Ahead of the March 28, 2015 presidential
elections, many promises were made by all the political parties to woo
voters. Most of the promises centered on how to solve the many problems
facing Nigerians at that time.
Many of the promises sounded unreal. But
politicians threw them at Nigerians at campaign grounds without giving a
thought to how to fulfil them in case the elections went their ways.
They must have consoled themselves with the thinking that they would
cross the bridge when they got there. Many Nigerians also did not bother to
ask questions. So far the promises were made by their favourite
candidates or political party, they would applaud them. In fact, they
joined in sharing these promises on the social media.
At that time, the All Progressives
Congress was bent on taking over the government at the centre from the
then ruling party, the Peoples Democratic Party. So its chieftains
rolled out these promises to achieve the change they were aiming at.
They even set deadline for some of the promises, saying they would be
fulfilled within the first 100 days of APC government at the centre.
As it is now, many of the promises have
yet to be fulfilled. Apart from that, the reality is even that some of
them will never be fulfilled judging by the body language of President
Muhammadu Buhari.
The President’s wife, Aisha, saw it
coming as early as November last year when her husband was barely six
months in the saddle. A statement was issued from her office quoting her
appealing to the APC leaders not to renege on their electoral promises
to Nigerians.
Specifically, Mrs. Buhari called on the
party to ensure that it fulfilled its promises of paying N5,000 to 25
million unemployed Nigerians and giving school children one free meal a
day. Her call was contained in a three-paragraph statement made
available to journalists by her media aide, Adebisi Olumide-Ajayi. The call came on the heels of the
decision of the Senate to shut down a motion seeking to compel the Upper
Chamber of the National Assembly to ask Buhari to fulfil the party’s
promise of paying unemployed Nigerians.
The statement read, “The wife of the
President, Her Excellency Aisha Buhari, has appealed to the ruling
party, the All Progressives Congress, not to renege on its campaign
promise of paying N5,000 to 25 million unemployed Nigerians and giving
schoolchildren one free meal a day. This comes after the senators from
the party voted against the senate moving a motion calling on the
Presidency to pay the N5,000 allowance.
“Speaking further, Mrs. Buhari said the
APC is a party of integrity and had assured Nigerians during the
campaign that it would pay N5,000 each month to 25 million most
vulnerable citizens. The wife of the president asked Nigerians to be
patient with the APC government as the change they had been yearning for
had come to stay.”
It was a motherly intervention; very apt
and timely. I am however aware that attempts were made on the day it
was released to recall the statement for whatever reasons best known to
those behind the idea. But it was too late.
I do not know what transpired between
the President and his wife after he must have read her statement which
was widely reported in the newspapers. I can only guess that the issue
would have come up during informal discussions between the two of them. Three months after, the President last
week revealed what he could have told his wife on the matter. In far
away Saudi Arabia, Buhari ruled out the payment of N5, 000 monthly
allowances to unemployed youths in the country as promised by his party
ahead of the presidential election.
The President’s statement, which
dismissed the N5,000 as largesse, again confirmed the position of some
of his critics who had in the past expressed displeasure at the fact
that Buhari always chooses to pass important messages to Nigerians
during his visits abroad.
The President’s Saudi pronouncement
contrasts sharply with those of some APC government officials who had,
at different times and on various occasions, assured Nigerians that the
fund to implement the promised allowance had been provided for in the
2016 budget, which is currently before the National Assembly.
The President, who was on a one-week
official visit to Saudi Arabia and Qatar, said during an interactive
session in Saudi Arabia that he could not pay those not employed. He
said he had a “slightly different priority” from the position of his
party on the payment of N5, 000 to unemployed youths, which he described
as “largesse.” The President said rather than paying unemployed youths,
his administration would build infrastructure and empower able-bodied
men to work.
“This largesse, N5,000 for the
unemployed, I have got a slightly different priority. I would rather do
the infrastructure, the school and correct them and empower agriculture,
mining so that every able-bodied person can go and get work instead of
giving N5, 000 to those who don’t work,” Buhari declared.
I said it here last weekend that the
President speaks from his heart whenever he decides to speak.That Saudi
declaration was another confirmation. He is not a typical Nigerian
politician who will see a black substance and claim it is white.
In an informal interaction during the
week, a top APC chief told me that the truth of the matter is that many
of the promises made by the party ahead of the election are strange to
the President. He said many of them were only brought to his notice
after winning the election. He added that a pamphlet containing some of
these promises had to be made available to him in order to convince him.
As far as I am concerned, however,
Buhari cannot successfully detach himself from the promises made by a
party on whose platform he is currently occupying the Villa. He must
heed the advice of Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo State who said on
Monday that “it (jobseekers’ allowance) is a great idea, we have to do
it one way or the other as time comes.
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PLEASE BE POLITE