President Muhammadu Buhari has never failed at any international fora to blame the dire economic situation of the country on the past administration of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP. The President is always apt to mention corruption, profligacy, leakages and other ills perpetrated by the PDP administrations since 1999. He is beginning to sound like a broken record without his offer of solution or policy direction of his administration in almost 6 months since he took over the mantle of leadership of the country.
Olisa Metuh, the spokesman of the Peoples Democratic Party might be seen as an irritant by the ruling All Progressives Congress but he is very correct this time accusing the President of de-marketing the country on the international scene.
“In the last six months, our president has only succeeded in discouraging foreign investors with his continued misrepresentation of our country as a business unfriendly environment, where most of the citizens are basically corrupt, dishonest, and cannot be trusted. “Whereas we have restated our total support for the war against corruption, we insist that Mr. President’s unceasing blanket negative labelling of citizens, in a country where millions of honest and hardworking individuals/firms are genuinely contributing daily to the development effort, is indeed a disservice and injurious to the nation and the people.
“Furthermore, Mr. President’s recent announcement to the world that the nation, with its abundant human and natural resources, is broke and cannot pay cabinet ministers not only sends a discouraging signal to the domestic and international business community, but also exposes the ineptitude of the present administration to meaningfully and sincerely exert itself and work with industrious and innovative investors to create and manage wealth,” Metuh said.
The response by the Presidency through the Special Adviser to the president on Media and Publicity, Mr Femi Adesina is at best lame, ego-tripping, focusing on the person of Mr. Metuh instead of addressing the core issue raised in his statement. Mr. Adesina statement reads; “Our attention has been drawn to the latest statement by the PDP spokesman, Olisa Metuh alleging that President Muhammadu Buhari is “demarketing Nigeria”. “We restate for the umpteenth time to Mr. Metuh and his ilk that their attempts to distract President Buhari from the job he has been elected to do will fail. “President Buhari will remain true to the virtues of honesty, integrity, sincerity, incorruptibility and plain-speaking which endeared him to Nigerians and made them prefer his leadership to that of a lying and deceptive PDP administration.
“The President will not, in the guise of “marketing” the country, refrain from telling Nigerians and the world, the emerging truths about the abject state in which years of plundering by a PDP leadership has left the Nigerian treasury and economy”, he said.
Nigerians voted for Buhari because he promised change, not because of buck-passing. We want the change mantra to move from mere word into reality. We are all aware of the state of rot the country is in, as the President wages war on corruption and other ills of the past, his policy direction ought to be taking shape as well. The honeymoon is over; we are in November for crying out loud. The President needs to urgently change his narrative about the country on the international scene; he need not bastardize his predecessors at every turn. As the Chief Marketing Officer of Nigeria, saying negative things about a product he wanted to sell to the world all in the name of saying the truth is a negation of his responsibility. He must be aware that all the promises made to him by France, US, UK and others on helping us to recover looted funds are equally made to the previous administration, and what is the result? Zilch!
It’s high time the President got working on formulating an economic policy that will make us self reliance in food production, power generation, refining capacity and job creation. Blaming past administrations is just crying wolf. We know things are bad and we expect him to bring lasting solutions not palliatives. The President should start talking presidentially, enough of blame game. President Buhari get working, talk is cheap.
