*President’s farewell speech, a charade, says group
Chuks Okocha and Sunday Aborisade in Abuja
Ijaw leader and elder statesman, Chief Edwin Clark, yesterday, reviewed the eight years of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration, and declared that it was a total failure.
The 96-year-old Niger Delta elder handed down his submission at a news conference in his Asokoro, Abuja home, saying all the promises made by the Buhari administration to the people of Niger Delta were not fulfilled.
This came as the Defenders of African Democracy (DAD) and Hope Africa have described the farewell broadcast of the outgoing president that Nigerians should follow and obey election tribunal’s decisions as a ruse and charade, when his administration paid little or no regard to court decisions and orders.
Speaking, Clark said, “The truth is, President Muhammadu Buhari is leaving the nation, especially the Niger Delta region, worse than he met it. He is bequeathing bouquet of unfulfilled promises, divided nation and myriad of critical federal infrastructural projects in shameful states, especially roads, and particularly in the Niger Delta region.”
He said there was terrible state of insecurity insecurity in most parts of the country, being perpetrated by the menacing killer herders, Boko Haram and ISWAP terrorists, heinous bandits, kidnappers and sundry criminals.
As a result of that, he said, “A vast majority of citizens, particularly, the youths, are gripped by feelings of annihilation, fear and desperation due to lack of adequate protection by the government”
The development, he added, had resulted in the now common “japa syndrome”, where the youths are leaving the country has become the aspiration of most active Nigerians.
Clark said, “Sadly, a sizable number of the Nigerian youths, particularly the professionals are leaving our dear country in droves to other climes particularly; Canada, Britain, USA, among others.
“There was a particular occasion in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic, when about 50 medical doctors were going to Britain for greener pastures, and they were returned at the airport by the immigration, but nobody knows how these Doctors later found themselves in Britain within two weeks.
“Today, we have a lot of Nigerian nurses scattered in Britain and other nations of the world. I am 96 years old now, and I have been actively involved, by the Grace of God, in the affairs of Nigeria and the Niger Delta region, for over 70 years, I have seen it all.
“In the past eight years, President Muhammadu Buhari has demonstrated in most cases that he did not belong to the whole country but to a group; his tribe and religion, which is contrary to what he said in his inaugural speech that he belong to everybody.
“For instance, he appointed fourteen out of seventeen security Chiefs from one section of the country. So, the declaration that he belongs to everybody and nobody, was a sham. I make bold to say that the reverse has been the case, he belongs to some people, but not the entire Nigeria.
“Even in simple matters like extending the good wishes of the government to notable personalities in the country on their birthdays or other landmark attainments, the Muhammadu Buhari administration was selective and biased in who it chooses to recognise or consider worthy of goodwill messages.
“Muhammadu Buhari’s team has publicly recognised the anniversaries of people who in all humility are either much younger than me, or have contributed much less than I have, to this country. On my 91st birthday in 2018, I protested this anomaly in an open letter to President Muhammadu Buhari. I became 96 on Thursday last week; the Buhari administration did not deem it fit to send a goodwill message to me.
“Given my patriotic services to Nigerian, three of my colleagues in General Yakubu Gowon’s government’s cabinet became Heads of State and President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, mainly, General Murtala Mohammed, General Olusegun Obasanjo, and Alhaji Shehu Shagari, over the past 70 years.
“I regard myself as a senior citizen of this country. I am convinced that if President Muhammadu Buhari was not illiberal and ‘belongs to everybody’, he would have been consulting me for advice.
“At my age, the present government had treated me with ignominy to the extent of sending armed policemen in loaded vans to my Abuja residence on 4th September 2018, to search my residence with a warrant procured from a certain Magistrate Court with the false allegation that I was stockpiling arms and ammunition from the Niger Delta.”
On their parts, the Defenders of African Democracy and Hope Africa,
said the Buhari farewell broadcast was a further confirmation that the ruling party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) used the courts and security agencies to intimidate the opposition political parties.
The two groups said this was more so, coming after the recent dramas exhibited by the some courts recently making what is considered politically induced unwarranted levying of unethical and obscene fines against key opposition personalities, presidential candidate and political parties whose crime was that they sought legal interpretation on the vexed issues of law relating to tardiness in the conduct of elections held in Nigeria.
In a statement by Dr. Abu John Aye, Political Coordinator of DAD and Hope Africa said, the courts “while throwing out the said cases on unjustifiable technical grounds, does not bode well for the growth of democracy in Nigeria and Africa.
“This is more so as security agencies in Nigeria, more particularly, the DSS and EFCC, have in recent time been used in threatening and making political announcement in a way that is targeted at stiffing the voices of the opposition element in Nigeria, while leaving out myriads of threatening national security issues such as sponsors of terrorism across Nigeria, Boko Haram, killings by Herds Men and oil subsidy racketeering.”
