Controversial Enugu Catholic priest, Reverend Father Ejike Mbaka, hit out afresh yesterday at former President Goodluck Jonathan and the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for running the economy aground.
He said the party brought upon the country and the citizens the current hunger and hardship in the land.
Mbaka who was clarifying his recent statement ‘Bless and Be Blessed’ said it was largely misunderstood to mean that he attacked or blamed President Muhammadu Buhari for the economic crisis.
He said he merely drew the president’s attention to the level of suffering in the country and tried to suggest the way out.
Maximus Ike Ugwoke, spokesman for Fr. Mbaka, in a statement entitled “FR MBAKA’S ASSERTION ‘THERE IS HUNGER IN NIGERIA’, NOT AN ATTACK ON PRESIDENT BUHARI” quoted Mbaka as saying that the PDP, rather than apologise to Nigerians for its alleged misrule, has launched an “iniquitous planning about 2019 election for them to continue from where they stopped.”
“They should not be foolhardy,” he said.
“All these years of Jonathan, nothing happened in Niger-Delta specifically to be recorded in the annals of history. What a shame! What an embarrassment!
“The place where the oil has been coming from remained underdeveloped under a man from the same soil. If you go to Niger Delta today you will cry. But what worries me is that our people are good in shifting blames.”
Continuing, Mbaka said: “There is a sword that is moving about in the country. People are dying like flies. The sword of hunger is eating the land. And as I have told you this is just the beginning. If anybody is telling you it is going to be well very soon that person is deceiving you. “This is because many of us were among those that were alive during the years of the past government. The past PDP government was a grasshopper and locust to Nigerians.
“The past government was a disaster to the land of Nigeria; the past government was cancer to this country. There is no need trying to cover their incalculable and iniquitous mess. If you don’t feel it now, you will feel it later.
“The impact of their horrific mess is yet to be felt. It was a regime where hooliganism became a political slogan; where looting became the order of the day; where the neglect of youths became a pattern of administration. The result is what we are passing through now. Hunger is everywhere; the hunger was created before this new government came in. Buhari is not the maker of the hunger.”
According to the cleric, “The hunger was created during the Jonathan PDP administration but Buhari should abate the long procrastination, bureaucracy and slow methods in tackling it.
“Understand it very well. People will know the truth and the truth will set us free. Buhari is just an agent of change. The money in our treasury was nothing to write home about before this new regime came. The country was in an embarrassing mess.
“Apart from the petroleum that we sell and get money, what other means of foreign exchange do we have? The foundation of the Nigerian economy is oil which has now collapsed and the foundation once destroyed what will the just man do? Psalm 11:3. The past administration did not prepare this administration for this season. That is why the sword has risen. Many will die by this sword but there will be survivors.
“Somebody entered your kitchen carried your pot of soup, entered your store and farm, raked everything in the store and farm and ran away. And another person enters the kitchen where there is no pot at all and you want the person to turn the kitchen into a magical kitchen that will produce a magical pot and a magical soup, which soup?”
He added, “I am just telling President Buhari that people are hungry because he cannot not come to the street like me and notice people’s feelings. But Buhari is not the author of the hunger. The past government planted the tree of hunger and they want to come back to water it.
“If it is in a developed country by now from the Senators to the Reps, to the governors, all who participated in the last administration should have resigned with apologies to our youths; otherwise the youths one day will begin to stone them.
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