Afenifere, Junaid Mohammed, Opadokun react to Buhari’s Democracy Day speech

News / BY Nwafor

President Buhari By Clifford Ndujihe, Dapo Akinrefon & Dirisu Yakubu Nigerians yesterday reacted to President Muhammadu Buhari’s Democracy Day broadcast,with some showering him praises while others gave him hard knocks.

It didn’t address our problems — Afenifere

The pan-Yoruba socio-political organisation, Afenifere, said it was more of a campaign outing because it failed to address the issues confronting the country.

Afenifere National Publicity Secretary, Mr. Yinka Odumakin said: “The speech of the President on June 12 is more of a campaign outing. Where he should be giving reports of achievements, it was about declarations of intentions and promises of action. If you have failed to address corruption, security and economy in five years, what magic do you want to perform in one year? One year because the last two years would be about the politics of next elections. We do not see any concrete steps on the ground for future success. All we see leads to failure.”

Opadokun concurs National Publicity Secretary of the National Democratic Coalition, NADECO, Chief Ayo Opadokun, shared Afenifere’s views adding that the broadcast was aspirational.

Opadokun said: “All that the president has said are aspirational, he has not addressed any of the issues. For instance, the State of the Economy has not witnessed any significant and qualitative upliftment as a result of the centralist and unitary governance.

“To compound the matter, the President and his government also failed in his promise to trim government bureaucracy in order to reduce the cost of governance. As we speak today, Nigeria’s recurrent expenditure remains between 75% -80% of the country’s total earning. How can the Nigerian State justifies the disproportionate pay and emoluments of politicians in the midst of abject poverty of most Nigerians?

“Unemployment is still intolerably high while the standard of living of our people remains intolerably poor. In spite of the social investment programme, Trader money, N-Power projects e.t.c., the latest indicators of the world body on Human Development Index put Nigeria within the bracket of the World War ravaged areas— Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, Pakistan and others in that category. Given the Godly endowment of Nigeria in Human and Natural resources, Nigeria, and its citizens deserve better qualitative lives.” 

It falls short of expectation—Junaid Mohammed On his part, Second Republic politician, Dr. Junaid Mohammed slammed the President’s speech saying it fell short of expectation.

Mohammed said: “As far as I am concerned, where a president has been elected and has not been able to fulfil his promises and then, he is rehashing his campaign promises expecting that people will believe him, I think it is an insult to the intelligence of the people of the country. If he (Buhari) said he has delivered on his promises, has he delivered on what he promised on security? As far as I am concerned, he has not.

“Also, he has not been able to deliver as far the economy is concerned. I don’t believe that the country is in a stable situation. I have a saying as a Muslim and this comes directly from Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). He said: ‘If you are shameless, do what you like, say what you want.’

“To me, for a person in such a position to make a statement which was written for him which is not true, is trying to completely diminish the country, diminish the government and diminish whatever it is that we call democracy.

“Democracy is not a licence to tell lies to your own people. If you can open your mouth and give a false account to the people, to me, you have contempt for the people you are governing. If a leader has contempt for the people he is governing, then, we are in very serious trouble.

share this story with friends