This week, President Muhammadu Buhari, speaking like a President should, said to Nigerians that their confidence in his administration is well placed, respected and will not be abused.
The President spoke in London while receiving the Buhari Diaspora Support Organisation led by Mr Charles Efe Sylvester.
“We will do our best to justify your trust in us, and that confidence won’t be abused,” he said. “I am happy that people like you are here, on your own, defending the country. You have shown courage and sacrifice. I assure you that your confidence in us won’t be abused, we will do our best to justify it.”
According to the President, and he could not have said it better, Nigeria is gifted with tremendous human and natural resources, but “failure of some of the leaderships we had led to our not being able to capitalize on resources to improve the lot of the people.”
And, this is the crux of the matter, the cause of the country’s underdevelopment. Resources endowed the country by God, destined by Him to be managed by Nigerians and for the benefit of the citizens have for many years and for selfish reasons been squandered, embezzled and mismanaged by few for the benefit of few corrupt and immoral persons.
These people, who called themselves leaders, are in the words of the President, wicked. “These wicked people plundered the country “and kept Nigerians poor,” the President said and it quite easy see and agree with him.
In fact, nothing more than looking at the condition in which the current administration met the country justifies his claim. Buhari’s administration, which came into office in 2015, had met a country without savings and the economy badly vandalised, despite the huge revenues it made from sale of particularly oil which for several years sold for more than $100 per barrel and Nigeria was producing well above two million barrels per day.
When Buhari came into office, the price per barrel had crashed to less than $20 and hovers around $50 and $60, yet, our country has been able to save what has now come to be described as a record saving of about $50 billion. No wonder the President boastfully said: “We have not done too badly.” And, yes, they’ve not done badly and, yes, no one begrudge his claim and, yes, too, no one can contradict his claim.”
Thus, when an angry Buhari said that if the thieves “had used 50% of the money we made, when oil prices went as high as $143 dollars per barrel, and stabilized at $100 dollars with production at 2.1 million barrels per day, for many years, Nigerians would have minded their businesses,” he couldn’t be more poignant. And when he added that the “stealing was so much, and they (thieves) were so inept that they could not even cover the stealing properly,” it shows that the thieves are, indeed, like he said, wicked and immoral.
Essentially, no one can deny the President’s assertion that the damage done to the Nigerian economy in the years of plunder was massive. Thankfully, the present administration is doing its best to recover some of the loots from corrupt people. Though it’s impossible to identify and recover all, the beginning is a right step taken by this administration.
