Nigerians Should Match To The Next Level With Buhari and Osibanjo. 

Source: Edje L. Efeturi

The dubious schemers had gathered to erode the three years' repairs it took Aso Villa to fix. In spite of their "Nicodemus" meetings to spoil and to plunder, President Muhammadu Buhari remains resolute by moving Nigeria to the next level through creation of more jobs, long lasting infrastructural provision, roads and bridges, money banks, stable power and energy, sound education as well as broadband infrastructure and internet access across strategic areas in the country and to run an inclusion government, among other projects.

When PDP came to power in 1999, we witnessed an upsurge of the crude oil price through the roof and our oil was placed on high premium by the international community. Prior to this time, a dollar was exchange for 72 naira. Virtually, everything was imported, including tooth picks. Financial foresight was evaded and investments thoroughly eroded their imagination. The exchange rate shot to 235 naira/$.

During this time also, a 50kg bag of rice was auctioned for 800 naira. It was an opportunity for competitive smuggling while the production of local rice varieties, such as the Gboko rice, Abakaliki rice, Ofade rice suffered neglect. Out of frustration, thousands of local rice producers left and joined in the mad rush of smuggling. This resulted to huge rate of unemployment while countries like Thailand and Indonesia thrived in the creation of more jobs for their new rice Mills.

The GDP continually rose geometrically before the PDP government interregnums. National assets like NITEL, NEPA, NIPOST, Nigerian Airways, Nigerian Shipping Line, Nigerian Machine Tools, Delta Steel, OSTM, National Oil, Dunlop Tyres, Michelin Tyres, NITEX, Nascon, Dixon, Asaba Textile, Kaduna Textile, Nichemtex, NIC to mention but a few, were all still alive. But by 2015, the PDP had succeeded in stripping these establishments, some by privatizing them and the proceeds they desperately shared and pocketed into private purses and their families. Again, millions of jobs were lost.

The ineptitudeness and lack of government skills exhibited by the PDP interregnum was so obvious that, even Nestle had to relocate its production line to Ghana and, then, truck in the finished products for us to sell and buy. Large sum of money worth over $20 billion was voted for electricity, yet nothing was generated. At the end, it got privatised. Our Nigerian high institutions were like glorified secondary schools and so on.

We must enliven our consciences and waken our imaginative sense of judgements, if we must get it right. That, the so much talked about poverty in our country started decades ago. The woes and spoils invented by the PDP government were inherited by President Muhammadu Buhari and he has sworn to fix them with a space of time, but not by magic. It takes time to fix fractured bones together.

The stern policies of reclaiming of President Buhari made it possible for the Nigerian Army to fiercely recaptured the North East Nigeria, Boko Haram insurgents had had to themselves under the watch of the previous governments. The Army were adequately equipped by the Buhari government, which acquired sophisticated weapons for the Army.

It is diaphanous truism that Muhammadu Buhari was massively voted for to fix the ruins of the past decades, bring sanity and discipline into the once battered nation by the PDP government. Gullible Nigerians who were deceived that Nigeria had the best economy in Africa, have now seen that she was in her pre-recession moment when Buhari assumed office. The Fed government was already borrowing to pay workers' salaries, and the ignorant citizens thought they were swimming in affluence.

We can still decide again in 2019, if we refuse to return to the path of perdition we have left already. We have to, rather, move to the next level. Today, Europe and American governments are rolling the red carpet before President Buhari for his astuteness, developmental policies and his commitment towards a better Nigeria. He is an honest leader of impeccable character.

Nigerians should be patient, if we must get it right. We must join in the match towards the next level and always think Nigeria.

Divramredje Lawrence Efeturi is An APC Stalwart, writes from Delta State.

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