Between President Buhari and Peter Obi

Did you listen to our President’s broadcast to the nation on October 1st? If you listened to it objectively you must be wondering if the President and his advisers live in a parallel Nigeria that you can only access from a spiritual portal at Aso Rock Presidential Villa. Somebody ought to tell President Muhammadu Buhari that it is better to create a life that makes you feel good on the inside than one that makes people impressed with you outside.



The reason I say this is because his Independence Day speech appeared to be the work of a man who knows that he has not delivered the goods he promised and yet rather than admit that, he wants to put up a front by painting an imaginary picture of things not as they are but as he wishes them to be. The President should be made to understand that using lies to lure people into a false state of security is like using a basket to gather water. The basket will get wet, but it won’t get full.

What I find most Ironic about this past October 1st is that Peter Obi and President Muhammadu Buhari both spoke on Independence Day yet we cannot remember what President Buhari said and cannot forget what Peter Obi said. Days after, the Nigerian media have moved on from President Buhari’s speech and are still digesting and re digesting the powerful points that Peter Obi gave WITHOUT READING FROM A SPEECH!! President Buhari read from a prepared speech yet made little impact.

Peter Obi spoke from his heart and made lasting impact on Nigerians! How can you, a sitting President, give a prepared speech, yet what the nation you govern is discussing is an unprepared speech by an ex Governor? Does that not show the degree of relevance you have in your own country? And I began to ask myself, when will we get leaders like Peter Obi and Ben Murray-Bruce. People who know our problems and proffer solutions?

Why are we, as a people, so ‘blessed’ with people who think there is virtue in knowing how to blame others for things that they should be responsible for? I listened to the President’s Independence Day speech and there was no clear cut plan to inspire Nigerians that our leader knows how to pilot us out of the recession.

I listened to Peter Obi’s speech on the same day and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that there was a man who knew what to do to get Nigeria out of recession. For a President who prides himself on personal integrity, President Buhari’s speech was full of lies. I think it is better to plagiarize than to lie.

If the President could fire the deputy director who allegedly plagiarized President Obama’s speech for him, then he should consider sacking the man or men who wrote the pack of lies that was his Independence Day Broadcast. Hear the President: “investors from all over the world are falling over themselves to come and do business in Nigeria.”

Really Mr. President!

The sad thing is that three days before President Buhari made that unfortunate statement, the World Economic Forum had just released its 2016 Global Competitiveness Report and their verdict was that of the 138 nations ranked, Nigeria is the 127th worst nation in the world to do business! Just weeks before the President’s statement, Bloomberg had reported that there is a massive disinvestment of foreign investors from Nigeria!

I later found out that President Buhari had appointed a second Personal Assistant on Social Media to add to his four existing media aides bringing the number to five! Maybe they are the foreign investors that are ‘falling over themselves’ to invest in Nigeria! But on a serious note, the exact amount of Foreign Portfolio Investment that existed in Nigeria in the second quarter of 2015 (Jonathan’s era) was $2.81 billion. The exact amount that existed in the second quarter of 2016 (President Buhari’s era) is $245.3 million. Mr. President, your advisers have deceived you.

The truth is that foreign investors are falling over themselves to get out of Nigeria! No fewer than eight international airlines have left Nigeria.

This was the headline of Bloomberg just six months ago ‘Nigeria Promise Turns to Peril as Investors Head for the Exits’. Many of those airlines which have chosen to remain in Nigeria have instead moved their office and staff to Ghana and only come to Nigeria to pick up passengers! And yet our President looked us right in the camera and said “investors from all over the world are falling over themselves to come and do business in Nigeria.”

No wonder we all forgot about your speech almost as soon as it was over! Who needs their intelligence insulted by such blatant lies? Peter Obi and President Buhari are a perfect example of Mind Power (Obi) and Might Power (President Buhari). Which power do you think Nigeria needs? That is a question I will leave to your conscience!

Omokri is the founder of the Mind of Christ Christian Center in California, author of Shunpiking: No Shortcuts to God and Why Jesus Wept and the host of Transformation with Reno Omokri