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Saturday, December 30, 2017

Change begins with you, Mr President!



Prof. Ahmad Isah Haruna wrote :

The blame game that characterised this government have shifted from Jonathan government to petrol marketers on the issue of serving petroleum products to Nigerians.

That is rather absurd and enigmatic because Nigerians voted a president while the president appointed a petroleum minister, and coincidentally in 2017 , the president is the petroleum minister and another coincidence: he was the petroleum minister in 1977 (40 years ago).

Nobody voted or appointed petroleum marketers, they registered voluntarily with their own companies and money so how does the statutory responsibility of providing petroleum products be vested in their hands?

The so-called removal of subsidy is an IMF policy that the former governments refused to accept but this government accepted and implemented in fullest and here we are today: 100% devaluation, N145 per liter and yet they cannot provide the petrol. The failure in petroleum sector is therefore a government failure and not petroleum marketers.

If it is not from government, the NNPC mega stations should have the petrol consistently. 

If buhari don't have solution towards providing the petrol needs for Nigerians despite being a president twice and petroleum minister twice within the span of 40 years (1977 - 2017), and now rely on IMF  policies, then he has nothing to offer to Nigerians. He cannot hide his failure under marketers who don't have laws in their hands and were neither elected nor appointed. 

The term marketers precisely does not refer to any person or company because if he accuse them of hoarding then he knows where they kept it and DPR workers (the owners of majority of filling stations) would have moved to catch themselves since they are in cohort with the marketers. How could you relinquish your statutory responsibilities to marketers (who are all profit makers) and when things get bad, you transfer blame to them?

This is absolute failure.

I still blame President Muhammadu Buhari for throwing the nation into biting petrol crisis. Buhari created the November/December 2015 fuel crisis for his failure to form the cabinet that would prepare supplementary budget and pay marketers. If marketers, this time, are to blame for the fuel crisis, how many oil marketers the federal government is prosecuting for economic sabotage? 

Even if the marketers are in court today, you must take responsibility for allowing them to sabotage the economy. The buck always stops at the president's desk. When you were Candidate Buhari, we joined you in fault-finding, criticising and blaming the then government.

Now that you are President Buhari, it is your duty to tackle and find solution to the problems you raised when you were candidate not apportioning blame to citizens. You cannot ask Nigerians to elect you and start blaming them for your failure and incompetence as a leader.


Change begins with you, Mr President!

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