Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN, Mike Ozekhome and a chieftain of the Arewa Consultative Forum, Anthony Sani, Tuesday, disagreed over claims by President Muhammadu Buhari that his stewardship has brought about improvement in various sectors of the economy in the past six and a half years.
The President had recently stated in Paris at the Nigeria International Partnership Forum, NIPF that his administration has succeeded in revitalizing the nation’s economy, built infrastructure and uplifted the living standards of Nigerians since he assumed power in 2015; a claim dismissed by the legal luminary who in a chat with Vanguard, described the state of affairs in the land as hopeless.
According to Ozekhome, the performance claims “must be in President Buhari’s dream utopian world of fantasy, make-belief and ‘Ali Baba’s’ tales-by-the-moonlight. It is certainly not the Nigeria I live and work in. There exist grinding poverty, abject penury, dismay, hunger, thirst, helplessness and hopelessness.”
The human rights activist further noted that compared with the successive administrations of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP; incumbent government fared poorly, stressing that it made Nigerians poorer than they were before 2015.
He continued: “Poverty has never been so grinding. Inflation has never been so high. Governance has never been so opaque. Corruption has never been so monumental. Insecurity has never been so ravaging. The economy has never been so parlous and recessionary. Innocent blood has never been so wantonly spilled. Nigerians are currently living in dire horrific circumstances of pains, pangs, sorrow, tears and blood. 2015 look like an eldorado. And the President is saying he has performed? This is the surest proof that President Buhari’s legendary disconnect with the people he presumably governs has reached unmanageable proportions.”
However, Sani, immediate past secretary general of the ACF said Buhari deserve some credit for the great work he has done so far.
“I believe that the regime has contributed to the socio-economic development of the country with the resources at its disposal. Whether the progress made by the regime is good enough is for the people to pass judgement after diligent use of trend analyses of the progress made.
“This is very necessary because the good things of life are not inevitable but are attained through ceaseless hard work by both leaders and the citizens. The task of nation building is a continuous process. That is why challenges of nation building would always arise and the work of government is to confront them as they arise. That may explain why Jesus Christ could say ‘the poor would always be with you.’ Surely, the poor would always be with us but they would not be around and keep quiet. The poor are never docile,” Sani noted.