By Aminu Mustapha Ibrahim
Initially in their bid to blackmail and undermine the Buhari administration, they experimented with creation of artificial food scarcity through massive purchase and exportation of grains, knowing fully well it means to subject the common man to a state of hunger and the implication of such on the president’s massive grass-root support.
Thanks to the government’s agricultural revolution programme as well as the strong confidence the masses have in the president’s that antic had failed and woefully too.
Then they went further to deploy what they thought would be the mother-of-all tactic by way of exploiting the fault-lines and masterminding killings, particularly in the North Central zone, where ethnic cum religious configurations are
at the height; all in a bid to change the narrative regarding the aged-old Herdsman-farmers conflict, through a conspiracy theory that indicts and portrays the government as an accomplice.
Thanks to the quick and massive response by the security forces and other patriotic groups and elements in the society, that antic also not only crumbled like pack of cards, it,indeed, ultimately, shored up the popularity of the regime, being the exact opposite of what the reactionary forces initially envisaged.
And, these same unpatriotic forces are those that are trying to pose the issue regarding the 2019 , presidential election, as one that fundamentally revolves around the economy, which they claim has become comparatively worse under this regime.
But if what they mean by economic turn around simply suggests a return to the old order of doing things, characterised, as they were, by unrestrained looting of the public treasury, circulation of huge unearned income that creates false impression of economic prosperity, the flamboyancy and ostentations that characterised the life style of the top segment of the largely parasitic elite class that fed almost exclusively on a settlement culture which defined the past administrations; then we must be prepared to engage in a sustained struggle will ensure that those who have serial indictments hanging over their heads, both within and abroad, are not entrusted with power and hence, control over the machinery of state policy only to manipulate it largely in the line largely with their whims and caprices.
We must insist that those who shall be vested with the responsibility of turning around the economy must be people of proven integrity to whom we can safely entrust our common patrimony.