The nightmare of a presidential spokesperson’s job, By Umar Yakubu

No father ought to need to depart money owed for his poor youngsters. Allow us to remind Oga Femi, once more, that President Obasanjo met the nation’s exterior debt at $28 billion and left it at $2 billion; President Umaru Yar’Adua subsequently left it at $2.6 billion; President Goodluck Jonathan left it at $7.3 billion, however President Buhari left it at $41.6 billion!!! That’s what he truly did for the poor – he left them an humongous quantity of debt that they can not pay. What an ore mekunu certainly!

“We shouldn’t settle for mediocrity as one of the best a politician can do.” – Joe Manchin

The job of a presidential spokesperson should be a nightmare. One’s schedule consists of projecting the picture of the principal by all means crucial. Nevertheless it turns into Herculean when the federal government is evidently mediocre and has little to indicate the general public.

Typically final week, former President Buhari celebrated his birthday. We congratulate him and pray that God grants him extra years to be of service to himself and his household. Household, associates, admirers, and different well-wishers ought to have simply purchased areas in newspapers to put up some AI-generated messages, and that might have been OK. However Femi Adesina needed to come once more and set off the already harsh surroundings by writing on how his principal was a compassionate president and the way he cared for the poor. With all these makes an attempt, I now actually sympathise with Oga Femi, however he ought to know that there’s little proof that reveals that historical past might be re-written, particularly when there’s information to corroborate a documented state of affairs.

The abstract of the piece is that former President Buhari directed that due to the challenges of the pandemic and revenues that had been certain to ebb, the fee of salaries should not fail. In his phrases, “that was the classic Muhammadu Buhari, at all times pondering of the poor and underprivileged” and primarily based on that, he needs to be referred to as “Ore mekunu” (pal of the poor) in Yoruba language. A part of the President’s job was to keep up the safety of presidency jobs, in order that he might be capable to pay salaries. Adesina additionally wrote about, “The Massive Elephant within the room. Elimination of gasoline subsidy”. Did you suppose the federal government didn’t know that the cash guzzling monster needed to be slain? It knew. However who ensured that subsidies remained so long as it did? Buhari. And why? The folks, the strange folks”. The remainder of the piece is on how the Buhari administration turned all the pieces right into a joke, together with by acknowledging that though the civil service was over bloated, the President wouldn’t heed recommendation on streamlining it as a result of he, a minimum of, wished to be remembered as somebody who was paying salaries.

So, primarily based on Femi’s logic, the true pal of the poor is the one who would keep the established order of inefficiency, paying an over bloated service, with ghost employees, to a degree the place we had been as soon as utilizing virtually all of our nationwide revenues on recurrent expenditure and the servicing of money owed. The nation was borrowing to pay poor folks’s salaries, which saved ballooning year-on-year from 2015 to 2023! The federal government was not fascinated by making the system environment friendly and leaner in order that the financial savings might actually go to the poor. That was an excessive amount of work.

How a lot was their administration paying as gasoline subsidy? How a lot NNPC was remitting to the federal purse? How many individuals had been prosecuted for oil theft throughout their time in workplace? What number of tankers of gasoline being smuggled in another country had been the Nigeria Customs Service arresting then? Can he additionally clarify how a lot the Buhari administration spent in fixing the 4 refineries in eight years, in order that gasoline imports would scale back?

On gasoline subsidy elimination, they left it due to the poor? Good, we imagine them. Can Oga Femi please state what number of barrels of crude had been stolen each day by means of our shores after they had been in authorities. How a lot was their administration paying as gasoline subsidy? How a lot NNPC was remitting to the federal purse? How many individuals had been prosecuted for oil theft throughout their time in workplace? What number of tankers of gasoline being smuggled in another country had been the Nigeria Customs Service arresting then? Can he additionally clarify how a lot the Buhari administration spent in fixing the 4 refineries in eight years, in order that gasoline imports would scale back? Even when it comes to the current day inflation, can the administration that Oga Femi served inform us what they did with the N27 trillion that they printed, which is the equal of $50 billion. Had been they printing the cash to pay salaries as certainly one of their legacies? The place would we be if a considerable a part of that $50 billion had been invested on behalf of the poor in schooling or well being? Which hospital might the poor go to in any a part of the nation?

No father ought to need to depart money owed for his poor youngsters. Allow us to remind Oga Femi, once more, that President Obasanjo met the nation’s exterior debt at $28 billion and left it at $2 billion; President Umaru Yar’Adua subsequently left it at $2.6 billion; President Goodluck Jonathan left it at $7.3 billion, however President Buhari left it at $41.6 billion!!! That’s what he truly did for the poor – he left them an humongous quantity of debt that they can not pay. What an ore mekunu certainly!

Let Oga Femi publish the Buhari administration’s information on schooling, early little one care, entry to healthcare, vitamin, power safety, housing, residing requirements, social protections, employment, housing, amongst others, and never on how printing cash to pay salaries appeared to have been an achievement.

Earlier than infrastructure and social funding programmes are flaunted, it’ll even be good to state that the common financial progress fee throughout the Obasanjo administration was 6.9 per cent; it was 7.1 per cent beneath Yar’Adua; 6 per cent throughout Jonathan’s tenure, and Buhari managed solely a measly 1.4 per cent financial progress. So how did he love the poor with such a low progress? Spending is meant to spur progress, so what occurred that the Buhari administration printed and borrowed extra money than the previous three regimes and but all this did much less to spur financial progress? Whereas the Sustainable Growth Targets advocate that we halve poverty by 2030, we truly grew to become the poverty capital of the world beneath ore mekunu!

These are macro-economic information that displays the micro-economic points that have an effect on the poor. Not all the pieces might be laundered by means of PR articles divorced from the truth. Let Oga Femi publish the Buhari administration’s information on schooling, early little one care, entry to healthcare, vitamin, power safety, housing, residing requirements, social protections, employment, housing, amongst others, and never on how printing cash to pay salaries appeared to have been an achievement.

Umar Yakubu writes from Abuja.