Adekunle Ade-Adeleye
For the duration of the Muhammdu Buhari presidency, there will, sadly, be no end to the verbal putdowns the president flings at his countrymen. At different times, he had acquiesced to their being described as fantastically corrupt, or gushed about Nigerian youths being lazy.
Now, he has remorselessly described them as deeply rooted in dishonesty to explain the border closure punishment he has inflicted on the country as a state policy. Speaking in Daura, Katsina State, on December 2, 2019 when a delegation of Katsina State Elders Forum visited him, the president explained the border closure policy this ingenious way: “Farmers must be protected. Dishonesty is deep-rooted in the country.
Otherwise the border closure would not have been warranted.” In addition, according to a statement released by one of his spokesmen, Garba Shehu, the president was quoted to have said that “the country’s domestic fuel consumption had dropped by more than 30 per cent, following closure of land borders.”
Insisting that no date had been set for the reopening of the shut land borders, contrary to the Customs boss, Hameed Ali, who probably under pressure had set a late January deadline, the president seems obsessed with only the benefits of the closure to the total detriment and exclusion of the costs. Well, it is his government.
He can inflict as many deadly policies on the people as they will permit. For now, the people seem to permit it, and are even enthusiastic. But to say Nigerians suffer from deep-rooted dishonesty to justify his simplistic and ruinous border policy, when the same benefits can be secured through efficient and modern policing of the country’s land borders, is both offensive and indefensible.
No matter what anyone says, however, the president’s condescending treatment of his countrymen will continue. There is no stopping him. And as for his poor opinion of Nigerians, well, they deserve it. After all, they put him in office over and over again, and indulge his style.
Leave a Reply