Govt’s Broken Promises to Benue People

  Govt’s Broken Promises to Benue People

Saturday letter2

Now, again, the promise to conduct a free and fair presidential election, plus those of the national assembly appendage, on Saturday the 16th of February 2019 was broken by this APC government led by Muhammadu Buhari. Well, this promise-renege has become a stock-in-trade of this federal government, and I am particularly bothered by the plethora of broken promises this Buhari’s government made to my home state of Benue.

Recall that a short while ago when Makurdi, the state capital, was inundated by floodwater, the Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, was dispatched to tell my folks that the federal government would help build wide-breath drainages to curtail future flooding risks, but this has not been done and it surely won’t be done especially now that the federal government is looking to re-gazette “cattle routes” through this state. Further, at the height of the killing of settled native farmers by roving band of Fulani tribesmen, the Minister of Interior, Gen. Abdulrahaman Dambazzau (rtd.), promised that the federal government would train some 700 agro-rangers from Benue State to help provide buffer for traversing cattlemen across farmlands but this has not been done.

Top on the list of what I consider surreal and quite implausible promises was the one by the Managing Director of the NNPC, Maikanti Baru, that some space-age kind of “alternative energy” fuel plant would be built in Benue State so as to create about one million jobs for the locals in order that they may thereafter live in peace with the killer Fulani hordes who have been terrorising them. What great farce! Why would a highfalutin “federal government” descend to the level of a lying bunch of aging men? Governments exist to provide basic needs for its citizens (nowadays we can add security into the mix) plus the fact of charting a course of civilization (in terms of law and order) and heightened learning that these citizens must imbibe.

No government should go out there and tell its citizens things it does not intend to do. Making and not committing to non-specific general promises is a sign of incompetency by a sitting government. The promise to solve ASUU’s earned allowance issue is specific, the promise to remit backlog of funds to the NDDC is specific, the promise to pardon those who have unjustly taken from our collective wealth and compel them to invest in the national economy with no threat of persecution is specific, the promise to begin the process of restructuring six months after swearing-in is specific, etc. It is worth remarking that all the specific promises are doable.

 Sunday Adole Jonah,

Department of Physics, Federal University of Technology, Minna, Niger State

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