Financial Times alleges Buhari sleepwalked Nigeria closer to disaster
By Emma Ogbuehi
The Federal Government on Sunday took a swipe at the British magazine, Financial Times, for saying that the Muhammadu Buhari-led regime has failed woefully in office.
In a scathing article written by the Africa Editor of the magazine, David Piling, on January 31, Financial Times said “President Buhari has overseen two terms of economic slump, rising debt and a calamitous increase in kidnapping and banditry — the one thing you might have thought a former general could control.”
The magazine further accused Buhari of chaperoning Nigeria to disaster.
“Next year, many of the members of government will change, though not necessarily the bureaucracy behind it. Campaigning has already begun for presidential elections that in February 2023 will draw the curtain on eight years of the administration of Muhammadu Buhari, on whose somnolent watch Nigeria has sleepwalked closer to disaster.”
Majority of Nigerians share the same views.
But six days later, the Buhari government has clobbered together a response.
In a statement on Sunday, Garba Shehu, Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity to the President, pushed back forcefully, describing the report as “predictable.”
While acknowledging that insecurity remains an issue, the government accused the author of the article, David Piling, of leaving “out the security gains made over two presidential terms.”
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The statement reads:
We wish to correct the wrong perceptions contained in the article “What is Nigeria’s Government For,” by David Piling, Financial Times (UK), January 31, 2022.
The caricature of a government sleepwalking into disaster (What is Nigeria’s government for? January 31, 2022 ) is predictable from a correspondent who jets briefly in and out of Nigeria on the same British Airways flight he so criticises.
He highlights rising banditry in my country as proof of such slumber.
What he leaves out are the security gains made over two Presidential terms.
The terror organisation Boko Haram used to administer an area the size of Belgium at inauguration; now, they control no territory.
The first comprehensive plan to deal with decades-old clashes between nomadic herders and sedentary farmers – experienced across the width of the Sahel – has been introduced: pilot ranches are reducing the competition for water and land that drove past tensions.
Banditry grew out of such clashes. Criminal gangs took advantage of the instability, flush with guns that flooded the region following the Western-triggered implosion of Libya.
The situation is grave.
Yet as with other challenges, it is one that the government will face down.
