Garba Shehu, Others, Time To Stop Finger Pointing

Shehu

The political atmosphere is charging for general elections next year. It is palpable in the air, and only the uninitiated could have missed it. It is also that time when men who pay scant attention to history are condemned to repeat it and live with its consequences. The Jonathanians-apologises to Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State, are still licking their wounds.

Because men fail to learn from history, the pit that swallowed the President Goodluck Jonathan administration, may yet swallow the President Muhammadu Buhari administration in 2019. All thanks to men they choose to be their faces and voices to Nigerians.

At the run up to the 2015 generation elections, there were three men who represented the face of the government of Goodluck Jonathan. His Senior Special Assistant on Media, Reuben Abati; Dr Doyin Okupe; and spokesman of the Goodluck Jonathan Presidential Campaign Organisation, Chief Femi Fani-Kayode. With the exception of Fani-Kayode, the rest was utterly useless. Abati represented everything that a spokesman of a president should not be.

Instead of Jonathan’s image-makers telling Nigerians what Jonathan had achieved in his five years as president, they concentrated their attacks on the person of General Muhammadu Buhari, the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC). They even made a documentary attacking him. Jonathan achieved a lot, not the least of which was the establishment of 12 federal universities to make education available to children at remotest parts of Nigeria and linking Abuja and Kaduna by rail and completing some power stations. The list was many, but Jonathan’s men obfuscated these while fearing mongering on the dangers of electing Buhari was the order of the day.

Today history is about to repeat itself. Of course it is said that history does not repeat itself. It is men that repeat history.

Recently the senior special assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari, Malam Garba Shehu, said the Buhari administration would not stop talking about the damage done by the past administrations and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). He was apparently reacting to complaints by Nigerians that the administration’s blame game is getting out of hand.

After three years in power the Muhammadu Buhari administration has made some remarkable achievements, but instead of emphasizing on those, his media managers are more concerned with what Nigerians should fear about the return of the PDP in 2019. Even though Goodluck Jonathan is not going to be on the ballot paper in 2019 they are busy digging out stories about him, while many Nigerians are scratching their heads asking, “what changes have Buhari made in our lives?”

In any case accusing PDP of corruption sounds hollow to many Nigerians especially coming from Garba Shehu. His Oga before, former vice president Atiku Abubakar was elected on the platform of PDP and occupied the position for eight years. If PDP was (is) a party of looters, then Atiku was a looter as vice president. And even if Shehu was not a card carrying member of PDP, for working for Atiku, he was a beneficiary of loots.

Most members of the APC are former PDP members. When presidential spokespersons say that PDP looted our treasury, they are invariably indicting the president’s party leaders.

Most governors in APC today were former PDP members. Rochas Okorcha (Imo); Nasir El-Rufai (Kaduna); Abubakar Bello (Niger); Ortom (Benue); Bello (Kogi); Masari (Katsina); Gandunje (Kano); Tambuwal (Sokoto); Lalong (Plateau); Al-makura (Nasarawa); Bagudu (Kebbi);  Bindow (Adamawa); Abdulfattah Ahmed (Kwara); Abubakar (Bauchi) etc.

Former PDP governors in APC include; Senator Chris Ngige (Anambra); Chibuike Amaechi (Rivers); Sylva (Bayelsa); Kwankwaso (Kano); Wamakko (Sokoto); Akume (Benue); Goje (Gombe), Gaya (Kano); Aliero (Kebbi). The list is endless. Are they saying that only those left in PDP presently are looters while these ones are saints?

The era of painting PDP with one brush is gone. It is no longer selling. That was why when the vice president, Yemi Osinbajo alleged recently that Jonathan spent N150billion in two weeks, Nigerians generally ignored it. Such unsubstantiated allegations from this government no longer move them. They now see such outlandish claim as ways of distracting them and providing cover for the government’s failures.

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The Buhari administration should learn from the pitfalls of the Jonathan administration. The spokespersons should lay more emphasis on the achievements of Buhari. Attacking and declaring any person or group of persons that questions the government’s activities as looters is counter-productive.