Nigeria Is Drifting Under GEJ..Buhari

The Presidency and former Head of State, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) on Saturday traded blame over insecurity and corruption.

While the National Leader of Congress for Progressive Change, said Nigeria was drifting “hopelessly,” the Presidency said he was part of the problems facing the country.

Buhari said anarchy was “already knocking on the door of many sections of the country” and that the Federal Government had not demonstrated anything to show that it has the capacity to address the situation.

The former presidential candidate of CPC said this at the national convention of his party in Abuja on Saturday, where CPC agreed to merge with other opposition parties and political associations to form the All Progressive Congress.

Prominent among the parties in the merger are the Action Congress of Nigeria the All Nigeria Peoples Party; and a faction of the All Progressive Grand Alliance led by Governor of Imo State Rochas Okorocha.

At the CPC convention, Buhari said it was unfortunate that some areas of the nation were turning into war zones.

He said President Goodluck Jonathan’s Transformation Agenda had, within the space of three years, “transformed the country into a veritable wilderness, where everything that should work, doesn’t and where everything that can get broken has.”

Saying all the promises made by the government had failed, he added that the government was neck deep in corruption.

He said, “Some areas of the nation are virtual war zones in a country supposedly at peace. Whole local governments in some states in the North-East are no-go areas to representatives of constituted authority.

“Marauders of every description armed to the teeth with all manner of sophisticated armaments roam the national landscape with total and murderous impunity. The patience of this nation and the various communities within it has been severely tried and stretched to its limits. And there is no end in sight.

“Anarchy is knocking on the door of many sections of this country and the Federal Government has not demonstrated that it has the good sense to understand what is going onn or the competence to check it.

“The nation is hopelessly adrift. But, if we are to survive, this vicious circle of violence that has engulfed this nation must be brought to an end, and we implore the National Assembly to take the lead in this quest for peace.”

He decried what he called the “unprecedented fall in the nation’s standards and an astronomical rise in the standard of dying” in the country, adding that in Nigeria, nothing was going right and that the nation had become a nation in which nothing worked as it should.

While calling on Nigerians to move to save their country, saying the coming together of the opposition parties was one of the ways to salvage the nation, Buhari appealed to members of the APC to be ready to make sacrifices in order to move the nation forward.

The former Head of State said, henceforth, Nigerians’ votes must count and that the opposition would no longer tolerate the mayhem, which, according to him, the government allegedly created in order to cover up its guilt.

“And we will no longer be intimidated anymore,” Buhari declared.

The Presidency however said it was unfortunate that Buhari’s comments were only meant to destabilise the country. It added that the retired general should not be taken seriously on his claim that the country  was drifting  under Jonathan.

The Special Adviser to the President on Political Matters, Dr. Ahmed Gulak, in a telephone interview with one of our correspondents, said as far as the present administration was concerned, Buhari should be ignored because he was not sincere in his claims.

The presidential aide said, “Buhari should be ignored by Nigerians. He is not sincere in his claims. He is a serial election failure and he is ready to say anything in his bid to destabilise the country.

“Buhari is part of Nigeria’s problems, so it is better for him and his team to remain on the sideline. He should be ignored because he is not saying the truth.

“Contrary to his claims, President Jonathan is transforming this country and will continue to do so and make life more meaningful for Nigerians.”