In yet another interview granted primarily to foreign news media, President Muhammadu Buhari addressed the presidency’s intolerant stance concerning Biafran agitators in Nigeria. Buhari also stated how his administration feels about the International Monetary Funds’ (IMF) advice regarding the current condition of Nigeria’s economy during his visit to Qatar last week.
According to him, the Nigerian Civil War claimed the lives of at least two million Nigerians around four decades ago, thus the present agitators (who were most likely not even born at the time, in his opinion) are simply jokers and a threat to national security.
Buhari made it clear that his administration is not interested in a dialogue with the Biafran supporters in South-East Nigeria and even refused to watch a video clip of a clash between the Nigerian Army and a group of supporters carrying out a peaceful protest. Buhari went further to state that those planning to break up the country would face the wrath of the Nigerian security forces.
On the situation that the Nigerian economy is presently faced with, Buhari boldly admitted that Nigeria may actually be going against the advice of the IMF to devalue the Naira since it is not in the country’s national interest to do so. The president commented that Nigeria cannot afford to devalue its currency like other countries that have stronger infrastructures and enormous production output.
In what is beginning to seem like an unhealthy pattern, it appears Nigerians should only expect to hear from the president on certain pressing socio-economic matters which concern them directly when he is abroad. Last month, Nigerians learned that Abubakar Shekau, the notorious Boko Haram leader, may or may not have been replaced by a successor, amongst other enlightening details in an interview which he granted in the United Kingdom.
Last year, in December, Buhari made an equally crucial statement concerning the state of the anti-corruption war in Nigeria, claiming that implicated past government officials had begun to cave in and return stolen funds to Nigeria, amidst other information which he released in Iran.
During the interview in Qatar, Buhari also claimed that his administration is housing saboteurs inherited from the previous ruling party, and therefore loyalty could not be expected of them. However, his statement about loyalty represents one of many paradoxes which Nigeria’s citizens currently experience with the presidency since it assumed power—whether or not his ‘foreign comments’ concerning the welfare of Nigeria changes the perception of foreign investors, as is believed by Nigeria’s Ministry of Information and Culture.
