Of Gaddafi, Obama, Buhari and Atiku

With Reno Omokri

I commended President Muhammadu Buhari when he belatedly did what he ought to have done quickly, which is to speak up against the enslavement of Black African migrants in Libya. I did so because the President listened to the strong criticism from civil society against his tardiness in responding to the situation. However, I still need to ask a question.

Both the Buhari administration and the African Union condemned Germany’s 2016 terror attack that killed 12 persons within mere days (hours in the case of Nigeria). Yet, both the Nigerian Government and the African Union remained silent for weeks on the selling of hundreds (perhaps thousands) of Africans as slaves in Libya.
That being the case, have both the Nigerian Government and the African Union outlived their usefulness to their people?

Such a thing as the Libyan affair should ordinarily attract swiftest rebuke. In fact, I am still puzzled that the African Union in particular is taking this issue lying low.

It leads me to think that to a very large extent, we Africans are our own worst enemies.
I remember how I campaigned for candidate Obama during the 2008 US elections, thinking that Obama as President would do a lot for the Black Race.

Now, after eight years of Obama, Black people are worse off than they were before him in many respects and this is actually due to Barack Obama’s policies.

When Gaddafi was in power, there was no slave trade of Black Africans in Libya. As a matter of fact, Gaddafi gave financial aid to Black African nations and almost single-handedly funded the fight against White minority rule in the then Rhodesia (renamed Zimbabwe) and against apartheid in South Africa (Google it. There is a YouTube video of Mandela saying so openly in America during his thank you tour after his release from prison).

To be sure, Gaddafi had his own challenges too, but no one is perfect. Gaddafi did for the Black world much more than anything Obama ever did for Africa. He gave financial and military support to oppressed people. He funded scholarships and health schemes. He was not big on rhetoric, like Obama. He was big on helping you in reality.
And then Barack Obama staged Gaddafi’s removal and now Black Africans are being sold in Libya and you think Obama is good and Gaddafi was bad?

All over Africa, from Libya, to Egypt, to Nigeria, Obama intervened without caring what Africans really wanted and saddled us with incompetent regimes that are taking Africans backward. History will not be kind to Obama!
Certainly, it was fortuitous for the African continent that Obama’s echo in the person of Hillary Clinton did not make it to the White House. I believe it would have been more of the same.

And look at the incompetent government they helped come to power in Nigeria. I only wish Nigerians know how much of a role Obama played in the emergence of President Muhammadu Buhari in 2015.
It was actually quite hypocritical for Obama, a blatant meddler in other people’s elections, to point the finger at Russia. If at all Russia meddled in the 2016 US Presidential elections, they were only paying Obama back in his own well-deserved coins.

In less than two years, the Obama-supported Nigerian government of Muhammadu Buhari has destroyed a once thriving economy that was projected to be the third fastest-growing economy in the world in 2014 by CNNMoney.
He has wiped off 70% of the value of the Nigerian Naira. He has increased electricity, fuel and passport costs without increasing the minimum wage.

But it is when it comes to his anti-democratic credentials that I cringe the most.
President Buhari has used many dirty tricks to try and intimidate his most likely opponent. Not minding that he as President has not created jobs and has rather lost the jobs that his predecessors created, President Buhari has tried to cripple the businesses of Atiku Abubakar by coming up with flimsy excuses to breach the commercial contract entered upon between INTELS and the Nigerian Ports Authority.

It does not matter to the President, obviously, that by trying to ground INTELS he is putting the jobs of many Nigerians at risk.

But the most hypocritical thing that this government did is to attack Atiku’s credibility over his decision to quit the ruling All Progressives Congress.

The President even permitted one of his official spokesperson to verbally insult Atiku in public after first unleashing Malam Nasir El-Rufai to take Atiku to the cleaners right there at the Presidential Villa.
But to show that President Buhari and his surrogates are hypocrites, let’s take a quick look at the political odysseys of those criticising Atiku for leaving the APC,

Muhammadu Buhari, from:
• ANPP to
• APP to
• CPC to
• APC

Nasir El-Rufai, from
• PDP to
• CPC to
• APC

Rochas Okorocha, from
• PDP
• Action Alliance
• APP to
• ANPP to
• APGA to
• APC

The only major politician on the national stage that has remained in one party since the return to civil rule in 1999 is Dr. Goodluck Jonathan and he has not criticised Atiku Abubakar, but rather, he has stretched out a hand of fellowship to him.
It seems that this is the season for decamping. In fact, I have just been reliably informed that President Buhari has sent his AGF to Dubai to open discussions with Maina so the President can decamp to Pension Fund Bazaar Party. Rochas Okorocha too would soon be decamping from the APC to Statue Party, while Nasir El-Rufai may be leaving to join Serial Betrayer party of Nigeria.

Reno’s Nuggets
True story: Fish is Norway’s biggest export after oil. Norway sent stockfish as humanitarian aid to help starving Igbo people during the Biafra War. The Igbo loved the stockfish and after the war, they bought so much that Nigeria became Norway’s largest market for stockfish, earning them billions annually. Moral of the story: Be kind to people. Your kindness will eventually benefit you #RenosNuggets.

QUOTE: President Buhari has used many dirty tricks to try and intimidate his most likely opponent. Not minding that he as President has not created jobs and has rather lost the jobs that his predecessors created, President Buhari has tried to cripple the businesses of Atiku Abubakar by coming up with flimsy excuses to breach the commercial contract entered upon between INTELS and the Nigerian Ports Authority

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