About 18 months after President Muhammadu Buhari took over the leadership of the country, the citizens say they are yet to see the promised ‘change’
A general overseer based in Lagos has given an incite into the many failures of the Buhari administration as well as the frustration these have caused As Nigeria slips deeper into recession, the general overseer of the Divine Appointment Ministry International, Ilupeju, Lagos, Reverend Ben Eragbai, has revealed that the All Progressives Congress (APC) administration of President Muhammadu Buhari is only being saved by one factor.
Reverend Eragbai reveals what is still saving Buhari’s governmentThe man of God made this known in a lengthy interview with The Sun stating that this is not the change Nigerians expected when they voted out Goodluck Jonathan.According to him, the country would have turned against the government because the recession has reached a boiling point.
The administration is being saved by the churches which have continued to give hope to the already hopeless, he said.Confirming that there is starvation everywhere in the country, the clergyman added: As a pastor, we are bearing the burden of the people, seeing what is happening now, where people are finding it hard to feed; some are equally not finding it easy paying transport fares to go to work.
“Many are thrown out of jobs and some cannot pay their house rents, as well as their children’s school fees. Unemployment rate has so much increased.“So far so good, I believe God is still on the throne. This is not the change that Nigerians asked for,” he said.
He added: “We had thought that before voting a person into office, he should have appraised the enormity of challenges he was going to face and prepared to paddle the economy.“Removing former President Goodluck Jonathan shouldn’t just be the achievement of the All Progressives Congress (APC), but meeting the needs of the people who are now staving and groaning over the excruciating poverty and suffering in the land, should be their strongest point.”
Eragbai slammed the government for deceiving Nigerians with the claim that the remaining Chibok girls would soon be released.“Based on what was promised, we thought that by now, it would have been a settled matter as all the girls, not just the 21, would have reunited with their parents. But it is not so.
How are the parents of these remaining girls feeling?“These girls were not criminals, they just went to school, but some criminal elements wanted to truncate their ambitions. How would the political leaders feel if those were their children?
The government has failed in this direction.”He complained about Nigeria’s current exchange rate saying the country was making its neighbours like Benin Republic and Ghana richer by the day.
‘Buhari is right, the change you are looking for begins there inside of you’The clergyman said: “The exchange rate is another sore point in this country. The dollar is hitting the rooftop everyday, while the naira is going down and down. We are making Benin Republic and Ghana, our neighbouring countries richer.
People are closing their factories in Nigeria and relocating to those countries.“Airlines are also toeing the same line. We have banned importation of various items, but they are still finding their ways into the country through the land borders. We make other nations richer, as they are collecting taxes and tariffs for these items, but nothing comes to us. You banned all these items when there are no alternatives or substitutes.”
He said currently, the church has become the only hope of the people and wondered what would have happened if there were no churches in the country.
“People are hungry, they are jobless and if not for the church, the armored tanks, the guns etc, cannot stop the people from trooping out into the streets for a possible revolution,” he said adding that if the country’s economy is sound, the rate of crime would reduce.
“I wonder how it would have been in Nigeria if there were no church. The church is where people get hope and know that God is still on the thrown; that, if today is not rosy, tomorrow will be better. That is what still keeps the people at bay.
“The people are feeling very terrible. Prices of essential drugs are no more affordable; patients are being abandoned in the hospitals after discharge because there is no money to settle the hospital bill. This is not the change we bargained for,” he said
