The North-West zone of All Progressive Congress (APC) has condemned the issues being raised over President Muhammadu Buhari’s health and vacation, saying it was unwarranted and unpatriotic. In a statement after its meeting in Katsina recently, the party said the issues smacked of desperation of the opposition parties.
It said that the zone had declared total support to Buhari’s administration, in its bid to move the nation forward.
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“The meeting emphasized the need for members of the National Assembly from the North-West to fully support the president in his effort to provide responsive leadership to Nigeria,” the statement signed by National Vice Chairman, North-West, Inuwa Abdulkadir, said.
“The meeting called on north-west zonal leadership of the party to engage members of the national assembly, ministers, and heads of government agencies to ensure that policies and programmes fall in line with the party’s manifesto. The meeting emphasized the need for elected and appointed public officeholders to undertake periodic consultation with constituents to enlighten them on government policies and programmes, and at the same time, receive feedback for effective service delivery.
“The meeting reiterated its support to seven governors in the North-West region in their effort toward economic integration of the region within the context of the north-west economic cooperation and integration framework,” the communiqué said.
The party also appreciated the seven states in the zone for their initiative at identifying high development priority areas like education, healthcare, agriculture, water resources, energy, solid minerals and industrialization.
The rumour of the death of President Buhari has gained currency in recently weeks, the actually sources is still unknown, but the news has spread like wild fire in the harmattan, but who are those who wish President Buhari dead?
They are indeed those who had held the country captive over the years and looted the treasury mercilessly, at the expense of the growth and development of the country as well as wellbeing of the generality of the people.
Those who wish PMB dead are wicked and self-centred individuals, who do not want Nigeria to prosper; instead they want to rapaciously milk the country dry and kill the destiny of the country. President Buhari has insisted that corruption is the worst form of human rights violation and if Nigeria does not kill corruption; then corruption will kill Nigeria.
To this end, the President has put in place measures that would expose corruption in all facets of our national life, while those who stole in the past are paying dearly for it.
Even, while addressing judges recently, PMB said among other things that, the judiciary is a public institution whose job is to provide fundamental checks on other public institutions.
Therefore, a fair and efficient judiciary is the key to all anti-corruption initiatives. He noted that Article 11 of the United Nations Convention against Corruption simply means that a corrupt judicial system not only violates the basic right to equality before the law but also deny procedural rights guaranteed by the Nigerian constitution.
In carrying out its role in the fight against corruption, the judiciary must remain impartial. It is incumbent on the judiciary to analyze facts based on the applicable law without prejudice and penchant regarding the case they are dealing with, and without acting in any way that would favour the interests of any of the parties.
Where judicial corruption occurs, the damage can be pervasive and extremely difficult to reverse. It undermines citizens’ morale, violates their human rights, harms national development and depletes the quality of governance.
He added, the eradication of corruption is a joint task involving not only judges and members of the legal profession, but literally all stakeholders, including all branches of government, the media and the civil society.
The challenge is to come up with an integrated approach that balances process and substance, promote clarity to ensure a coherent and realistic formulation of objectives. A corruption free Nigeria is possible therefore let every arm of government be the change we want to see in our country.
In spite of the hue and cry about the prevailing economic recession, which occasioned economic hardship across board, and the mounting campaigns of calumny against the present government and the tag of incompetence which a section of the political traducers of the Buhari administration want to foist on them.
It is imperative to underscore the fact that, without any iota of contradiction or equivocation that President Buhari is still the best option for leading and managing the affairs of Nigeria at this stage in the historical evolution and development of the Nigerian pluralistic trajectory.
Without doubt, corruption has been the bane of the Nigerian state, be it institutional corruption, public sector corruption, private sector based corruption, societal corruption and what have you, have permeated all facets of the Nigerian state, to the extent that over the years, graft became the official policy of the state.
Corruption had become a way of life, culture and acceptable norm before the advent of the present administration. So bad was the situation that a former president of the country said that, stealing was not corruption, besides he shielded and protected top officials government of his administration from investigation with obvious and proven cases of corruption.
No matter how bad the situation may look like presently, it is important to know that, one, the present economic mess in which the country is enmeshed is not caused by the present administration, however, the government is working round the clock to come up with lasting solution to the problems, caused by the mismanagement, financial recklessness, bad governance, corruption and inept leadership of past administrations.
