Buhari Has No Economic Blueprint – Group

Comrade Adeniyi Sulaiman, human rights activist, has lashed out at the economic situation in the country wondering why after five months of being in the saddle President Muhammadu Buhari’s government still lacked an economic blueprint.

Sulaiman, who is the Chairman of the Centre for Human Rights and Social Justice (CHRSJ) in a statement said President Buhari should know that Nigerians are not going to eat integrity alone but they need good governance with good economic direction that would make life bearable for them.

“Till this present moment, Buhari’s government lacks economic blue print and direction in governance which has led to an uproar in various State of the federation following submission of his ministerial nominees to the Senate”, said adding that this was as a result of the fact that “Buhari lacks cohesion within his ruling party by allowing internal democracy to operate in their folds”.

On the anti-corruption war, Sulaiman declared that the ongoing fight against graft by the present administration was selective and lacks direction, just as he stated that the noise through media propaganda has overriden the core value of the fight against the menace.

According to him, it would difficult for Buhari led-government to win any war against corruption by targeting only members of the opposition and political opponents.

He however described the development as parochial, ungodly, undemocratic and unconstitutional which negates Buhari’s inaugural speech during his swearin-in ceremony as elected President of Nigeria on May 29th, 2015, that “I belong to nobody and I belong to everybody”, insisting that there was no way a government could fight corruption without monitoring its agencies in charge of fighting the cankerworm that has eaten deep into the fabrics of the country system.

His words: «This is against the principle of fight against the menace of corruption which has been the bane of the country’s national development and also against the principle of equity, fairness and justice that is against the preamble of the amended 1999 Constitution which Mr. President took an oath to uphold without fear or favour.

“How can President Buhari defend some former All Progressives Congress (APC) governors that have one corrupt allegation or the other on their necks, without asking them to go and clear their names first. President Buhari goes against his anti-corruption stance by still sending their names to the Senate for screening and confirmation in the name of politics”, he posited.

Sulaiman reiterated that Buhari lacked credible defence in sending the names of those who have been alleged of one corrupt practice or the other, instead of President Buhari to defer their names, pending the provision of satisfactory report on them that exonerate them from the corrupt allegations but the presidency that claimed to be fighting corruption, was lobbying the senate now to clear the controversial personalities because Buhari wants them to be in his government at all cost.

“It is an eye opener and on record that only members of the opposition political parties and political opponents are being invited since June 1st, 2015 to October 20th, 2015 by the anti-graft agencies in the country.

He queried why the anti-graft agencies, particularly, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) refused to investigate the petition forwarded to it by some Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in which they raised corrupt allegations against some ministerial nominees? “Is it because they are members of the ruling party in the land? Or they wanted to be the Ministers in Buhari’s government”, he asked.