Continuing the blame game

 

With pressures from an economy in recession it was not surprising that President Muhammadu Buhari in letting off steam inveighed against what he claimed as the decadence left for him by 16 years of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP in power. President Buhari addressing the guests during the launch of the National Re-Orientation Campaign "Change Begins with Me" at the State House Conference Centre (SHCC) in Abuja. President Buhari … “I want Nigerians to realise that what this government inherited after 16 years of the PDP government was no savings, no infrastructure, no power, no rail, no road and no security,” the president said in reference to the challenges that are seemingly bringing his once messianic image to ground zero. Noting his achievements, he said: “Nigerians can see what we have done on Boko Haram and what we are doing to resolve the problem in the Niger Delta,” he said. The president’s assertion has continued to draw mixed results from all quarters. While PDP partisans dismissed his claim, his supporters in the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, are reiterating it as a fact that the PDP at the federal level and in states that they governed practically left delusion as they left. The lamentation at the federal level is well echoed in some states, especially in Edo which is due to choose a new governor this month and also in Benue State. Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue State had in an interview with Vanguard referred to the rot he met and how those who left the rot are making governance difficult for him. “I met a depressed economy, a deficit treasury where salaries and contracts were not being paid and several other things including pensions and gratuity amounting billions of Naira,” the governor had said. Noting how he is being tackled, he said: “I came at a time that the opposition are out blackmailing instead of joining hands with me to work for the progress and development of the state,” the governor said. Governor Ortom remarkably was a part of the PDP having been a local government official, state official, national auditor of the party before his appointment as a minister in the PDP government. Indeed, he left the party for the APC just about two weeks to the APC governorship primaries in 2014. Indeed, as President Buhari arrived Katsina, he was received by Governor Aminu Masari who was himself a member of the PDP and attained the position of the country’s number four citizen as speaker of the House of Representatives. President Buhari’s assertion of the failures of the PDP remarkably are interestingly the focus of discussion among some of his own party members. The joke among many of them is that a large proportion of those in his government were until recently members of the PDP, a fact that continues to bemuse many of them who led the campaign for Buhari’s emergence as president. However, not all former government officials who served on the platform of the PDP are under constraint to remain mute. Eyes are looking up to former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who in frustration of the machinations of the PDP during the last days of President Goodluck Jonathan publicly tore his PDP membership card. However, given his legendary temper, many are of the opinion that Obasanjo could be provoked to open his mouth and when and if he does, the shape and structure of national discourse could dramatically be altered.