…Only Kemi Adeosun and Maikanti Baru are still working!***
Looks like the political campaigns, especially the campaign for Presidential seat took off while many of us were deep in slumber. We had thought everyone should adhere to an INEC drawn timetable, until we were woken up by Bishop Mathew Kukah’s remarks: Buhari’s exit not the solution; even as the Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi also thundered out: Corruption will return automatically if PDP wins in 2019.
The Catholic Bishop of Sokoto delivered an argument that is absolutely flawless: “I reiterate that if every time you have problem in your marriage, you go ahead to marry a new wife, how many wives will you end up marrying? …The solution to bad marriage is not a new marriage!”
Perfectly and succinctly delivered. The only problem however is that the children of this marriage are behaving as if they owned all of us. The wives (voters) have sincerely been loyal. They recognized and are also proud, that their husband (President Buhari) has brought a discipline, vision and commitment never imagined before. But the children (Buhari’s appointees/ Ministers) have treated the citizens in a way that makes the ‘orphans’ crave for new ‘fathers’!
Consequently, the major limitation, as even Bishop Kukah uncovered is that in Nigeria today, the people in power feel ‘it is them’ against ‘the rest of Nigerians’. We always forget anybody who holds power holds that power in custody and in trust for the people!
Today, aside from Maikanti Baru and Kemi Adeosun, is there any Minister who is still seriously working?! Even Adeosun, the Minister of Finance, like a ‘mother’ of recalcitrant ‘children’, does more, only to further emasculate the people through one form of tax or levy, after another. She really never thinks of ‘giving’ anything back to the society. But, at least, you see her doing something!
Maikanti Baru cannot sleep, as he must carefully watch, and play to win the chess game between the powerful oil majors/ marketers; the billionaire independent oil importers and the ‘noisy’ independent marketers amidst politics infested PENGASSAN, NUPENG and other hawks!
Up till now, no one has ever bothered to ask what Fashola is still doing in Abuja, if the only road that provides Nigeria, with its highest revenue, after crude export, the Apapa Tin Can axis is a lockdown?! For three years, it has been so. And for three years, the revered lawyer, Senior Advocate of the People and Minister of Works has been domiciled in him! Just as no one has asked how many thousand units of houses has he added to the Federal Government’s housing lot?!
The SAN was appointed to protect the people against the institutional dominance, fierceness and intimidating coercion of the NEPA, PHCN, DISCOS etc, etc. But today, sometimes when the honourable Minister of Power speaks, the citizens wonder if his pay packet really comes from the tax payers or the Discos!
Yet, Fashola may even become a saint, when you hear the Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi speaks. Shipping companies are collapsing. Nigerians in the maritime industry are losing jobs in drones. The ex-workers are dying; and yet the Minister of Transportation is proudly sitting on the Cabotage Vessel Financing Fund’s over $100m, an ‘esusu’ contributed by the operators to reinvest and reinvigorate the industry!
Proudly he tells everyone that cares to listen: the CVFF would not be distributed under his watch! Suddenly, the CVFF has become ‘his own’. The Minister strongly also justifies his myopic position: those who took similar loans in the aviation sector squandered it; therefore, those in the maritime sector will be denied their ‘esusu’..QED! An industry watcher wants to know if the money was actually being reserved for the 2019 elections!
Today, everyone is expected to celebrate the Comptroller General of Customs, a gentleman and an Officer, retired Col. Hameed Ali! He is the first human being to have taken the Service to cross the Trillion Naira revenue bar! Yet, three years into the saddle, you can hardly see any infrastructure on ground. The team, like an army machinery is worn out; no fixed Scanners, no mobile scanners, welfare package is at archaic level, morale is at its lowest ebb; and yet, the Service had grossed in over a Trillion Naira!
Today, every form of examination is not only 100 percent physical examination, with all its debilitating delays, it is even being done, at most awkward places, including inside the Apapa gridlock! The situation also most gave the Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote goose pimples this week, when he visited the site of the ongoing rehabilitation work at Apapa! Dangote saw what all stakeholders had been moaning about! The construction was going to cost only N4bn plus. The country as a result of the chronic gridlock, which Dangote noted was being exacerbated by Customs checkpoint, was losing over N4bn, daily!
Yet, nothing can be more ludicrous, than to see the nation’s Number Cop, the Inspector General of Police, allegedly become an unpaid Ombudsman, for the dreaded Fulani herdsmen! Why didn’t he just keep quiet? Why is he trading words with the Benue State Governor and attracting flax to My President? Is that the way to enable the President Buhari win the votes of loyal Benue people??
If Buhari does not win in 2019, how can he further advance the laudable agenda? If Buhari’s appointees and Ministers continue in their current forms, how many states would vote for Buhari, in a democracy, where the election is expected to be free and fair?
Would the South East vote Buhari? No! Would the South-south vote Buhari? No! Would the South west vote Buhari? The answer is dicey! A lot would depend on how Asiwaju Bola Tinubu is able to wave his magic wand! Would Benue vote Buhari? Would Taraba vote Buhari?
Finally, would only the votes of the North East, North Central and North- west be able to guarantee Buhari’s re-election?!
It is for these little reasons that those who still love the President and loyally want him to continue must appeal to those unwittingly pitching Buhari against the innocent lot to think twice!
Children with fathers must stop riding rough shod with the orphans!
May the President live Forever!!
