Our Girls are still missing since April 15, 2014. Pray for their return.
Mixed messages of incompetence and indifference from government.
The figure ‘70+’ is a ‘murdered Benue farmer citizens’ number with 73+ millstones around the government’s neck as it fails miserably to deal with the plot that unleashed the reign of terror imposed by Fulani herdsmen’s unlimited, nationwide unprovoked and premeditated attacks amounting to the Fulani herdsmen’s war- my subject over 30 years. Are they singing to an international agenda as the effect is cross-continent reaching even East Africa. The deaths of soldiers and policeman added to more than a total of 100,000 ‘bloodied civilians’ amounts to a war as I have said for many years, and confirmed by Prof Wole Soyinka. The Vietnam War claimed 54,000 US soldiers. Our ECOMOG War claimed between 3,000 (government figures) and 12,000 (non-government) estimates. Some journalist or researcher should go back and total the almost daily reports of five, 10, 20, 300 deaths in the news reports of the Fulani herdsmen War for 10, 20yrs. What will be the final death count and what is our total cost for unity? Are the perpetrators ghosts and the killing fake or phantom to always automatically escape arrest? Whither Nigeria. Only when a defence to the senseless murders is planned, it is torn down as being terrorist. Our words are the wrong way around. The attacker is the terrorist; the defence strategist is the counter-terrorist. In Nigeria we specialise in turning victims into accused and terrorists into tribal heroes. Stop the killing!!
Congratulations, Nigeria made the targeted $40b by beginning 2018 during economic hardship. The first aid care, under the ‘save the naira’ policy of Buhari and CBN support for the naira. Phase one has paid off. Phase two will be easier with the hike in oil price to nearly $70/barrel which will boost our reserves to a targeted $80-100b by April 2019 if not Dec 2018. Phase three must go hand in hand and that is to get the naira to ‘crash back’ to N150:$1 or lower to destabilize the forex hoarders. We should recommend a CBN-led forced fall of N1 naira per day to return to the golden age of N1:$1.5 by Dec 31, 2018. Ibrahim Babangida crippled Nigeria when he halved the naira value overnight and skyrocketed interest rates –a presidential knife in Nigeria’s back. Can we reverse that blow also overnight? Or perhaps improve at N1 per 1-2days to achieve N130: $1 by Dec 31? No other government has dedicated such efforts to reversing losses inflicted on the naira.
The unpredicted fall and now spectacular rise in oil price towards $70+ confounds ‘doom and nay-sayers’. However that $70barrel cost should not make our oil imports more expensive if our own oil is exported to be refined. The real problem is our tragic incompetence as a nation, to in four years, get its refineries up to 150% production locally to combat manmade paralytic Christmas and New Year shortages.
The president’s dismissal of the entire efforts to restructure is an insult, painful, but predictable given the benefits he and his groupings, ethnic and otherwise, gain from the power accrued under the status quo since 1956. It is deeply saddening to millions of victims of political and military fiat which lopsidedly created states and hundreds of LGAs to favour certain parts of Nigeria, arrogated huge swaths of the budget to itself and giving power to few. It speaks volumes of the paralyzing and blinding nature of the office of the president to any modern and citizen targeted progressive agenda. Is it the seat or the occupant at fault?? Probably the combination. It is legitimate in a democracy, even one as fragile as ours, to ask ‘Do you trust your president to make merit and objective decisions and appointments?’ The answer is chillingly negative. The president can change this perception in 2018, but has misjudged the mood by appointing Ahmed Rufai Abubakar as Director General, National Intelligence Agency, NIA, demonstrating his presidential and personal rigidity to his agenda? Trust demands more than ‘Our Unity is Non-negotiable’.
But what is the current true presidential vision and mission for Nigeria? Yes, he wants to restore value and pride to the naira, if possible to N150 and lower which will automatically by definition lift millions out of poverty and ‘re-dignify’ Nigeria while making deserving fools of naira speculators and dollar hoarders -a sound and praiseworthy achievement. However this ‘grand naira recovery scheme’ will be no virtue if the Fulani herdsmen-murdered farmers’ body count skyrockets due to presidential insensitivity, collusion or indifference to the victims of the Fulani herdsmen’s rampage. He has also the self-inflicted burden of an additional hurricane of sectional mainly Fulani ‘Oga at de top’ appointments, difficult to defend in a cosmopolitan country populated with some of the best brains in the world and some of the worst.
Away from the presidential responsibilities and government failures it behoves us to know that the work of our hands, brain, family, community will make the nation great or small in 2018. It is well-known that just one evil-minded corrupt president and evil cohorts [which Nigeria has had an abundance unfortunately], a single corrupt political or business policy or decision in your official capacity, in and out of uniform, can raise or ruin your neighbour, your community or your country. Be vigilant!
NB: Uncover ‘I LOVE NIGERIA’ KNOWLEDGEABLE CANDIDATES for 2019 -SDG 16.
