Nigeria’s laziest President on a lap celebrating his failure
By Jeph Ajobaju, Chief Copy Editor
A day after celebrating himself with a rice “pyramid of lies” as his political opponents put it, Muhammadu Buhari will today travel to The Gambia, his needless 132nd foreign junket that could at best be delegated to a subordinate.
After his return later on Wednesday, Buhari would have gallivanted 132 times to 38 countries where he spent 313 days, building on a tally by Daily Trust in an editorial on 10 December 2021 which echoes widespread criticism of his wasteful travels.
He is simply enjoying himself.
“Buhari has done his best. That is what he can do. If we are expecting anything more than what he has done or what he is doing, that means we’re whipping a dead horse and there is no need …,” former President Olusegun Obasanjo said in Abuja on 13 December 2021.
“How do we prepare for post-Buhari? Buhari has done his best. My prayer is that God will spare his life to see his term through.
“What should we do to make post-Buhari better than what we have now? That is our responsibility now, because it concerns all of us.”
Just last week, Buhari re-issued a 2019 directive that reduced the number and duration of overseas trips by Ministers and other officials in order to cut the cost of running government.
He failed to set an example by following the directive three years ago. And he is now the first to break the new one.
“On cost-benefit terms, the dividends of President Buhari’s visits have not been as spectacular as Nigerians expected. We are yet to see the direct foreign investments translate into jobs for our unemployed young men and women,” Daily Trust wrote.
The main beneficiaries of his junkets are his kitchen cabinet and attack dogs dressed as spokesmen, all of who collect estacode in foreign exchange and throttle lies to prop up an incompetent man who has rolled back Nigeria more than six decades.
Buhari will “attend the inauguration of Gambian President Adama Barrow following his re-election for a second term,” his spokesman Garba Shehu said in a statement.
Buhari had on Tuesday corralled personalities, including Governors and businessmen, to clap for him in Abuja as he “unveiled” purported “one million bags of rice pyramid” facilitated by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
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PDP scoffs at Buhari’s rice pyramid of lies
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) mocked him for staging another “shameful” media stunt to deceive voters in the run up to the 2023 ballot, as contained a statement issued by PDP National Publicity Secretary Debo Ologunagba.
Nigerians are aware of how the All Progressives Alliance (APC) “create” fake pyramids of rice with sandbags and re-bagged rice stacked on pyramid shaped wooden structures as discovered in an APC state in the South West in 2018, he said.
“There is nothing to celebrate in the APC pyramid of lies in Abuja,” Ologunagba insisted, reported by The PUNCH.
“It is rather shameful that APC leaders are again ridiculing … Buhari by making him unveil pyramids of allegedly imported foreign rice which are re-bagged as locally produced, just to create an impression of a boost in local production under his watch.
“If indeed there is a boost in local production of rice as the APC wants Nigerians to believe, how come the price of rice has not come down but continues to soar from about N8,000 per bag which the PDP handed over to the APC in 2015 to about N30,000 per bag today?
“It is on record that the PDP turned the waterland of various states of our nation into huge rice production hubs with farms and mills springing up across the country, leading to a boost in local production, drastic drop in imports and the celebrated affordable prices of food products under the PDP administration.”
‘Incurable corruption’ of the APC
Ologunagba argued that the APC, with its incompetence, counter-productive policies and “incurable corruption” reversed all the gains made by the PDP in the agricultural sector and triggered a decline in production which has led to high food costs.
He cited how the APC administration failed to protect farmers and then blamed over 40 rice farmers killed by terrorists in Borno State instead of prosecuting the murderers.
“The APC pyramids of lies are therefore nothing but huge signposts of their failures and irredeemable proclivity for lies, deception, beguilement and fake performance claims even in the face of unbearable high costs of food, 22.95 per cent food inflation rate and our nation’s ranking as 98th out of 107 in Global Hunger Index.
“It is clear that with the 2023 elections in sight, the APC is desperate in pushing its stock-in-trade, pyramid of lies, propaganda, deceit and bogus claims with which they stole power in 2015.”
Ologunagba warned that the APC has not realised that 2023 is not 2015, stressing that Nigerians have seen through it deceit which these “pyramids of lies” will not obscure in 2023.
Buhari’s wasteful globe trotting
Buhari had travelled 130 times to 36 countries altogether, spending about 308 days since he became President on May 29, 2015, said the Daily Trust editorial on 10 December 2021.
After the publication, Buhari junketed to Turkey on December 16 where he spent four days, during which Nigeria’s laziest President in history revelled in his 79th birthday festivity together with his wife, six Ministers, and other senior officials.
By 19 January 2022, he has travelled 132 times to 38 countries where he spent about 313 days.
Another tracking by Sahara Reporters shows that Buhari – who enjoys dodging his official responsibilities – gallivanted to nine countries in the three months between September and December 2021.
He travelled to
- New York (September)
- Adis Ababa (October)
- Riyadh (October)
- Scotland (October)
- London (November)
- Paris (November)
- Pretoria (November)
- Dubai (December)
- Istanbul (December).
“On cost-benefit terms, the dividends of President Buhari’s visits have not been as spectacular as Nigerians expected. We are yet to see the direct foreign investments translate into jobs for our unemployed young men and women.
“Also, we have not witnessed the race by foreign industrial concerns to establish industries that will help boost technology transfer, raise our exports and gross domestic product,” Daily Trust said in the editorial.
“In fact, it is curious that while the president all too often finds reasons to embark on foreign trips at the slightest opportunity, he almost always needs to be persuaded to visit the states and communities within Nigeria that are deserving of his presence.
“Indeed, it has been observed that on the occasion he visits the states, he hardly stays long enough to make them meaningful to the people.
“We believe that in the remaining months of his tenure, President Buhari should cut down drastically, his foreign trips and should travel abroad only where it is absolutely necessary for him to do so.
“He should turn his attention inwards and undertake visits to states and communities in the country and engage with them more. The country and its citizens require his attention.”
