Democracy under threat By Uche Secondus

                                             

MY view on the above topic as the leader of the main opposition party in the country is not going to be fundamentally different from that of the rest of Nigerians. As objective as one would want to be even as an opposition person you cannot but score the three years of the administration poor and below average in all ramifications.             

The only reason why some generous teachers award certain marks to a badly written work is for the sympathy of the ink and the paper used.                         

Similarly, why anybody outside those driven by selfish interests should take a critical examination of Nigeria in the last 36 months and claims he or she has seen something to eulogize about the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, and President Muhammadu Buhari is because something just needed to be given out.

Recall that this government rode to power clutching their magic change propaganda promising to do wonders in so many areas particularly in the area of Economy, Security and Democracy. Since propaganda in its deceitful ingredients can take you into government but cannot help you in governance, here we are three years after.

Economy: I am not going to say much in the area of economy because this is an area this government has shown glaringly that it lacked the wherewithal to make reasonable change in our economy. When we in the opposition were shouting that this government is directionless in the area of economy, we were not taken seriously until bill gate came and told them that their economic blueprint is not good for their people. They promised to turn the economy around within one year, in three years they have dragged us into recession, devalued our currency from 365 naira to a dollar from about 186 naira to a dollar they met. They claimed that PDP administration was hiding under fuel subsidy to embezzle money that nothing really existed as subsidy. Google for yourself and see what PDP spent as subsidy in 16 years and what the APC government has spent in three years and judge for yourself. Whatever you see is despite the hiking of petrol product prize from N97 per liter to N145 per liter. Am not going to talk about the state of our industries in the past three years, the cost of poor power performance etc.         
              
Security: This is one area that this administration came brandishing the credentials of the President as a General and a nonsense person who will send Boko Haram packing within 100 days of entering government. They came using the weapons already purchased by PDP administration to chase way the sect from certain parts of the country and even entered the notorious Sambisa forest. Typical of them they made all the noise and took some civil society groups and the media to the forest where they established the so called ground zero. The media should ask them for an update what they celebrated two years ago as technically defeated. The media should ask them to furnish the public numbers of Nigerian civilians and soldiers killed since they came into office. While the Chibok girls who they claimed PDP government mismanaged is still not settled we have had the curious case of Dapchi girls with all the suspicion around its handling. Do I need to belabor the menace of herdsmen that has killed hundreds of Nigerians across the country with government clearly unable to provide solutions? They cannot even look at the terrorists herds group and tag them what they really are terrorists Groups. Instead what you hear from the ‘General’ is lamentations of the herdsmen coming from Libya and all that. In summary my take in the three years of APC in Nigeria is that the country has never been this insecure and disunited since after the civil war.   
               
Democracy: This is one area where the predictions of all pundits came through. Despite the claims of APC then that their flag bearer was a new creature and a converted democrat and that with him old things of the uniform era has passed away, three years after,    the fear for our democracy is as real as sunlight. Since 1999 this democracy has never been as threatened as it is today. All institutions of democracy are under stress. The legislature is permanently harassed by the agencies of government ditto the Judiciary. Not even in the dark days of General Abacha did security operatives invade homes of Justices and Judges at the dead of the night the way we witnessed under their watch. Just recently in Port Harcourt a serving Minister took operatives armed to the teeth to stop court from delivering ruling they suspect would be against them. What kind of democracy are they offering?
                                                                   
- Prince Secondus is the National Chairman of the main opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP

Source: Vanguard