- for except Buhari defeats the Civil Service, he has lost the war to Salvage the Economy!
Those wanting the nation’s number 1 citizen, President Muhammadu Buhari to frontally tackle the Economic crisis may have ignored the fact that until the seven most urgent distractions propping up Corruption are tackled, Government’s energy and resources may not be unbundled, elsewhere!
We love the Civil Service; and for most Nigerians, especially after the National Youth Service Corps, some individual have shown interest and wandered to take up appointments there.
Some were successful. Most were futile. We love the civil service; their white collar and most stable job opportunity it offers. And then, the fact that once you join, you are also guaranteed, except you were unlucky to be in the Railways, to continue to draw pensions, till death, after retirement.
Unfortunately, the Udoji windfall came, Nigeria went berserk, and began to pay money to them, not for working, but simply for having their names on the register. The authorities were not telling them we love them. The nation was simply out to Spoil them. We sowed the seeds.
Pirates
Today, we have about 23,000 of them, serving or retired, guilty of drawing illegal funds as canonized “ghost workers”. The EFCC would prosecute them. About 8,000 may refund approximately. Over 15,000 may not. And if a prison yard cannot contain more than 5,000 inmates, then, the present prison yards, already flowing beyond capacity, Buhari may need to build three more ultra modern Civil Servant Prison Yards (CSPY)!
The President would also, despite the need for a quick attention on the economy, first account for the protection of the ‘Agatus’!
Available statistics showed that as at this minute, only about a third of the ‘Agatus’ are still domiciled in their ancestral enclaves. The rest, like their equally unfortunate fellow “countrymen” in the Northeast are already living in certain camps as Internally Displayed Person (IDPs), having been dislocated, traumatized and humiliated by some Fulani groups who allegedly feel that Nigeria could again be made to reenact the quintessential Caliphate stunts!
Observably, a huge embarrassment to a focused President who undeniably is also from their stock, the marauders have to their intimidating credit, terrorized most adjoining nations, in Jos, Benue and even the not so close neighbors, the Yoruba, as they move their cattle, to and fro; and in the course of doing that, tearing up families and livelihoods of anyone who tries to stop their animals from feeding freely, like locusts on the farms!
Or shouldn’t the President first attend too, to the problem already exacerbated by a most unwary, non-discretional security apparatus sent to quell the Biafran motley crowd of chorus singers in a secondary school, and rather than shelter the people in the school, not allowing them to go out until they were hungry and exhausted ; but only swooped on the crowd of youths and women, shooting live bullets and tear-gas!
The IPOB group was far wiser than the security team. They came with video camera and simply lured the security apparatus to exhibit an uncanny recklessness! Have you watched the video? Except stage managed, the video even showed the anti riot police kneeling to take pot-shot of defenseless women and youths!
Fourthly, or shouldn’t Mr. President first find a more enduring solution to the fuel crisis. A chess game with Billionaire investors is not the same as thundering instructions by Governor Rauf Aregbesola to the helpless Osun State teachers; let alone comparable to Rotimi Amaechi strict instructions to Maritime Journalists associations to go and merge!
The fuel importers group are no push over. Individually, they have paid their dues, and acquire teeth comparable to fangs. And collectively they can do more than bite. They can make life seriously difficult for the masses. And a groaning masses can easily further confuse, infuriate and distract the Government, doing greater harms than mere derailment!
The fifth and sixth have to do with the war against Boko Haram and then the looters both of which have kept government from doing anything productively, especially in terms of seeing the masses benefit from the dividends of Buhari’s regime.
Finally, shouldn’t Mr President also first pay prime attention to the festering problems of bunkering, oil theft and piracy in the Niger Delta, before bombarding the economy, with it’s Federal might?!
Successive governments have tried to come up with one policy or another in respect of the Niger Delta. Obasanjo pursued ‘carrots and the big stick’. Musa Yar’Adua introduced an “Amnesty”. What is Buhari’s blue print on this?
As we enjoy the march towards the Easter celebration, let no one remain deluded that the Nigerian Civil Service is still innocent, naive or uninformed.
A body from which about 184 of its best officers are slated to be penalized for budget “padding” cannot claim to be either neutral or objective.
A body of highly trained and revered people, harbouring over 23,000 bad eggs, is to say the least, subjective.
Just as a body, like the CBN and Immigration which secretly, selfishly and deliberately allegedly go out of its normal protocol, in vain bid to protect its primordial instincts, give selective, clandestine employments to children, wards and nieces of the political class, cannot in any way, morally claim to be saintly, but evil.
Is it not for a reason that the Bible tells us that God decreed, that judgment would start from the House of God?
It is for the same reasons that if Mr. President would succeed, and if the battle to salvage the economy would yield the desired positive results, then Buhari must confront the agents of corruption, beginning with the Civil Service!
Unfortunately, they are also the authors, foundations and executors of his policies…
May the President, live forever!
