The Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to the President, Femi Adesina, has offered reasons why Nigerians brought back President Muhammadu Buhari to power 30 years after he served as Military Head of State.
The Eagle Online recalls that Major General Buhari was in power for 20 months between January 1984 and August 1985.
Adesina offered the reason for Buhari’s return to power 30 years after he was toppled by the General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida in his weekly Friday column, titled: “PMB and the NDDC.”
The presidential spokesman, who used the Niger Delta Development Commission for his illustration, said the decision of the President to upload the rules and be spartan, brought back life into the intervention agency.
He said until Buhari stepped in, the NDDC was a pipe for some to milk the people as money ploughed in never gets into the right places but private pockets.
He said: “Despite hundreds of billions of naira invested over 20 years, the true intervention has been in the pockets of some select people, rather than on the region, and the lives of the people in general.”
Adesina said Buhari hated with passion “grant larceny, expropriation and purloining”.
He added: “Once it’s confirmed that you are filching from the public purse, you can never be his friend, no matter who you are. So he had to bring to a halt the gravy train that the NDDC had become over the years. And no stampede, no rout or panic. The house cleaning must be done, and done well. Thorough.
“In the Niger Delta, you see plenty signboards, but little or no projects. In other words, people collect contracts, erect signboards announcing the project, but the job never gets done. And the contractors get paid.
“What to do? A forensic audit was necessary. Some powerful forces mounted robust resistance, but they didn’t reckon with the iron will of the President. The audit was done, and report submitted.”
Adesina added that if the resources pumped into the NDDC over the years had been justified with verifiable projects, it would have impacted on the region, and on the lives of the people.
He said the President said the audit was done because of “serial abuse, lack of delivery, entrenched institutional decay” and that every recoverable kobo would be retrieved, used in service of the people, and the malefactors would be prosecuted.
He then told his readers: “The case of the NDDC is symptomatic of the lot of our country. An interventionist agency is established to serve the people, and it turns to a private cash cow for a few people. Who has cursed and bewitched our country, that there are few men (and women) of probity and accountability in public life? No wonder after Buhari served us for 20 months between January 1984 and August 1985, and he was toppled, we brought him back to power 30 years later. Do they make them like this anymore? Doubtful.”
The full article is published elsewhere on this news website.