Your Failure To Provide Security, Turns Nigeria To Killing Field ― Govs Reply Buhari

The Evangelist
December 4, 2022

The 36 State Governors under the aegis of Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) on Saturday blamed President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration for failing to fulfill the statutory role of providing security of lives and property, thus allowing bandits, insurgents, and kidnappers to turn the country into a killing field, maiming and abducting people in schools market squares and even on their farmlands.

The governors’ position was contained in a statement titled: ‘Governors and the nation’s poverty index: Clement Agba got it all wrong’, issued by the NGF’s Director, Media and Public Affairs, Abdulrazaque Bello-Barkindo.

While taking exception to various allegations levelled against the subnational government on the rising poverty index in the country as well as misdirecting resources to projects that have no impact on the people, the NGF authorities accused the Minister of State for Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mr. Clement Agba of protecting his paymasters and politicize very critical issues of national importance.

The Forum alleged that the poor economic policy of Buhari’s administration determines poverty and unemployment in the country, adding that most Federal Ministries including Agriculture, Rural Development, and Humanitarian Affairs are not using available financial resources at their disposal for the benefit of Nigerian Citizens.

The statement read: “The tirade early this week by the Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, Mr. Clement Agba, on the 36 Governors, where he blamed them for the rising poverty index in the country comes to the Nigeria Governors’ Forum as a surprise. The Minister got his message totally wrong. His attacks are not only unnecessary, but they represent a brazen descent into selective amnesia. It is also diversionary as far as the Governors are concerned.

“The Minister who should be responding to a question demanding to know what he and his colleague, the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, were doing to ameliorate the hardship Nigerians are facing attempted to defray the notion that rising levels of hunger and lack were peculiar to Nigeria.

“True as that may be Mr. Agba went further to explain that their government, through many of its social security programmes, has been dedicating resources to alleviating hardship, and then goes further to accuse State Governors of misdirecting resources to projects that have no impact on the people.