THE ALTERNATIVE
By Reno Omokri
If you have not read my exposé on the lies in President Buhari’s Democracy Day Speech, do yourself a favour and Google it. The only achievement of that speech is that President Buhari quite possibly has created a Guinness World Record of most lies in a speech.
Not surprisingly, some of the President’s paid vuvuzelas are upset that my exposé trended on Twitter more than their idol’s speech itself. I am sorry if that fest upset them, but how could I have been expected to keep quiet when the President’s lies were so effulgent?
Does the President lie willfully or is it that he is too incompetent and clueless about things going on around him that he cannot detect that his aides padded his speech with lies? I rather suspect the latter is the case because of the case where the President signed a document with his own name wrongly spelled. If the President can’t spot a misspelling of his name, is it a lie in his speech he can spot?
President Buhari has more media aides than any President before him including:
SA MEDIA
SSA MEDIA
SA DIGITAL MEDIA
PA BROADCAST MEDIA
PE NEW MEDIA
PA SOCIAL MEDIA
SA and CHIEF PHOTOGRAPHER
SA and STATE PHOTOGRAPHER
Yet none of these aides could fact check his Democracy Day Speech and still not one of them has been bold enough to take the #BuhariChallenge and name even one project initiated, started and completed in three years by Buhari. Do they need a microscope to find the projects?
The fact is that you can say many things about Buhari. You can say he has 150 homosexual cows that have refused to increase in number since 2011. You can say that he is arguably 75 (at least by football age). You can say that he is a father. But you can’t say that he has integrity. I proved that already.
And there were other lies in his speech besides the 20 I spotted. For instance, the President said as follows;
“For the first time, 30% of the budget was earmarked for capital expenditure.â€
But that is a blatant lie! The truth is that 2018 is not the first or the second or indeed the first time that capital expenditure was 30% or above of the budget.
In former President Umaru Musa Yar’adua’s first budget in 2008, capital expenditure was 37%. Capital expenditure was also above 30% in 2010 and 2013 under former President Jonathan.
That the Buhari regime does not know this is indicative of the endemic cluelessness that plagues this backward administration from top to bottom.
But lies were not the only thing that caused disappointment in the President’s speech. As a matter of fact, the speech, at least to my mind, was more disappointing for what it omitted than for what it included.
I had expected the President to say something about Leah Sheribu. In all my years on earth, very few things have been as inspiring as the case of Leah Sheribu, and I am nonplussed by the President’s failure to call attention to this story of real and rare Nigerian heroism.
Leah Sheribu should not be forgotten. Though she is a child at just 15, Buhari did not mention her on Children’s Day, neither did he do so on Democracy Day. What she is going through is similar to what Malala Yousafzai went through. Even if Buhari has forgotten her, Nigerians should not forget.
Just so we have not forgotten, Leah Sheribu is the girl who refused to give up her faith in Christ even at pain of death. So when you are promoting a Nigerian politician who is prepared to abandon party allegiance, remember that Nigeria has people like Leah, a conscience-driven individual who has the courage of her convictions.
The failure to recognize Leah is symptomatic of the inability of the President to empathize with those he leads. This failure was made glaring after the New Year’s Day massacre of Benue people after which the President showed an apathy that was not just disdainful but could be said to have amounted to an absconding of his duties as the nation’s head of state.
It therefore surprised me when the Federal Government threatened health workers with the sack. The health minister is threatening JOHESU members to resume work or the Federal Government will declare them as having absconded from duty.
What hypocrisy! Did Nigerians declare Buhari as having absconded from duty when he spent 108 days in London at a stretch last year?
This administration should remove the log in their eye so they can see more clearly to remove the speck in JOHESU’s eye. The problem with the Buhari administration is that they lead by ordering and not by example. A case of do as I say not as I do.
If the millions of dollars spent by Buhari in London was instead spent on public healthcare, JOHESU will not be on strike. The President has the best healthcare system for himself in London and gives the worst public healthcare system to his citizens at home.
