The Independence Anniversary Speech delivered by President Muhammadu Buhari on Thursday has continued to draw reactions from Nigerians.
While some commend the President for his achievements as enumerated in the speech, others are in disagreement and see his administration as the nation’s greatest challenge.
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Governors’ Forum reacting to the speech, accused President Buhari of leading the country to extreme decay.
The governors led by Sokoto State governor, Aminu Tambuwal, also accused him of being divisive in his actions.
Buhari in his speech had boasted that no administration before him had done as much as he is doing for Nigerians even with scarce resources.
He accused past leaders from 1999 to 2015, when he took over, of running the country to near destruction and wondered at their “impudence” in criticising his administration.
The forum, in a statement titled, ‘Reflection on Nigeria @ 60: The past, present and way forward…We need a national dialogue,’ signed by Tambuwal, however, stated that Buhari supervised the nation’s slide into extreme decay within five years in power.
According to the opposition party governors, in spite of enviable strides recorded since independence 60 years ago, the nation appeared to be on reverse gear with the state of affairs in the country.
“In the last five years, under the APC-controlled administration, Nigeria has continued on the downward slide into extreme decay, with the country displacing India as the poverty capital of the world, with an estimated 87 million Nigerians living on less than $1.9 US a day (Brooking Institute 2018).
“It is indeed sad to observe that Nigeria’s external debt hit a 16 year high of $27 billion in December 2019, just higher than the $20.8bn in external level as at 2005 when Nigeria exited from the club of its foreign creditors,” the PDP governors said.
Also reacting to the speech, the Trade Union Congress of Nigeria (TUC) condemned the President’s comparison between the cost of fuel in Nigeria and Saudi Arabia.
President of the Union, Quadri Olaleye, in a statement on Thursday, said the comparison was unnecessary as Nigeria was not at par in any way with Saudi Arabia and other countries mentioned.
Buhari in trying to justify the recent increase in the price of fuel in the country, compared the pump price of the product in the country with those of Chad, Niger, Ghana, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
He noted that at N161 per litre, Nigeria had the cheapest price.
Disagreeing with the President’s position, the TUC leader said the country had achieved nothing despite six decades of oil exploration.
He said successive governments had looted, laundered and wasted the country’s resources while patronising hospitals outside the country.
According to him, “It is like comparing black and white. It is that bad!
“It is ridiculous to compare Nigeria with Saudi, Dubai, or any other country, not even in Africa. With the natural resources that we have, we could rule the world, but government is not interested. There is no need for this comparison because it looks like the president is defending fraud and the impoverishment of Nigerians.
“Come to think of it, what has Nigeria achieved with all the money made from oil since over six decades of oil exploration in commercial quality? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. All successive leaderships have done is loot, launder and buy properties in foreign land.
“So, if the president is defending the hike (in pump price), what does he want to do with the surplus they will make from the hike? The same old story of providing infrastructure! Our roads are nothing but death traps. Our leaders are not patriotic at all.”
On the other hand, Olaleye noted that in Saudi Arabia, roads, water, and to some extent, jobs were not big issues.
Also, the reacting, the Southern and Middle Belt Leaders Forum said Buhari’s speech was a “tale full of sound and fury signifying nothing.”
The Forum lamented that on the occasion of Nigeria’s 60th Independence Anniversary, Nigerians were treated to nothing but “bland sermons and empty rhetorics.”
The organisation, in a statement signed by Yinka Odumakin (South West), Chief Guy Ikokwu (South East), Senator Bassey Henshaw (South South) and Dr. Isuwa Dogo (Middle Belt), said Buhari would have made sense if he had used the opportunity to outline the process of reconstituting Nigeria to return it to the path of productivity, autonomy for the federating units and sustainable peace and development.
The statement read, “The Southern and Middle Belt Leaders Forum has examined the broadcast of President Buhari to mark the occasion of the 60 years of independence of Nigeria and disappointingly concludes that it was like the tale full of sound and fury signifying nothing.
“In the midst of all the country is going through that requires the leadership to summon the constituent units to the table of brotherhood to seek fundamental ways out all we were treated to were the usual bland sermons and empty rhetorics.
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“The President said he was engaging in self-reflection but he never remembered how our founding fathers negotiated a federal constitution which put us on the path of development in the early years of independence until military intervention set us on the ruinous unitary lane which has fostered underdevelopment to the point that we are now the global secretariat of poverty at 60.
“It is shameful that on this type of occasion, our president had to be lecturing us on why we had to pay more for fuel because countries like Ghana, Egypt and Niger are paying more.”
On their part, the APC Governors’ Forum had nothing but praises for the President.
In a statement issued in Abuja titled, “Nigeria’s 60th independence anniversary, We reaffirm our commitment to Nigeria’s development,” the governors said was refining politics in the country.
The statement signed by the Chairman of the Forum, Abubakar Bagudu, said under Buhari, the rulling All Progressives Congress was being made more liberal.
His words: “Under the leadership of President Buhari, our politics is today being refined to ensure indiscriminate development of all parts of the country.
“In addition, the President is inspiring all of us in the APC to change our political culture especially in relations to electoral contests. Unlike what obtains in other parties where the operative culture is to manipulate electoral contests to produce set outcomes, the environment in our party, the APC, is being made more liberal. With such a liberal atmosphere, combined with impartiality of the Independent National Electoral Commission, as a governing party, our electoral probability, in all elections, is even.”
