The Vanguard paper Abuja Bureau Chief, Emma
Ujah in an editorial of September 6th captioned
" How America, West frustrated Jonathan’s anti-Boko
Haram war,"
did a very adroit job of defending the
administration of Goodluck Jonathan on its failure
to purchase weapons and invariably to process its
war against Boko Haram.
Emma Ujah quietly laid down in the article, as if it
was new news, that the US hindered Jonathan's
ability to purchase needed weapons and that this
frustrated the anti-terror war. He said,
"A security source disclosed ...that Nigeria,
under ... Jonathan, wrote 25 letters to the United
States of America and other Western nations,
seeking to acquire state of the art weapons to deal
decisively with the terrorists. However, they all
turned down the requests, the source said. What
was most painful was the fact that Nigeria was not
begging to be given those weapons as gifts. We
were ready to pay for them but they turned their
backs on us when we needed them most."
Also Read: Ezeife accuses Buhari of running a
northern agenda
The immediate question that arose in the mind of
any reader who perused the article was, if so, then
where is our money? Where are the billions that
the article says Jonathan was "ready to pay for
them" with?
In the 5 years of Jonathan's administration as
with the overall 16 years of PDP rule, Nigeria
enjoyed some of its largest oil sale rate-based
earnings in history. At an average of over $100/
barrel, with billions of barrels pumped out of the
Niger Delta soils every year, Nigeria should have
earned over $100 billion every year, without
stealing, that is.
The International Business Times in an article this
June, captioned, " Goodluck Jonathan's
Administration Spent Trillions On Nigerian National
Security In Past Five Years, Yet Boko Haram
Remains: Report ," said, "Jonathan's administration
spent a whopping 4.62 trillion naira or $23.2 billion
on national security over the past five years,"
quoting PremiumTimes.
So, Jonathan was "frustrated" by the US and could
not buy weapons, but had and spent a budget of
$23.2 billion mostly for this purpose and indebted
Nigeria with a further loan of $1 billion in late 2014
again for this same purpose, where is the money?
You just cannot have it both ways. If the Jonathan
government was frustrated by the US after writing
over 25 letters and could not buy arms which at
least $20 billion of that budget was for then we do
hope the money is intact and was handed over to
President Buhari and Osinbajo, no?
I'm thinking of a story where a mother sent her son
to the market to buy provisions and he came back
without the provisions and without the money? Who
got the money? Bandits? Boko Haram? Idriss
Deby? Ihejirika? Patience will tell I guess.
Other factors that need mention are, why didn't the
PDP administrations for their 16 years buy any
weapons? Same reasons? When Jonathan was
"frustrated" and couldn't get weapons from the
West, what did he do for the 5 years? Why did he
not inform Nigerians of the frustration-based
failure so the nation can decide what to do including
possibly organizing an exigent emptying of the
northeast of all human life which the Jonathan
government had realized it will not be able to fulfill
its constitutional obligation of protecting? These
questions can go on and on.
We plead the media has empathy on us and
respects our intelligence without giving us such
horrible old tales to read that are only further
incriminating of the former PDP administrations.
Nigerians have moved on. We will probe and
prosecute the former administration on its war
failures and corruption successes and no radio or
print media station can obstruct us from that.
- MyNews24
No comments:
Post a Comment