Prophet Isa El- Buba Says Nigeria’s Economy Is Collapsed Due To Bad Leadership, As He Endorse Peter Obi/Ahmed Datti For President

Yakubu Busari

The State of the Nation by Initiative for a Better & Brighter Nigeria (IBBN) and coalition for a Better and Brighter Nigeria (CBBN) Convener, Prophet (DR.) ISA EL-BUBA Sadiq raised alarms that Nigeria’s economy has collapsed and would need more than a team of geniuses to revive and stabilize. Nigeria is spending more than all its revenue to service debts

Nigerians have found themselves suffering from conflicts and agitations everywhere, feelings of marginalization, and exclusion, rising through political and criminal violence, porous borders, rising ethnic, religious, and cultural hostilities, weak institutions, food shortages, unemployment, inflation, crumbling infrastructure, deteriorating human development indicators such as infant and maternal mortality, and literacy rates.

El-Baba stated this during a world press conference held at the Ebomi headquarters in Jos ,says ,”Nigeria, everyone agrees, is ailing and failing, its long list of ailments is enough to make the heart skip”.

He disclosed that” I need not remind us of the challenging times and environment that Nigeria and faced unemployment stands at 33 percent. Annual inflation has risen to 21 percent, with a chronic lack of foreign exchange and hundreds of millions of barrels of oil- which is the country’s main export, lost last year to theft and inefficiency.

 Some 92 million Nigerians now live in acute poverty, according to the World Bank, and hundreds leave every day for greener pastures. Flooding in the outgone year has devastated 33 states in Nigeria, killing about 700 persons by some counts, displacing about 1.5m, and affecting 2.5 million people. Already, 5.1 million more Nigerians might have become poor in 2022, according to a report by the World Bank “.

Isa El-Buba noted that the flooding had thrown millions into poverty and increased public health crisis, adding, the Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics, (NBS) reports a high Multidimensional Poverty Index of 0.663, with about 63%, that is, 133million of the estimated 200m Nigerians, multidimensionally poor.

 ” In some outgone year, many schools and public places had had to shut down based on credible alerts by foreign diplomatic missions of terror attacks in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

The US and UK governments had asked their citizens on non-essential services to leave the FCT as a precaution. In Kebbi, many hundreds have had to flee their communities in northern Nigeria taken over by ISWAP-Boko Haram terrorists, even as kidnapping and sundry crimes flourish in Nigeria’s southern states.

This is not to mention our Children who were grounded at home for over eight months in a protracted but resolvable impasse between Government and University Lecturers”.

” This year, even with the most optimistic scenario, Nigeria will borrow massively to service its growing debt. In the proposed 2023 budget, Nigeria intends to borrow about N8 trillion out of its N20.51 trillion national budget to manage its fiscal deficits. Nigeria’s revenue is fast dwindling. Nigeria cannot meet its OPEC allocation of 1.8 million barrels per day. It exports on the average 1.1million barrels per day, losing close to 700,000 barrels a day to oil theft.

Nigeria’s fiscal burden is made worse because it is expected to make petrol subsidy payment of about N11 trillion at the end of  year 2022, more than its projected revenue.

Nigeria therefore got into 2023 quite a weak and unproductive state, terrorized and pauperized, with poor human development indicators to say the least. An indication that the nation is at a threshold with a terrible present and a future that could be worse.

The challenges we had with past governments weren’t of this magnitude, yet Nigerians seemed overly critical of them but the ineptitude of the current government has rendered Nigerians rather disoriented “.

According to him , perhaps, this is how life teaches the difference between the good, the bad and the ugly.

Hopefully, so we may appreciate the good when next we see it.

As we are very much aware, In the next few months, Nigeria will hold two very important exercises. This is the first time in our recent history that Nigeria will be conducting general elections and a national census in the same year. While Elections in Nigeria hold every four years, and the census is supposed to be conducted at least once in 10 years, the last time the country had a headcount was in 2006, over 16 years ago.

The two exercises, if well carried out, I believe, could put the nation on a trajectory of national development and reunification, but will perpetuate the cycle of Nigeria’s perennial problems when mismanaged.

This makes 2023  a watershed year and a turning point in our national journey as a people. It is a make or mar year. We must, therefore, be intentional in our decisions in other to get things right especially in the enlistment of only the most competent, accountable, and responsive Leaders into Leadership positions at various levels.

 There’s Hope

Despite the foregoing, Nigeria is not beyond redemption. With the Presidential elections in about 40 days, We have a clear choice of the candidate with the sincerity of purpose and clarity of vision to serve Nigeria with love, strength and faith as well as go ahead to implement public policy that will birth a renewed nation, a truly better, brighter and greater Nigeria bound in freedom, prosperity,  peace and unity in the candidacy of Peter Obi and Datti Baba-Ahmed, of the Labour Party.

It’s on this note I am imploring you fellow Nigerians to obtain your PVCs, secure them and come out en masse on the 25th of February to come vote for the party that has Papa, Mama and Pikin as its logo on the ballot- the Labour Party. Vote for the Peter Obi and Datti Baba-Ahmed.

 I call on Nigerians not to mortgage your futures by either sitting on the fence or selling their votes. Don’t sit down and look, get personal about and get involved with this election.

It’s on this note that I wish to express my gladness with the level of Eye opening that Nigerian youths are giving to the coming election. It’s the one good thing that has come out of our current nightmare. Irrespective of political affiliations, Nigerians I urge you to vote for your conscience.

For once, let our votes reflect our earnest yearning in 2023. It is now Operation Save Nigeria with good governance. Let no political party affiliation stand in the way. Let no ethnic or religious sentiments stand in the way.

Accordingly, I want to use this medium to commend Obidients and Peter Obi Datti Baba-Ahmed Support groups across the nation and the diaspora- mostly young people who are tired and have been victims of the status quo for catching the vision for a new Nigeria and in the coming days, I urge and enjoin you to keep and increase the momentum as Hope is on the horizon. It is not over until it is over.