Everyone is entitled to his or her opinion but not all opinions are facts. Facts are universal, sacred and indeed factual.
Facts and truths are products of universality and they resonate with the society that does deep reflection. It is a fact that, but for the promise of life hereafter in heaven for the Christian, many would have lived and existed without purpose, moral candour and hope, not bothering to endure the discipline that is required of a Christian to be qualified for heaven.
One can therefore imagine how betrayed the Christian soul would be should they find after transition or through other means, that this promise was untrue, unrealizable, unachievable and just a decoy to achieve an end. This is typical of what promise means to people and how it deforms the essence of hope in a people.
During the electioneering, and at the beginning of the All Progressives Congress (APC) administration, there were many promises made to Nigerians. Some of these include quenching the fire of insurgency within a short period of time, repositioning the economy, fighting and winning war against corruption. Almost three years into the life of APC government, however, this government is yet to fulfill any of these promises in the true context of it.
Only recently, the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed released two lists of alleged treasury looters, and promised to release a more damning one in weeks to come. While I ordinarily should not have any reason to be disgusted about this essentially because it is an open secret that most politicians in Nigeria cannot claim to be clean and free from direct or indirect looting of our treasury, and therefore deserve to be cooling off in prisons, I am however, disappointed because of lack of tact in releasing the lists.
The first impression this release creates and gives to the international community is that it portrays the Federal Government as one that does not believe in due process nor have faith in the judiciary, therefore, necessitating the usurpation of the powers of the judiciary and the consequent pronouncement of certain people that may or may not be guilty before the court of law. The excuse that the judiciary is corrupt and too slow in dispensing off corruption cases cannot hold water. We should not forget that the gradual decay in the judiciary is traceable to the corrupt activities and tendencies of the political class.
The second issue is that, why were some names exempted from the looters’ list? For instance, there are lot of persons who were sometimes ago accused of stealing and looting our treasury by this same government but whose names were not included in the looters’ lists obviously because they had defected to the APC. This portrays the Buhari administration as not being totally objective and serious in dealing with the issue of corruption.
The third issue is that the release of names of alleged looters who were either former political office holders or captains of industries, without due process, can jeopardize foreign investment in the country. These are the categories of people that are likely going to be sought after for partnerships, because of their experience and opinions on most business matters, by foreign investors. Now that the Federal Government has condemned them as guilty and filthy people, it is safe to imagine that the likelihood of foreign interests bringing their capital to invest in this country (considering that the people they are likely going to engage with have been called thieves and looters by their own government), would be abysmally low.
The reality of this is better appreciated when one considers the economic statistics coming from NBS which clearly reveals a decline in capital inflow from the United Kingdom (UK) alone to Nigeria. According to the NBS, in 2014, 14.6 billion Dollars came in from the UK alone, but in 2017, it dropped to as low as 6.5 billion Dollars. We can only hope that it does not drop further in 2018 as a result of some of these actions.
We either practice democracy in full with all its attending shortcomings or we evolve through a consensus a different system of government like ‘diarchy’ as proposed by late Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, on the interim, until we rid the nation first of corruption and corrupt elements both in the military, custom services, Police force, judiciary, legislature and other major institutions such as INEC before returning it to a restructured democracy where every Nigerian is equal before the law and would respect the laws.
What is more disheartening is that in the midst of all these infractions, it appears that the followership that should call leadership to order is in a state of lethargy or stupor. Our collective apathy to our responsibilities as citizens, either as individuals or as organised group, to speak truth to power has made this country to continue sinking and sliding more and more into a failed state.
The state of ‘Omerta’ referred to by the mafia as the period where there is an agreed oath of silence regardless of the palpable and apparent pain of death because of an ‘intending end’ has overtaken us, except that in our case, it does not seem as though there is an expected intending end necessitating this ‘Omerta’.
On the 17th of March, 2015, President Buhari tweeted that he would create three million jobs per annum. This promise is far from being fulfilled since 2015. The jobs created are a far cry from the expected projection. There was also the promise of two million housing units every year and massive supply of electricity which we are not seeing today. The naira has lost over 70% of its value while the unemployment rate has risen from 6.5% to 26%.
External reserve was said to have grown from 28 billion Dollars to 48 billion Dollars. While appreciating that this was achieved even within the times of recession, it should be noted that external reserve is never the major indicator for measuring the performance or otherwise of any government.
Economic growth in any economy is like the engine of a car while corruption plays a strong role in determining whether or not the people would be willing to invest their monies in our economy.
Transparency International just recently helped to put the forgoing statement into perspective when it declared that our corruption score is still 2.7/10 as it was before the coming of this administration. Therefore, how do you think foreigners would invest their monies in Nigerian economy?
Akpotive wrote in from Port Harcourt.

Andy Akpotive