A former aide to President Goodluck Jonathan, Reno Omokri has hit out at the Presidency’s claim that Buhari stopped Jonathan’s plan to sack Federal Civil Servants.
The Presidency through Buhari’s aide, Garba Shehu, alleged that there were plans on ground by the Jonathan administration to sack federal civil servants, but Buhari stepped in to put a wrench in the works.
In a statement released on Facebook, Omokri claimed that there could nothing further from the truth and called Shehu a liar.
He said; My attention has been drawn to a statement by a Presidential spokesman, Garba Shehu, on behalf of the Presidency on May Day, being workers day, alleging that former President Jonathan planned to sack federal civil servants but was stopped by President Buhari.
Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Nigerians are by now used to lies emanating from Garba Shehu, whose latest lie prior to this, was to claim that President Muhammadu Buhari is the first African President to be received by US President, Donald Trump, at the White House.
I had the singular honour of exposing the Presidency’s lie through a video I released of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi being received by President Trump at the White House on April 3, 2017, more than a year before Mr. Trump met Mr. Buhari.
On this latest lie, Nigerians should ask how possible it would have been for President Buhari to stop then President Jonathan from sacking workers. If then President Jonathan wanted to sack workers, there is no way on earth that President Buhari could have stopped him from doing that.
Was President Buhari ever a boss of then President Jonathan? Did then President Jonathan issue a sack order that was reversed by President Buhari? The answer to these questions is no! So where is Garba Shehu’s lies coming from? That his name is Garba does not mean he should spew Garbage?
We realize that having nothing to boast of by way of achievements in job creation, the ever reactionary Buhari administration has come up with a revisionist plan to blame all its failings on former President Jonathan, but Nigerians have seen through this hollowness.
The fact remains that according to the government-owned and controlled Nigerian Bureau of Statistics, 10 million Nigerians have lost their jobs in the last three years of the Buhari government.
It should be noted that these were jobs created by the Jonathan administration through innovative policies like the Local Content Law, Youth With Innovation in Nigeria (YouWIN) scheme and the Graduate Internship Scheme (GIS).
Also, by building 165 Almajiri schools all over northern Nigeria and 14 new federal universities built nationwide and the over 500 schools that were renovated via the Universal Basic Education Commission, UBEC and the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), the Jonathan government put hundreds of thousands of youths to work which stimulated the economy and contributed to GDP growth.
Then President Jonathan proved that Nigerian youths are not ‘lazy’ by putting them to work. Sadly, Nigerian youths cannot day the same of the current leadership.
Nigerian workers may also remember that it was former President Jonathan who on March 16, 2011, increased the National Minimum Wage to ₦18,000 and extended the pay rise to the military and paramilitary services, even as he increased the allowance of members of the National Youth Service Corp to ₦19,800 monthly.
It is indeed wicked for the Buhari administration to now turn around and accuse a man who created the most jobs in Nigeria’s history of wanting to sack workers.
My advice to Garba Shehu is to focus on telling Nigerians what his boss has achieved after three years in office instead of casting blame on others.
For instance, huge sums of money have been offered to anyone who can name even one project initiated, started and completed by the Buhari administration in the last three years.
This blame game has gone on for too long. Just yesterday (April 30, 2018), President Buhari blamed Muammar Gaddafi for the spate of herdsmen killings.
Buhari controls the, Army, Air Force, Navy, Police, DSS, DIA, NIA and Civil Defense, yet he still blames a dead Gaddafi for herdsmen killings. If Buhari can appoint dead men into boards, I guess he should also be allowed to blame a dead man for bringing killers on board.
It only remains for President Buhari to blame Idi Amin, Sadam Hussein, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Hosni Mubarak, Said Bare, Pinochet, Manuel Noriega, Nicolae Ceausescu, Benito Mussolini, Ferdinand Marcos, Samuel Doe, Charles Taylor and any other brutal dictator that catches his fancy!
Nigerian workers are warned that if they re-elect a man who lost 10 million jobs in just three years, by the time he is finished with Nigeria, the only jobs remaining in the country would be the job of blaming others for the problems caused by President Buhari.
Reno Omokri
Bestselling author of Facts Versus Fiction: The True Story of the Jonathan Years: Chibok, 2015 and Other Conspiracies.