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Mr. President, halt this trend -By Mike Arayuwa Wilkie

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Revisiting Gen. Buhari’s 1998 thesis on religion media and leadership By Samuel Aruwan

 

One of the promises of President Muhammadu Buhari during his presidential campaign was the provision of employment for Nigerians when voted for as the president of the Federal Republic. It was part of the ‘Change’ which was canvassed at the time.

His political party, the All Progressives’ Congress (APC) re-echoed this slogan until victory came in its favour. The period of election propaganda is over and now is action time. Of the threepoint agenda of Mr. President, what interests me most is the provision of employment.

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In my view, employment is also embedded in the “stomach infrastructure”, a campaign philosophy recently formulated by the political egg-heads of Ekiti State. It is certainly too early to give an accurate assessment of the Buhari regime since it came on-board on May 29, 2015 vis-à-vis employment, security and the economy.

He has also embarked on probing some few Nigerians who are suspected to have stolen from the common wealth. This is to enable his government recover some of these unmerited wealth from those whose agenda was to steal infinito, money, which belongs to all Nigerians. In this vein, I must emphasize that I am not an advocate of corruption in whatever manner and do not give any credence to it.

It is also not within my level of honesty to support official jobbery including other vices committed by unpatriotic citizenry in the services of our fatherland. I wish to add that any Nigerian found to be corrupt or traced to be an accessory of corruption must be duly punished in accordance with the extant laws of the land.

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Let me stress, to the best of my ability and knowledge that I hate to understand that such persons should not be fired from their duty posts and if Government should look the other way without taking the required punitive action, it would be interpreted that the principal actors in the probing regime are also neck-deep into corruption and its direct equivalents.

However, there is a due process in the dismissal of such unworthy characters. In recent times, some top Directors and Managers have been sacked. Political appointees in the Federal Boards, parastatals and other Institutions of Government were also affected. From the look of things, the purge will continue.

The dissolution of Government Institutions which directly affected the politicians of the erstwhile government of President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan should normally be expected. It is within the constitutional ambit of Muhammadu Buhari to invoke his official discretion to dissolve such Boards, or to inherit them.

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In anycase, there is no reasonable President who will prefer to inherit members of an opposition party in Government Institutions. These are mainly the two options left. The President has opted to dissolve them so be it. The overall intention is to enable the President create vacancies for his party members, at least, they too need such appointments for the purpose of “stomach infrastructure”.

Sooner or later, Buhari will embark on the appointment of APC members to fill the vacant positions in the fundamental interest of keeping the political party intact and to reduce tension amongst them.

These vacancies already created in the Federal Government Institutions have now encouraged some busy-body persons of other political parties to decamp to the All Progressives’ Congress (APC) inorder to partake in the envisaged political appointments. These politicians are merely interested in the local concept of “food is ready”.

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The questions are: where were these insincere and unserious-minded politicians when the members of the APC were involved in cross-country race to campaign for President Buhari?

Was it as a result of the woeful defeat of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) in the last presidential election? Was it as a consequence of the fact that they find it difficult to snatch the Governorship tickets to contest for such positions in their States? Some miserable politicians of the PDP in Bayelsa State who decamped to the APC on Saturday, August 15, 2015 in Yenagoa serves as a reference point in addition to others. In an attempt to create further vacancies for his party members, Directors, whether in the status of Executive or Managing have just been sacked. I am of the candid opinion that the announcements of their dismissals, terminations, retirements or sacks were all done via Radio, Television and perhaps the Social Media.

For any worker to close from the day’s job and heads for his or her home, preparatory to the next day’s work and suddenly being sacked on the electronic media is totally unacceptable. It is completely odd which negates the required human feelings. Mr. President, as a born again democrat, ought to halt this ugly trend in view of the fact that only totalitarian military regimes would demonstrate such a sadistic process in Governance.

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Let the required due process be adopted to erase the impression that hate is probably involved in the exercise.

We must realize that those who have been sacked already from their duties still owe their nuclear families the mandatory financial commitments to perform. So also is their extended families. When they are suddenly out of work through disgraceful sack, these families would suffer immensely and face the wrath of extreme poverty.

In a democratic culture, government should have a human face. The year 2019 is a stone throw from now and the President should not create a situation whereby all those sacked may constitute an additional opposition to the APC. The President should do his best to ensure that the spate of declaring people jobless is drastically addressed.

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It is expected that Mr. President ought to clear his positive conscience and leave the rest for posterity to judge. In 1804, the legendary Usman Dan Fodio said, and I quote: ‘Conscience is an open wound, only truth can heal it.”

 

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