President Buhari’s recession speeches

In his speeches, President Muhammadu Buhari is not exaggerating the problem faced by his government today.

The shortage of funds to run his government has made him looked like a lackluster fellow to his countrymen, though he rode to power on the back of his mental and moral qualities.

Admittedly, the years of corruption by the men who previously occupied Aso Rock had made governance a tough game for Buhari who continues to soliloquize like an angry lover. But Buhari is inadvertently exacerbating the situation for millions of Nigerians.

In a moment like this, Buhari’s role as a salesman is important both to Nigerians and to the outsiders.

I agree that selling in a down economy, during tough times or a recession is different from selling in a strong economy, but a salesman must be careful with his message not to jeopardise tomorrow, when the slump is over.

The economic outlook is grim and deteriorating with the speed of a racing car. Everyone is impacted. We don’t really need a “Macedonian vision” to understand that Nigeria needs help. Even Buhari’s “body language” has not been able to do the magic as it is being referenced for increased electricity supply across the country.

When our national oil company, the NNPC, loses money as huge as N172 billion in just three months, it’s not something to cheer us. The reason is not hard to find. The loss will not just impact on NNPC or the federal government; there must be chain of reactions.

My point is this, if you haven’t been personally affected by this recession, you probably know someone who has – a friend; a neighbour; a member of your family. You don’t need another confusing statistics from the National Bureau of Statistics to know that our economy is in crisis, because you live it every day.

But when a president has no encouraging word for the nation, except to cause more fear, then you can imagine what will happen to that young man who has just lost his job.

Think of that couple that had to downgrade the school of their kids to be able to cough out the tuition and think of a man who had N1 million in his savings deposit the previous year aiming to invest it in a small business, but faced with tumultuous time of poor exchange rate now have just about N300,000 in the account. The recession is just everywhere and everyone is affected.

So when Buhari speaks, he must have the right words to lift us all up. Such speeches about no money in government to do anything shouldn’t be the lead story on the pages of our newspapers anymore. Buhari needs to take steps to recovery. It cannot be done by whining. His whining voice or petulant complains will not change things. It will only happen when Nigerians are inspired by his speeches.

Honestly, the palpable excitement generated by Buhari’s presidency has disappeared. Every moment of hope raised by Buhari himself has left Nigerians confused. What with his uninspiring speeches to a nation undergoing recession?

Buhari is definitely acting like a man in the middle of sexual intercourse who withdraws at exact time his woman has reached orgasm. It was not difficult for me to come to that conclusion after his recent statement about having ministers sit in cabinet meetings without portfolios with a simple justification of no money to pay salaries. Are they pro bono ministers? How are you going to hold them accountable, when they are not given real responsibilities, other than to answer the name of their states?

At a time everyone has commended him for his choice of ministers and Nigerians are looking forward to his government’s economic direction for everyone to begin the journey to recovery together, then he fired a salvo, no money to move forward. “Nigeria is broke,” Buhari said. But Buhari was not elected to complain. Nigerians knew things were not alright, so he was elected to fix and not to complain.

Rightly so, the constitution made it compulsory to appoint 36 ministers, but in the last five months since he came to power, Buhari could have made a request for amendment to that section of the constitution for the number of ministers Nigeria should have under his administration.

Without creative ideas to take the country forward and his inability to stimulate other sectors of the economy, Buhari continues to whine about lack of money to run the government more than five months after he took oath office as Nigeria’s President, yet he failed early to appoint finance minister or assemble an economic team to bring about the change.

When asked about his government’s slow action in addressing infrastructure, Buhari retorted: “Where is the money? You must have known that the Federal Government has to help 27 states out of 36 to pay salaries. Nigeria cannot pay salaries; the Federal Government itself has to summon the Governor of Central Bank on how it could pay salaries, not to talk of projects, agreements we signed with other countries on counterpart funding and so on.”

In 2009, when the United States was in a serious recession, the words of the country’s president were to inspire people and not push them into further depression. For instance, when America’s President Barack Obama was addressing the Congress during that period, he said: “The answers to our problems don’t lie beyond our reach. They exist in our laboratories and universities; in our fields and our factories; in the imaginations of our entrepreneurs and the pride of the hardest-working people on Earth. Now is the time to act boldly and wisely – to not only revive this economy, but to build a new foundation for lasting prosperity… Now is the time to jump-start job creation, re-start lending, and invest in areas like energy, health care, and education that will grow our economy, even as we make hard choices to bring our deficit down. That is what my economic agenda is designed to do, and that’s what I’d like to talk to you about tonight. It’s an agenda that begins with jobs.” I ask you, where’s Buhari’s recovery plan or his agenda for the jobs?

But now that Buhari is done with the retreat for his pro bono ministers and those with portfolios, I hope we can now take necessary steps to recovery. The message is clear on the wall: Nigerians are no longer at ease and things must not fall apart, because the arrow of God is not a purple hibiscus.

Follow me on Twitter: @adeola_akinremi

This article first appeared in THISDAY