gunning for the presidency. Giving the stories that have always made the rounds regarding fake Chicago certificates and a United States’ indictment for drug pushing, what kind of advice is this man giving to Buhari? Indeed, what kind of advice is Buhari receiving from Nasir el Rufai, another of his key advisers? When people used their position to grasp at lands in Abuja and offer jobs to girlfriends at a million Naira a month when the minimum wage was N18,000, what thesis would they be writing on the theme of fighting corruption?
That leads us to Dr. Kayode Fayemi, the former Governor of Ekiti State, himself. According to the records of the current Ekiti State Government, Fayemi took loans totaling N21.4 billion for various dubious reasons, including “lease of vehicles”! Fayemi’s administration took a loan of N1.5 billion from from Fidelity Bank for the purchase of laptops. The most ridiculous aspect of acts of financial recklessness is that it mortgaged the future of Ekiti people until 2017.
Because of Fayemi’s loan-taking spree, lenders have each month first to deduct repayments from the state’s VAT account, its FAAC account, its Sure-P account and its IGR account before any talk on the payment of Ekiti workers’ salaries. Yet, these are the people screaming CHANGE and fighting corruption Buhari style.
What all this says, perhaps, is that those who claim that President Jonathan is soft on corruption may have a point. Otherwise, a lot of the loudspeakers strutting about, claiming to be anti-corruption champions in Buhari’s campaign would today be cooling their heels behind bars.

No comments:

Post a Comment