[dropcap]P[/dropcap]ersonally, I’ve got no issues with a man being ‘innocently’ ignorant of certain things. We certainly can’t know everything.
Trouble arises when an ignorant man mixes his ignorance with a worrisome degree of arrogance and “I know-it-all-attitide”.
Nigeria is not in this current mess simply because our president is some poorly lettered 16th century-brained Septuagenarian. No! We are where we are today as a result of the fact that we have an arrogant, ignorant and unteachable old man with some terribly twisted Messianic complex as president.
Let’s not get it twisted, even an unlettered man with the mindset of the pre-medieval era can be schooled as long as he is willing to learn.
President Muhammadu Buhari’s biggest problem arises from the fact that he is so arrogant even in his ignorance, with an ego that is terribly too big for him. To make matters worse, he remains unteachable…always acting like he knows everything even when he knows very little. He sees himself as a Messiah of some sort….a man sent from heaven to deliver Nigerians. And it would seem to me that he is under some kind of illusion that he’s the only man who can ‘save’ Nigeria and Nigerians. Ironically, he is the biggest danger facing Nigeria and Nigerians right about now.
For over six months, Mr Buhari refused to appoint any minister. He ran the country the exact way a cattle farmer runs his cattle farm. This is a man with very limited education but rather than appoint well lettered people to help him pilot the affairs of the country, he chose to run the destiny of approximately 200 million people the way he handled his homosexual cows in daura. That singular act portrayed him as a man with some twisted mindset of being the only one out of millions of people who could get things done. (Although, this bunch of hopelessly incompetent Clowns led by that 1st class red beret-wearing accidental minister called Solomon Dalong he wasted 6 months searching for as ministers has made it seem like he should have simply continued running his “one man show”)
Even when it’s now very obvious that the economy is in a very terrible state and may take a very long time before recovering, Mr Buhari has continued to ignore calls to set up an economic team. He claims he has one already and has even taken a swipe at those asking for an economic team.
Now let’s look at some of those who make up the so called economic team he claims he has:
It is headed by the vice president Osibanjo who is a professor of law( not an economist)
We have Buhari’s chief of Staff; Abba Kyari as member. Mr. Kyari is a lawyer who got his Masters degree in law from Cambridge in 1984 (he is not an economist).
We have the minister of national planning; Udoma Udo Udoma who is equally a lawyer (not an economist) Don’t forget, this was the same man who couldn’t do a simple due diligence on an important document such as the 2016 budget despite the fact that he is the minister of budget and national planning.
We have the minister of trade and investment; Mr Okechukwu Enelamah who is a medical doctor by training.
We have a finance minister who is more of an accountant than an economist. The same ‘technical’ finance minister who didn’t even know for a fact whether the economy under her watch is on recession or not.
Where is the economic team here?
Is this the team any right thinking person should hang his hope on?? Is this the team we should trust to take us out of our present economic quandary?
Does it take a Ph.D. to know that you don’t set up a team made up of mostly lawyers and doctors and expect them to come up with workable plan and policies that would take your country out of recession??
Do we need to break Mr. Buhari skull to make him understand that by “economic team”, we mean a group of seasoned economists who went to school to read not law, not medicine, not engineering but ECONOMICS as a course. People who are experts in the field!
Do we really need to break this down in Fulani language for Mr. Buhari to understand it?
We have a CBN Governor Mr. Emefiele who was not allowed to take decision on whether or not the naira should be devalued and when finally, the almighty president decided on that, he still didn’t allow for the naira to be allowed to float freely.
The same president who refused to even make dollars available for students studying abroad and businessmen trying to resurrect the dead economy have now ordered the CBN to not only make dollars available to Muslim pilgrims but to equally subsidize same with not less than 7 billion naira by selling it to Muslim pilgrims at N197 per dollar. This is an economy currently on recession. This is a president that swore his govt would never fund religious pilgrimages. Apparently, he was referring to Christian pilgrimages.
Just take a few seconds to think of the negative impact this foolish ill-adviced decision would have on the economy which is currently in coma.
Does this sound like a decision a man with any ounce of gray matters upstair would take?
Is anyone still in doubt that what we now have under this unlettered highly vindictive ethnic cum Islamic bigot called Buhari is a COWntry not a Country?
For shame!!
Charles Ogbu is a social media activist. Connect with him on Facebook.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.
