Buhari: The No Inheritance Joke -By Ken Tadaferua

My government inherited nothing from Obasanjo, Yar’Adua, Jonathan – Buhari

Come on, Bubu, you are kidding, right? You didn’t inherit hard working, entrepreneurial and creative 180 million Nigerians, 356,669 square miles of arable land, sweet rivers crisscrossing the country, abundant food and cash crops, fish, cattle, birds, minerals, roads, airports, seaports, rail system, a financial system, a capital market, $30 billion in savings from Jonathan and many more.

Okay, I understand. It is oil. PDP did not leave a high international price of oil for you. So poor oil revenues is equal to nothing. So you inherited nothing. Though oil contributes less than 10 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), you insist, unfortunately, that you inherited nothing. Indeed nothing more reveals your mindset than this statement you made.

Thank God, you recognised that agriculture will produce a bumper harvest this year. I am not sure which policies you put in place in the past 15 months to generate a bumper harvest. Clearly, you inherited a strong agriculture sector which produces some 40 percent of the GDP.

Now the country is in recession, you are indulging in your favourite pass time: the blame game. First you blamed Jonathan, then you blamed Nigerians, now you blame all past PDP presidents. You conveniently forget your role as destroyer of brand Nigeria in foreign fora, your confused forex policy that crashed the naira, your snail speed approach to key socioeconomic policy and appointment execution, your N87 to N145 fuel price hike that blew inflation into the hot skies leading businesses to close up and thousands of citizens to get laid off. Hunger is whistling like Sirocco winds across the country.

But rather than face up to your failures, you remain in denial. Your blame game won’t do. Soon it would be two years you took over as president. The trend globally, and even in more efficient economies, is that it takes a minimum two years to turn a recession around. This means Nigeria will still be battling recession at the end of your four year tenure.

I recently heard your finance minister say one of the smartest things I have heard since the inception of this your incompetent government. That Nigeria will focus on the key contributors to the GDP rather than oil. That it will address the structural causes of inflation and the recession including, for instance, getting the refineries to work again to cut pressure on forex and cut the price of local fuel. That is the kind of critical thinking that can get us out of the fine mess you put the country into.

Get your jokers for ministers to roll up their sleeves and proceed to perform on measurable deliverables. Dump your extra portfolio as minister for oil and if you must add a portfolio to being president, then become minister of agriculture which contributes 40 percent of GDP. That is where millions of our neglected subsistence farmer citizens slave for peanut returns to feed this country. Boost their capacity and returns and you get a bountiful revolution.

Your generation of elites and leaders splurged on free rent from oil revenues all your lives and you folks can’t seem to change your mindset about oil. You set up the most inefficient, wasteful and greed driven sociopolitical and economic system in the world. You run a unitary system under the camouflage of federalism to concentrate power in the political centre, which through a rogue cesspool called federation account, has for the past five decades been distributing free rent to useless and thieving 774 LG chairmen, 36 state governors, an over bloated presidency and public service.

That is why, without oil revenues, you are like fish on dry land. Ask the Japanese or South Koreans if they thrive on oil. Change your mindset Mr. President. Stop the blame game because Nigerians have grown wiser and are not impressed. So get cracking on your promises and duties to get the economy bustling again.

The people are hungry Mr. President. They are tired of you blaming every other person except yourself and your party. You knew the score when you ran for president and when you were making salacious promises during the campaigns to win the elections. Now you have reneged on many, if not all, of those promises. We see you. We hear you. Now we know you. We know you are not capable of delivering on any of your promises on the economy, except you do the unusual and exceptional.

We wait for you to come up with the unusual and exceptional. We pray you get the inspiration and will to surprise us. We are sick and tired of your blame games. Get cracking, Bubu.

Ken Tadaferua is a media and marketing communications consultant. Twitter: @ktadaferua