''On Tuesday the 7th of November, 2017, President Buhari presented an N8.6 trillion budget proposal for 2018 which he styled as a budget of consolidation. A cursory look at the budget, however, shows that the only thing that it consolidates on is the fact that this administration lives by borrowing.
Young people who are applauding President Buhari’s so-called budget of consolidation should be aware that it is largely funded by debt that they and their children will keep paying off long after President Buhari’s has quit the scene. In short, Buhari will spend, but they will pay.
To show you how this administration has mortgaged the future of Nigerian youths, a full one-quarter of the entire budget, or N2.014 trillion, will be spent on debt servicing. Mind you, debt servicing means that only the interest is being paid, not the capital borrowed. Under the Peoples Democratic Party, Nigeria was doing debt repayment!
My question to those Nigerians celebrating President Buhari’s N8.6 trillion budget is this, what did you gain from the N7.44 billion he budgeted last year? No infrastructure, late or no salary payment, hyperinflation?
And I laughed when the President talked about improving healthcare. If the Buhari administration can’t successfully manage Aso Rock clinic that is under their nose, how do you think they can manage the nation’s health sector?
And even Femi Adesina, the President’s spokesman, got tired of listening to the fairytale his boss was presenting on Tuesday at the 2018 budget presentation that he fell asleep. I tweeted the picture on my Twitter Timeline. Can you blame him?
Former President Jonathan never budgeted up to 5 trillion but we felt the impact of his budgets.
Each year President Buhari budgets twice the amount of money that Jonathan budgeted yet every year Nigerians get twice the suffering they had under PDP. Jonathan never budgeted more than N4.6 trillion. Buhari regularly budgets N8 trillion and above (N8.6 trillion is his latest budget). How come Nigerians paid N87 Naira per liter of fuel and N8,000 for a 50kg bag of rice under Jonathan’s N4.2 trillion budget and N145 for fuel and N20,000 for rice under President Buhari’s N8.6 trillion budget? Yet Jonathan was allegedly corrupt while Buhari is allegedly a man of integrity?
And immediately after the budget presentation, the administration went back to its favorite past time: Blame Gaming former President Jonathan.
Sometimes I wonder if President Buhari has an unnatural attraction to the handsome former President Jonathan with the way he is always mentioning his name.
Buhari mentions Jonathan more than he mentions Aisha’s name! Is this normal? If he can’t perform in the economy (and perhaps in other places) it is Jonathan. He goes to London for treatment, it is Jonathan that caused it. The ‘technically’ defeated Boko Haram attacks a military base, it is Jonathan. Are we sure that President Buhari does not see Jonathan pursuing him in his dreams? Or does Jonathan make him have wet dreams?
Could it be that the President and members of his administration are living in one big bubble? If not, why do they persist in the fallacy that things in Nigeria are heavenly today, whereas they were hell under the PDP?
On Wednesday the 8th of November, 2017, the minister of information who is aptly named Lai (pronounced Lie) Mohammed said:
”It will be a tragedy for Nigeria to fall back into the hands of PDP. They dropped us in hell and we are taking people out of hell.”
For those who may buy into Lai’s PDP is hell, APC is heaven analogy let me ask you if the Federal Government (not state) ever owed you salary under PDP? How much was petrol under PDP? What was the exchange rate of the dollar under PDP? If APC is heaven, Nigerians would rather go to hell!
On the day former President Jonathan handed over to President Buhari, your ?18,000 minimum wage could buy you:
* 18 bags of cement
* 2 bags of 50kg rice
* A return ticket to Abuja from Lagos.
Today your ?18,000 can’t buy you even half of each of the items above, yet Buhari says he has ‘fixed’ Nigeria and Lai Mohammed calls the new improved Nigeria under President Muhammadu Buhari heaven? Really?
In this ‘heaven’ of Lai Mohammed, herdsmen kill Nigerians in Plateau state almost on a daily. How many people were killed in the Southeast before the President sent troops there for ‘Operation Python Dance’? When will he send troops for an Operation Herdsmen Dance in Plateau? Or is this the President’s population control strategy?
The Nigerian Army that was willing to kill 347 Shiite men, women, children and infant because Shiites delayed the convoy of the chief of army staff is now suddenly paralyzed in the face of herdsmen who are daily killing Nigerians in their tens and sometimes hundreds in Plateau and all over the Middle Belt!
Would the fact that these killer herdsmen are of the same ethnicity as President Buhari have anything to do with the Nigerian Army’s unwillingness to deal with them the way they dealt with Shiites and IPOB and the government’s refusal to classify them as terrorists even when the World Economic Forum tags them, terrorists?
And Nigerians will just keep pretending the Head of Service did not expose President Buhari as a liar and his anti-corruption war as a farce?
The only cloth the emperor had was anti-corruption. Now that the Maina affair has unclothed him, shall we pretend the emperor is not naked?
Has someone performed mass hypnosis on Nigerians? One man at the NNPC awarded $25 billion worth of contracts without due process. The board did not meet. The Vice President denied approving the contracts. And now the President presents a budget where he will borrow $5.5 billion and we are quiet!
Last month when I said that Evans the kidnapper should join the All Progressive Congress if he wants his freedom, the APC attacked me. Apparently, Maina took my advice!
That is why when President Buhari reminded Nigerians that the whistleblower lines were still open during his budget presentation, I sincerely believed that the President should have used the line he was advertising to blow the whistle on himself for his immense failure of leadership on all fronts.
But I don’t blame him. I blame those 15 million Nigerians who believed that a man who should be in a retirement home quietly collecting his pension would be able to fulfill his promises of ‘three million jobs per year’ and ‘ensure that the Naira was equal to the dollar in value if voted into office’!''
Reno’s Nuggets
''How can a congregation offering build a school whose fees is too exorbitant for the very children of the congregation whose offerings paid for it? How can a shepherd fly in a multimillion dollar plane and live the lifestyle of the extremely rich and famous while the sheep under his care can’t feed themselves and their children? Jesus fed five thousand in the mountain, but today five thousand feed the shepherd on the mountain. Religion blinds the eyes of the people while godliness opens their eyes. Selah #RenosNuggets.''
Reno Omokri
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