Election: After receiving sight, don't afflict yourselves with blindness again, Adesina warns Nigerians over PDP

Femi Adesina, President Muhammadu Buhari’s special adviser on media, Wednesday, lambasted ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

He said the former leader, a farmer, failed in the agriculture sector, despite being in power for over a decade as military and civilian president.

This was contained in an article he wrote titled “Things that pertain to our peace”.

The spokesman added that Obasanjo and his party looted the treasury and never cared about Nigerians.

Adesina said: “As we hold elections this Saturday to elect our President for the next four years, may we know the things that pertain to our peace as a country. May we opt for the straight and narrow path we’ve been treading for about four years, because at the end of it is peace.

“May we resist the allure to jump into the wide road that seems quite easy to travel, for at the end of it is destruction and damnation. Not all that glitters is gold. A goodly apple might be rotten at the cheek.”

Advising Nigerians to shun the PDP on election days, Adesina described them as “a coalition of people with questionable reputation, who have entered into a confederacy, poised to again stick their snouts into the nectar of office, and perhaps suck out the very lifeblood of the country. In the past, while they held sway, they drew down the Federation Account.”

“Plundered the foreign reserves. Looted the excess crude account into nothingness. Ran the country into a hole. Till they were given the left leg of fellowship by Nigerians in 2015. Now they have regrouped, poised to wreak havoc again? Not if Nigerians know the things that pertain to their peace.

“There is a farmer who ruled this country for about 12 years in all, if you decide to add his time as a military head of state and two terms as a civilian leader. He paid lip service to agriculture, following it with billions upon billions of naira. It all went down the drain.

“At the end of his tenure, in which he had to quit involuntarily, Nigeria was nowhere near food self-sufficiency. We still spent millions of dollars annually to import food.

“But within three years, President Buhari changed the picture. Rice importation reduced by about 90%, we can now feed ourselves, and also sell food to neighboring countries. That same man claims he hasn’t seen what President Buhari has done. True. No man is as blind as the person who deliberately refuses to see.

“There was a time the sluice gate of corruption was open in this country. Public coffers were like gravy train, from which you took what you wanted at will. Till a new Sheriff came into town. President Buhari came this way, and stealing promptly became corruption. Would we then exchange transparency for fantastic and grand corruption? Not if we know what pertains to our peace.

“See infrastructural development round the country. Roads, bridges, rail, power, all showing a government at work for the people. The second Niger Bridge that they built with their mouths in 16 years is now making steady, sustainable progress. Every state in the country has at least a major federal road under construction.

“The whole country is now one huge construction site. And then, we forgo all these and give power to people who will play what Igbos call agbata eke (put on the table and share) politics? May God let us not afflict ourselves with blindness, after we had enjoyed the luxury of clear sight.”