By Akombo Aondona
As the President Muhammadu Buhari clocked one year in office on May 29, Nigerians have been assessing the President’s performance in 12 months. However, from the exclusive interview that The Dream Daily conducted among the grassroots people, it appears that the jury is still out there on the President’s one-year performance, even as one could sense a sense of disillusionment in some respondents.
A businesswoman, Rebecca Joshua, alias “testimony” told The Dream Daily: “Sai Baba no try o! It is as if he is dividing the country. We don’t have security because many things are happening . Now see our people in Benue State and many places across the country, Fulani herdsmen are killing our people. This shows that there is not enough security in the country.
“The cost of food is also high. Gari is now N250. So Baba is bringing division in the country, both politically and economically.”
A job seeker, Ayuba Rose Princess said: “By my own assessment, President Buhari has not tried at all because we the graduates don’t have jobs and we are suffering. There is also increase in food prices. So, I am pleading with Sai Baba to create more job opportunities for us to have something doing to avoid being criminals because unemployed graduates are into crime armed robbery and some girls are into prostitution. This is not proper. Let the President do something fast. That is why we have issues like Boko Haram and herders’ attacks in the country.”
An eggs seller, Veronica Samuel (alias Mama Destiny) told The Dream Daily: “Aha there is a lot of problems in the country. There is insecurity, hunger, no food, no money; we are suffering. The children’s school fees have also increased, not to talk of feeding them. We are begging Buhari to help us so that food will be cheap.”
An unemployed youth, Wachin Daniel, said: “To me Buhari is uniting Nigeria because if you look at his appointments, you will see that they are being done in accordance with our Constitution based on federal character’s principles. The north, east, south and west are being considered for appointments. So, in the next two years, Nigerians should be expecting a new country that will be better than the United States and the United Kingdom.”
Similarly, a an Applicant, Kpega James, stated: “Well, he (Buhari) is trying and I believe that he is the right person who can solve Nigeria’s problems. The issue of Boko Haram, sincerely speaking it has reduced to a minimal level now, and we are not hearing much bombing here and there. However, we urge him to try to the side of Fulani herdsmen. We from Benue, especially from the boundary between Taraba and Benue, we are facing serious challenge from Fulani herdsmen. Some of us have lost farmland to these Fulani herdsmen while many are sleeping in the bush.”
Another applicant, Joshua Ezekiel, told The Dream Daily that “President Buhari is not uniting the country. He is killing the people with hunger, no money, no good school, no light and the roads are bad. Just look at Aso Road here, from Mararaba to Aso, the road is not good. We don’t even have light for five years but we are still supporting Buhari. I don’t know what he is doing. We are begging him to come and do Aso Road for us.”
In an exclusive interview, Co-Convener, PDP Reform Group Ariyo Dare Atoye told The Dream Daily that “President Buhari set the tone for divisiveness when he defended his choice of favouring mostly Northerners in his first set of appointments. He took it too far in the US when he made the famous statement that, where he got 95 per cent of votes cannot be treated equally with where he got 5 per cent of votes. Nigeria is now more divided than before and our fault lines more pronounced. Also, policy flip-flop has created serious gaps in the economy, thereby creating unfold hardship. Buhari need to run an inclusive government and bring the best hands on board.”
Efforts to speak with APC officials for this investigation report were not fruitful as they all declined to be interviewed.
In a recent newspaper interview, Afenifere chieftain and Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee on the 2014 National Conference, Senator Femi Okurounmu, was quoted to have accused the President of marginalising the South-East with his appointments and policies.
Okurounmu said: “Successive regimes have done their best to reintegrate them (Igbo) back, but (President Muhammadu) Buhari’s administration has re- opened their wounds by extremely marginalising Igbos simply because they did not vote for him.
“The President in his speech on May 29, 2015 said he belonged to nobody but to everybody, which means he will treat everybody equally. But the same Buhari later contradicted himself, by saying he could not treat people who gave him 95 per cent of their votes the same way he would treat those who gave him five per cent. Apparently it is the latter principle he has been following. Recently, we looked at the 59 appointments which he had made, only three came from the South East whereas the North West, the zone from where Buhari comes from, had 26. So where is the justice? Why will the Igbos not feel marginalised? When people feel marginalised, they will resort to all sorts of measures, part of which is to seek to take their own future in their own hands. That is what IPOB is all about. Unless we restructure this country, Nigeria will not know peace. We must have a country where everyone is first class citizen.”
Similarly, in recent newspaper interview, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, National Coordinator, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA)scored President Buhari poorly on human rights and stemming ‘herdsmen’ attacks in the country.
His words: “The human rights situation in the country is disappointing, it is appalling and it is in a very rapid decline. From all human development indexes, Nigeria seems to be at the threshold of imminent collapse in terms of the high level of disrespect for the fundamental human rights of Nigerian citizens”
In an opinion piece, Onwubiko also alleged that “President Muhammadu Buhari who is a Fulani by ethnic origin and who is known to have herds of cattle in his ranch in Katsina State and his government are now embarking on some annoying debates seeking to blame foreign mercenaries for” the killings allegedly carried out by Fulani herdsmen in the country.
“There are a plethora of newspaper reports indicting Nigerian Fulani herdsmen as the real mass killers so why this deceptive game of blame shifting and dancing in the graves of our fallen compatriots, even when no effort is made transparently to arrest and punish these mass killers,” he added.
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