How does President Buhari expect the members of JOHESU to feel given the ostentatious lifestyles of members of his administration?
Never mind that the Buhari administration has borrowed N11 trillion in three years, which is more money than the Peoples Democratic Party borrowed in 16 years, you still see cronies of the President and his party leaders living large and thumping their noses at the masses.
How will JOHESU members accept the administration’s official lines that Nigeria does not have enough money to meet their demands when they see an All Progressives Congress Member of the House of Representatives gifting his wife with a N75 million car while wearing a N1.5 million Gucci suit. The President’s son rides a multi-million Naira BMW power bike and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission leaves them and instead arrests Lagos youths!
The EFCC should show seriousness by starting their arrests at Aso Rock and the National Assembly!
In fact, my first reaction after listening to Buhari’s Democracy Day Speech, was to publicly advise the EFCC to apologize to all the yahoo boys they have arrested and released them because the lies in Buhari’s speech beat any scam those fraudsters could ever come up with.
The EFCC itself recently announced that they had seized expensive cars from some youths suspected to be yahoo boys (fraudsters). I am not impressed. If the EFCC wants to show they are working, they should seize Yusuf Buhari’s multimillion Naira BMW Power Bike. Does he have a job or business? How could he have afforded it?
The EFCC must realize and accept that they were not created to go after the real and imagined enemies of the sitting President.
For three years President Buhari has been in power and it is only after former President Obasanjo rejected his re-election agenda that the EFCC, whose chairman publicly wears a Buhari re-election lapel pin, decided to probe Obasanjo.
If you still believe that there is an anti-corruption war, you need spiritual deliverance!
What moral authority does a man who idolizes Abacha, a thief who has been convicted in 4 different countries, have to probe Obasanjo, a man who paid off Nigeria’s entire foreign debt? Simply because Obasanjo spoke against his re-election, the EFCC suddenly remembers to probe a man Buhari praised last year!
Let me rest my pen here because I have said enough to ruffle Buhari’s feathers, however, I would not want to end this piece without a warning to the government and the public.
Nigerians may remember that as soon as Ebola erupted, the Jonathan administration introduced Ebola screening machines in the nation’s airports. Now, consider that more than a month after Ebola re-erupted in DRC Congo, the Buhari government has not thought it wise to do the same. May God save Nigeria from this clueless regime!
One Other Thing:
On the same day that the allegedly 75-year-old Buhari signed the #NotTooYoungToRun Bill, it was announced that his party, the APC, picked a 74 year old to be its deputy Governor candidate for the July 14 Ekiti guber election. Youths of Nigeria, can’t you see they are just using you?
What is there to celebrate in an allegedly 75-year-old man (football age?) who does not have a single youth in his cabinet, signing the #NotTooYoungToRun Bill? If he believes in it, then he should have at least one youth in his cabinet. He just wants to reap where he has not sown.
Reno’s Nuggets
If you bless your pastor because he prays for you and ministers to you, what about your mother who began praying for you even before you were born? No pastor on earth has ministered to you like your mother. Remember your mother today. Give her a call. Give her a gift. Every gift to your girlfriend does not give you any spiritual or physical blessing. A gift to your pastor may give you limited spiritual blessing. But a gift to your mother and father not only honours them, it also gives you bountiful spiritual and material blessings and helps to elongate your life #RenosNuggetsReno’s Nuggets.
Pix+ ±Buhari.jpg
Quote+ In former President Umaru Musa Yar’adua’s first budget in 2008, capital expenditure was 37%. Capital expenditure was also above 30% in 2010 and 2013 under former President Jonathan. That the Buhari regime does not know this is indicative of the endemic cluelessness that plagues this backward administration from top to bottom. But lies were not the only thing that caused disappointment in the President’s speech. As a matter of fact, the speech, at least to my mind, was more disappointing for what it omitted than for what it included.
I had expected the President to say something about Leah Sheribu. In all my years on earth, very few things have been as inspiring as the case of Leah Sheribu, and I am nonplussed by the President’s failure to call attention to this story of real and rare Nigerian heroism
