Buhari’s Incredible Loss of Nigeria’s $9bn: A Coup Would Have Happened By Now If It Were Military Era
Dr. Issa Perry Brimah
Had this been the good’ol military era, our radio and TV shows would have been interrupted by the announcement of a coup, with some new army generals telling us why they had to urgently truncate the Buhari regime.
“We have sat and watched with restraint as the Buhari administration ran Nigeria into the ground.” They would have said.
“But upon realising that some of the tolerated incompetence of Buhari would have everlasting damaging effects to Nigeria, we had to act and immediately.
“Nigeria lost a full year because Muhammadu Buhari took 6 months after each election to select his unremarkable and corruption riddled cabinets. These periods of pauses in governance that we overlooked have now cost us $9billion dollars, as his chief of staff did not address the nation’s legal challenges during the periods of vacuum. This, combined with the selection of an incompetent cabinet have caused us immeasurable reputation and economic loss. Thus we as a nation have no choice than to remove the incompetent leadership.
“The recent US Visa reciprocal price hike slammed on our citizens 18 months after Nigeria’s incompetent government failed to address US complaints of our unreasonable and unprovoked Nigerian Visa price hike for US citizens, was another of too many examples of a country run on gross and dangerous incompetence. Loudly focused on persecution of minorities, journalists and depriving the nation of its freedoms, the Buhari administration has lost sight of its actual mandate.
“After reviewing the published chain of events, how a $850 million settlement handed over to Buhari in May of 2015 was left by his Chief of staff Abba Kyari and Attorney General Malami, to leap to $6 billion and now over $9billion in judgements that have already had dastardly impacts on our financial strength and threaten our assets abroad including Nigeria House in US and other physical structures as 20% of our reserves are seized, we must begin immediate solid steps to restore confidence in Nigerian leadership, reassure foreign investors and build a foundation for economic revival, return of jobs, security and hope for the Nigerian people, born and unborn.
And it may conclude with:
“Fellow Nigerians, we would like to assure you that while the former head of state is under house arrest, we have commenced the probe of Abba Kyari, Malami and so on and so forth. We assure you we will recover all looted and diverted funds from the FOREX and oil subsidy frauds that have been run under the Buhari regime, and other schemes. But at the same time, we will provide the nation true change, as we select a cabinet of competent, dynamic, positively experienced new minds within the next 24 hours and immediately set Nigeria on a course of fresh hope.”
While democracy has its benefits, the Nigerian Presidential style as against the prior Parliamentary system that former dictator Obasanjo erroneously replaced, makes it more difficult to sack failed leaders no matter how persistently they wreck the country. The elite senate chamber is not beholden to the people who vote them into power and spend their time striking self-enriching blackmail deals with the executive when impeachment is imperative for national survival.
Nigeria’s learned and intellectuals are too few and many are out of the country, leaving the nation in the hands of largely docile, deprived, tribal engrossed masses who will never understand the implication of this latest act of gross incompetence, the latest of too many. We also expect presidency sponsored campaigns and phony groups to soon flood a compromised mainstream media space in attempt to obscure the reality of this catastrophic blunder.
Without question, no ruler in the world can survive such incompetent loss of over $8 billion dollars, but my bet is Buhari will survive it as Nigeria’s future continues on its lost trajectory.
The $9 billion loss perhaps will only be our latest “worst in the world,” new trophy.