28032019 - NATIONAL ASSEMBLY LEADERSHIP:All clear for Lawan; fresh crisis brews over Gbaja

44—Vanguard, THURSDAY, MARCH 28, 2019
A president and the poverty
red herring
P
R E S I D E N T
Muhammadu
Buhari’s friends promote the
narrative that he is poor, and
he himself is enamoured with
an “accolade” that holds him
up as a clean man in the land
of treasury thieves. They see
virtue in his poverty, an idea
which sits perfectly well with
the hackneyed tale of
integrity.
“Prior to being sworn in on
May 29 … Buhari had less than
N30 million to his name. He
also had only one bank
account, with the Union Bank.
“[He] had no foreign account,
no factory and no enterprises.
He also had no registered
company and no oil wells.”
Garba Shehu, the president’s
media aide, pitched this
statement to the public on
September 3, 2015. It was a
deliberate attempt to
criminalise wealth and
weaponise poverty by making
the storyline of not owning a
factory, registered company or
thriving enterprises feed into
the tale of an anti-corruption
czar.
Poverty
narrative
Vice President Yemi
Osinbajo’s recent claim that
four years of the Buhari
Presidency has made him
poorer escalates this cliché as
his principal gets ready for his
second term. It is not a
coincidence. At a dinner in
honour of the All Progressives
Congress, APC, volunteer
supporters on March 14,
Osinbajo said Buhari may even
be poorer today than four years
ago.
“When I looked at his assets
declaration form; I was
checking it in 2015, I said to
him, ‘Mr. President, I am so
much richer than you, it is an
embarrassment',” Osinbajo
recalled. “I can tell you that he
is, perhaps, even poorer than
he was in 2015 when I saw his
declaration of assets form.”
Buhari’s reported riposte is
equally instructive. “I am only
a soldier, you are a big lawyer,
so you should have more
money than me,” he told his
deputy.
Osinbajo describing Buhari
as being poorer today is a
nuanced attempt to sustain the
poverty narrative. But it also
makes it imperative that
Nigerians interrogate it. If
“poverty is about not having
enough money to meet basic
needs, including food,
clothing and shelter,” can
anyone say that Buhari has
ever been poor since he
enlisted in the army in the early
1960s?
The World Bank says:
“Poverty is hunger. Poverty is
lack of shelter. Poverty is being
sick and not being able to see
a doctor. Poverty is not having
access to school and not
knowing how to read. Poverty
is not having a job, is fear for
the future, living one day at a
time.”
How does Buhari fit into any
of these scenarios?
Put differently, has Buhari
ever been poor? If yes, how
poor and relative to whose
wealth? If no, then why are his
confederates willfully pushing
the narrative?
For Buhari to be poorer today
as Osinbajo claims, it would
mean that his poverty net worth
has shrunk since he became
president.
There is need to revisit
Buhari’s asset declaration and
For Buhari to be
poorer today as
Osinbajo claims,
it would mean
that his poverty
net worth has
shrunk since he
became president
his refusal to make it public
despite his promise to do so
within 100 days if elected
president.
In a 2014 document titled,
“My 100 days covenant with
Nigerians,” the then APC
presidential candidate said: “I
pledge to publicly declare my
assets and liabilities,
encourage all my appointees
to publicly declare their assets
and liabilities as a precondition
for appointment.”
It was a clear personal
commitment delivered in first
person pronoun – I. But after
Buhari assumed office, Aso
Rock disowned the document
without any qualms. When
Nigerians insisted he kept the
promise, the Presidency said
Buhari and Osinbajo had
submitted their assets
declaration forms to the Code
of Conduct Bureau, CCB, in
compliance with the
Constitution.
Not even Shehu’s statement
on June 7, 2015 that details of
the assets would be made
public once the CCB
concluded verification was
enough to calm frayed
nerves. Shehu said Buhari’s
“declared assets and those of
… Osinbajo will be released
to the public upon the
completion of their verification
by the Code of Conduct
Bureau.”
He promised that the
verification “will be completed
before the expiry of the 100-
day deadline within which
they said they would do this.”
Shehu put ice on “some
suggestions that [Buhari] and
[Osinbajo] may not, after all,
declare their assets publicly,”
a suggestion he ridiculed as
“a little precipitate”.
He added: “There is no
question at all that [Buhari]
and [Osinbajo] are committed
to public declaration of their
assets within the 100 days that
they pledged during the
presidential campaign.”
The promise was not kept.
Instead, Buhari mounted his
high horse of intransigence
u n t i l
September
3, 2015
when he
grudgingly
released
what he
claimed was
his declared
assets,
which many
disagree
with.
“Prior to
being sworn
in on May
29, President
Buhari had
less than
N30 million
to his name
... had only
one bank
account, with
the Union
Bank … had
no foreign
account, no
factory and
n o
enterprises.
He also had
n o
registered
company
and no oil
wells,” a
statement by
G a r b a
S h e h u
claimed.
Shehu had
proclaimed
that prior to
his swearing
in on May
29, 2015, “…
Buhari had
shares in
B e r g e r
Paints, Union Bank and Skye
Bank … had a total of five
homes, and two mud houses
in Daura … two homes in
Kaduna, one each in Kano,
Daura and in Abuja.
“One of the mud houses in
Daura was inherited from his
late older sister, another from
his late father. He borrowed
money from the old Barclays
Bank to build two of his
homes. “... Buhari also has
two undeveloped plots of land,
one in Kano and the other in
Port Harcourt. He is still trying
to trace the location of the Port
Harcourt land.
Assets declaration
ghost
“In addition to the homes in
Daura, he has farms, an
orchard and a ranch. The total
number of his holdings in the
farm include 270 heads of
cattle, 25 sheep, five horses, a
variety of birds and a number
of economic trees.”
The documents finally
claimed that Buhari “uses a
number of cars, two of which
he bought from his savings
and the others supplied to him
by the Federal Government in
his capacity as former head of
state.
“The rest were donated to
him by well-wishers after his
jeep was damaged in a Boko
Haram bomb attack on his
convoy in July 2014.”
Even Buhari himself knew
that what he did was not the
public declaration of assets
because he still promised that
“As soon as the CCB is through
with the process, the
documents will be released to
the Nigerian public and people
can see for themselves.”
That pledge is yet to be
fulfilled two months to the end
of his four-year tenure. So,
why would Osinbajo resurrect
Buhari’s assets declaration
ghost on the eve of his second
term? Is it a coincidence or a
carefully choreographed alibi
to achieve a pre-determined
goal?
Most importantly, is it true
that Buhari is poorer today
than four years ago?
How can a man who did his
medicals in Europe, whose
children were in top of the
range schools in Europe and
America, had a fleet of choice
cars when he had no factory,
no enterprises, no registered
company, no oil wells and lived
on his pension become poorer
when all his bills are picked
up by the Nigerian state and
his teenage son can afford a
multi-million naira power
bike?
To agree that Buhari is poorer
today than in 2015, Nigerians
need to know what he claimed
were his assets prior to his
Presidency.
Anything short of that is
sheer red herring, a
smokescreen.