Senate President Bukola Saraki says Nigerians are not concerned about who is responsible for the present economic hardship, but about how to end it.
However, he admitted that the present economic problems were caused by past administrations.
“During this year’s Sallah as it is my tradition, I had close interaction with a cross section of my people in Kwara central, including the aged, youths, market women, and leaders of thought,” he said on Tuesday at the resumption of the senate.
“I believe many of you did the same. I recall unforgettably, how one of the women came straight to me with a look of utter desperation and all she could mutter out was, ‘please our senator, do what you can to put an end to this suffering; it is becoming unbearable’.
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“I don’t know what your experience was, but if your experience mirrored mine, then the challenge before us could not have been made clearer.
“The words of this woman reverberated across the hall with such unison that it was impossible to underestimate the desperation in the land. In the last couple of days, I have interacted with many of you here, and it has become even clearer to me that the situation is virtually the same all across the country.
“During my interaction, which I described above, I remember trying to explain to my people that this kind of thing does not happen overnight; that the seeds for the condition that we suffer from today must have been planted by past administrations that refused to do what was necessary.
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“However, I soon realised that my people are not so interested in how we got here or who to blame for our current situation. They only wanted to know that government has plans to get them out of this current predicament. To them, the only explanation that makes sense at the moment is that which puts food on the table, reduces price of rice, garri, salt, sugar, meat and saves jobs.”
Saraki said it was clear that “desperately” hungry Nigerians were in need of urgent solutions to their problems, and as such, leaders must be visionary.
“It is clear to me that when people are desperately hungry, what they need is leadership with a clear vision, leadership whose daily actions reflects the very urgency of the people’s condition,” he said.
“Therefore, our response to the current challenge must be dictated by the urgency of the hardship that the people suffer on a daily basis.”
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3 comments
You are a liar Saraki….Nigerians are interested in who is responsible for our present predicament….That way we can continue to wait for the right time to strike during the revolution that will eventually happen if people like you don’t go to jail…..
Well cleverly said my honorable Senator. The reality is, in my view, Nigerianse are not saying anything new when it comes to crying about hunger for food, such as rice, beans, gari, semovita, meat, and now ndomi noddle. Traditionally and across the country, we Nigerians are used to hand outs and we’ve been fed with bags of rice and semovita during elections, on fridays, during festivals, and at every opportunity presented for our leaders to give us our own fair share of the so called ‘national cake’. Unfortunately, most of us are ignorant of certain facts that got us all to the deplorable state we now find ourselves – our poor state of economy as an oil rich nation.
So, how can someone not start telling us how we got here in the first place if our leaders will not tell how, and before we start making the same old mistakes, and before we start asking for something for nothing? As crude,unfair, and cruel my line of thinking this may appear, I think until we really begin to get to the root of our problems, we may just be treating symptoms rather than the cause of illness.
Bottom line is we need to be told that most of the food items, such as rice, can no longer be imported. Most market women generally educated and stay educated on so many issues that business just can’t be as usual again if we want a good life for our children and generations to come. The old thinking of living for today by eating rice, beans, and semovita without learning how to produce them ourselves is never going to work in a long term.
The blaming game on how we got here can’t be ignored because the opposition party will not stop calling for the president to resign from office because he, they say, he can’t his promo of change happen a year and half into office. We all know it’s an uphill battle, if not an impossible task for any president at all to make a quick-fix out of many decades of bad governance and ignorant followership.
You’ve just wasted out time confusing yourself with grammar without saying anything tangible. This is exactly what Buhari has been doing for 1.5 years now.
Virtually and physically he has grounded the Nigerian economy yet he refuses to take the blame, and he is so shamelessly sitting tight i office.
Buhari and Saraki should resign.