By Folarin Ademosu
President Muhammadu Buhari and 3rd Deputy Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Sheikh Sultan Bin Zayed
President Muhammadu Buhari has continued to take the flak for his frequent foreign trips. Since he became Nigeria’s president 29 May, 2015, Buhari has visited no fewer than 18 countries and packed hefty bills in travel expenses.
The president has visited the United States, the UN General Assembly, South Africa, Niger, Chad, Cameroun, Germany, Ghana, France, India, Iran, Malta, Kenya and Ethiopia. Again, Buhari last week departed the country to visit Qatar and Saudi Arabia, including observing the Lesser Hajj in Medina.
To critics, President Buhari’s foreign trips suggest fecklessness and display insensitivity akin to 54 AD Emperor Nero – who played violin while Rome burnt. The majority consider the president’s frequent foreign trips ill-purposed and occurring at a time of economic haemorrhage.
Buhari’s cabinet ministers Lai Mohammed (Information) and Amina Mohammed (Environment) responded that the trips would ultimately benefit the country’s struggling economy. Characteristic of Lai Mohammed, he added for good measure that Nigeria had almost become “a pariah state” before Buhari’s emergence as president and his “personal presence in many of these (international) fora is important”.
While the Information minister’s allusion to Nigeria sliding into a pariah state might be fallacious, it was undoubted that Buhari inherited a polity deeply sunk in political, economic and moral quicksand.
The troubling revelations from the various ongoing corruption investigations and prosecutions have shown how a rapacious infinitesimal political and economic ruling class superintended one of the biggest heists in the country’s history. The official banditry and impunity of public servants in the immediate past administration was a perfect remake of obnoxious gusto displayed by Nigeria’s 1980s king of the underworld Lawrence Anini. The otherwise public servant culpable in the primitive thievery couldn’t give a hoot and were …Read More
Source:: PM Newspaper