In the past, the nation was groping in darkness, not knowing where it was heading to, as corruption and greed held sway; people who were hitherto not particularly very well to do, became multi-billionaire overnight, and as they became richer by wantonly fleecing the commonwealth of the nation; as a result the nation became poorer, as poverty and unemployment became ubiquitous.
It was the same set of people that stole the country blind that won elections, by using the ill-gotten money they got to illegally purchase people’s voters card as well as manipulate the electoral process, hence, what took place in the country for many years was election without voting and in such instances, they were not accountable to the people but to themselves.
Hence, they place a high premium on power, they accumulated power by all means, did everything to secure it and prevent others from getting it. As rulership became permanent, politics became Hobbesian.
Power was pursued by all means and kept by all means and the struggle for power became the overriding concern. Indeed, politics became the only game in town, it was a game played with deadly seriousness for the winners won everything and the loser lost everything.
Development does not occur in the framework of a political style which essentially institutionalizes warfare.
Therefore, democracy in Nigeria was not democracy properly so-called but a combination of kleptocracy and plutocracy; more worrying was the fact that, they ruled with the iron law of oligarchy.
Therefore, having abandoned democracy, for political repression, our leaders are delinked from our people.
Operating in a vacuum, they proclaim their incarnation of the popular will, hear echoes of their own voices, and reassured pursue with policies that have nothing to do with the aspirations of our people and which cannot mobilize.
It is for this reason that it has been argued that, it is clear even from the behavior of leaders that most of them have no respect for themselves and do not take themselves seriously.
That is why they have converted us into the mimic people. Lacking confidence and self-respect, they cannot develop any sense of efficacy. So even with the best of intention, they are forever confused and perfunctory.
More worrying still, our leaders suffer from self-contempt. This underlies their alienation from themselves and from us and it is manifested in their prickly impatience with their environment, their fondness for things foreign and disdain for the local and so on.
Their self-contempt has been projected into contempt for their people, unless one remembers this it will be difficult to understand how our leaders relate to their people; why they manipulate us so cynically; exploit us without mercy and brutalize us to no end.
The situation in the past was bleak and a case of complete hopelessness and every policy was predicated on conjectures and happenstance; the darkness was all-encompassing, as it completely enveloped the country in its entirety and there was no silver lining in the horizon; governance was in abeyance, as it was not about the people, but about a few privileged few at the corridors of power, worse still, they managed the economy based on the conditionality of the International Monetary Fund IMF, which encouraged the removal of subsidies and social welfare measures that helped the poor and insisted on the drastic reduction of government expenditure and public consumption.
However, as soon as President Buhari became president of Nigeria, he said corruption is the worst form of human rights violation, he went on to explain that, the country must move fast to deal decisively with corruption or else, corruption will kill Nigeria; and from all intents and purposes, this government has been working assiduously to exterminate graft from the country.
But the point must be made that, indeed, corruption is seriously fighting back and creating all sorts of problems in the country. In the words of the former minister of finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, when you fight corruption, when you touch the pockets of people who are stealing money, they do not keep quiet.
But the country is being gradually reoriented presently on the right kind of values and moral ethos, which the generality of the people are imbibing, save for a microscopic few, who are have been used to stealing public funds and looting the treasury, who are working hard to thwart all the efforts of the present administration aimed at fixing the country’s numerous problems.
We all know President Buhari as a very modest and austere person, who lives a simple, deeply religious and straightforward life.
He has held several juicy positions in the past and did not taint his reputation or soiled his fingers; he is a man of very high moral standing, integrity and credibility. It is therefore, very obvious and glaring that, he would never embezzle or do anything untoward that would invariably tarnish is image.
Not only this, he is telling Nigerians all the truth about the position and reality of the country in all spheres as they are presently, he is not telling them half-truths or what they love to hear, thereby taking practical and realistic steps that would assist in solving the contradictions in the system permanently and lay the template that galvanize the country to greater heights in all ramifications, amongst the comity of nations.
President Buhari more than any other leader Nigeria has had, is committed to the all-round growth, development and prosperity of the country, without shortchanging Nigerians in any way.
After President Buhari must have completed the socio-economic and political re-engineering of the country things will generally look up for Nigeria and Nigerians alike. Hence, out of all the options possibly available to Nigeria, President Buhari is still the best option for Nigeria moving forward.
Ayobolu, a public affairs analyst contributed this piece from Lagos State.
