After 16 years struggle to get power, Buhari has no clue about Nigeria's problems - Ayo Adebanjo.
Excerpts:
In less than three weeks President Muhammadu Buhari will be one year in office. What is your assessment of the president so far?
Buhari to me in the last one year has not been impressive. But he has done very well in anti-corruption crusade. But the only reservation I have about that is that he is doing it with disregard for the rule of law which I don’’t like, for instance, the ruling on Dasuki and some others. He can still get what he wants without disregard for the law.
That is the minus I give him there. For all the things he promised that he was going to do, I score him 95 per cent for anti-corruption. But for other promises which they made, I score him not below average but total failure. For instance, take the question of the economy in one year, starting from the budget, how can a party and a man who has been struggling to rule for the past 16 years do not have a programme he would implement when he gets to office.
Now in office, he’’s starting campaign slogans again; all he said he was going to do which he gave to unseat Jonathan now the time has come to perform and we have not seen anything. All the excuses they are giving –– the situation is very bad, the past administration has squandered the reserves and so on, is not done; that is not what we expect.
When Obama came into office in America everyone knew the mess George Bush left but he didn’’t dwell on that nor did he use that as excuses, but rather he swung into action; got them corrected and got the things done. People say a bad worker complains of instruments. You see, I accused the APC that they have no clue to our problems. And two, that their coming together as members of the party, are birds of a feather. They have not agreed on what they are going to do in government from the beginning, all they agreed to do was to send Jonathan away.
After the departure of Jonathan, what programme are they going to execute and how are they going to do it? That is the scene we are in at the moment. They have told us that Jonathan is bad; his government is full of corruption. Alright, now that you are there in one year you can’’t even pass your budget which is critical to the economy.
The stock exchange is badly unstable and many other things negatively affected. The morning shows the day. Here is your first budget that you have spelt out your programme for the four years and you have been doing it by trial by error. Some people decided to put this, remove that. How can you say the budget is padded by civil servants? You give directives to the civil servants and they are there to implement what you asked them to and see if they will not carry out your order if you are efficient yourself and if your ministers are efficient too.
On why he supported Goodluck Jonathan
Recently the South-West PDP accused the APC of destroying its accomplishments and legacies which it built for 16 years. But the APC in its defence said their action was justified because the PDP’’s legacies were worth destroying as they were characterised by corruption and bad governance. What is your view on this?
In the first place why I supported Jonathan was because he promised to implement the recommendations of the confab. I said then that between the APC and the PDP they are two evils and only chose the lesser one in PDP because the PDP gave a little hope to implement what I believe will change for the better our country. All that the APC said about the PDP I am not in defence. Of course some of the supporters of APC said why Jonathan didn’’t implement the recommendations before he left and I said well I won’’t argue that if that is the case.
At the election I have two options –– one says if you vote for me I will implement, the other says I have nothing to do with it. People forget what issues are critical. I discuss politics of issues not sentiments. At that time they were not looking at the message I was sending in. Oh he is a supporter of Jonathan, no. Why I am supporting Jonathan is because of the content of 2014 confab. But unfortunately many did not know the importance of the contents of the confab. But lately many are beginning to see and push for the implementation of the conference recommendations, because all these problems confronting us as a nation have been solved there. But you see the corruption problem had overwhelmed people at that time.
They just want Jonathan to go. Then I asked them now Jonathan has gone what good has it translated to? Even the monies they have recovered have still not been felt, we are still experiencing all these hard times. No accountability, we only heard so much has been recovered, what effect has it got on the masses. Has it lessen the struggle for fuel? Not even starting a refinery to give us some level of hope, which project have they started? Worse of all even the budget that will give us hope of better things to come as to what they will do has just been passed. So where are we?
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