A GIANT LEAP YEAR OF SUCCESS FOR BUHARI IN SPITE OF TSUNAMI CRITICISMS! (SPECIAL EDITION TO COMMEMORATE PRESIDENT BUHARI'S 366 DAYS IN OFFICE)

ZION B-BC   NEWSLETTER.  

A Publication of the Zion Faith Bible-Believing Church, Kpeyegyi, Abuja Nigeria. [VOL. 5. NO 146. 29th May, 2016.} “…ONLY The Truth, Will Set You   Free! (John.8:32).

A GIANT LEAP YEAR OF SUCCESS FOR BUHARI IN SPITE OF TSUNAMI CRITICISMS!  (SPECIAL EDITION TO COMMEMORATE PRESIDENT BUHARI'S 366 DAYS IN OFFICE)

In spite of the very many grand promises of Nigeria's ruling Party in both its Mission Statement and Manifesto, two terribly vexatious challenges stared President Buhari in the face on assumption of office on 29th May, 2015! The first and most worrisome was the state of insecurity created by the persistent Boko Haram insurgency which blew out of proportion from the year 2009 into large scale terrorism that swept the nation with fearful panic from Maiduguri to Lagos and from Port Harcourt through the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, to the Sokoto Caliphate! The second was the unprecedented state of massive institutional corruption that had crippled the economy which was handed over to the new Change Administration, with a virtually empty treasury! It is one full leap year of the All Progressives Congress (APC), government under Buhari who had attracted an avalanche of criticisms more than those of his predecessors who in fact created the loads of economic woes being forced down the throat of the common but resilient man, woman and children on the street!
The masses are groaning under the pains of insecurity of life and property, commodity inflation, national energy loss and incessant power outages, absence of potable water, motorable roads, modern health facilities, poor management of agricultural, solid minerals and educational sectors, and a completely vandalized crude oil sector in both outright embezzlement of accruable monetary resources and physical destruction of pipelines through organized cabals of 1999-2015!  Inflation rate skyrocketed to 13.7% in April, 2016 as against 9.6% in January of the same year; also 67.63% increase in fuel prices from N86.50 to N145.00, per litre, on 13th May, 2016, further compounded the inflation challenges! Transparency International's corruption perceptions index for 2015 (released in January 2016), ranked Nigeria in the 136th position out of 168 countries as the most corrupt nation in the world, a position it maintained since 2014; which indicated that corruption was endemic in the country! In his own assessment, the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, alluded that Nigeria and Afghanistan were "fantastically corrupt countries" during a conversation with the Queen at a reception in celebration of her 90th Birthday anniversary at the Buckingham Palace, shortly before the International Summit on Anti-Corruption, hosted by Britain - Thursday 12th May, 2016! After that derogatory comment, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby intervened to say," But this particular president is not corrupt..... he's trying very hard." In Nigeria, the erstwhile Co-coordinating Minister of the Economy who also doubled as the Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and the Federal Government under President Jonathan, were ordered by a Lagos High Court, on 23rd May, 2016, to provide information on the spending of an allegedly missing N30 trillion as requested by Social Economic Rights Agenda, (SERAP), in a suit No.CS/196/2015, instituted by the pressure group! The judgment delivered by Hon. Justice Ibrahim Buba, was instituted in 2015 by a former Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Charles Soludo, who alleged that at least N30 trillion, had either been stolen or unaccounted for or grossly mismanaged over the last few years under Iweala's watch!
Also in the same week, it was revealed by the Minister of Solid Minerals and Chairman of the Board of Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI)! Dr. Kayode Fayemi, that a sum of N2.23 trillion, was not remitted to the Federation Account by the NNPC, according to a 2013 Audit Report of the Oil and Gas as well as the solid minerals sectors. This consisted of $9.75 billion and N378.67billion earning from various aspects of its operations in 2013 which were supposed to be remitted to the Federation Account! Another ex-CBN Governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, now the Emir of Kano, during his tenure also accused the NNPC of non-remittance of $20 billion US dollars to the Federation Account under the watch of Mrs. Iweala and was promptly sacked by the Jonathan's Administration for opening his mouth too wide!

Critics of the present administration believed that Nigeria's economy had never had it so bad in the last one year and one could not completely fault their arguments because it is very obvious that the economic window dressing and the media-propped governments of 16 years of PDP's maladministration as earlier enunciated above, came crashing down in the first year of the new administration! The latest Gross Domestic Product (GDP) Annual Growth Rate announced on Friday 20th May, 2016, by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), revealed that growth indices shrank by 0.36 % year-on-year in the first three months of 2016, compared to a 2.11% expansion in the previous period and way below forecasts of 1.7% growth and the trend was attributed to slowdown in the services sectors, due to a weakening naira while lower oil prices kept dragging the oil sector down. Under Iweala's watch, Nigeria re-based GDP estimates for the year 2013 which was adjudged as Africa's largest economy and the 26th globally, was put at $ 510billion US dollars or N80.3 trillion naira, was debunked because on per capita basis, Nigeria was placed in the 121st position since its workforce of about 100 million persons dwelt in abject poverty of meager $1.5 US dollars per day!  The deficit 2016 Budget is another issue of criticism because, it could not successfully address the dominance of recurrent over capital expenditures and critics vehemently claimed that Executive financial wastage was still pronounced - especially in the Presidency and the National Assembly (NASS)!
Inadequate national health and housing facilities were other areas of criticisms in view of the fact that the rural communities are still marginalized because child and maternal mortality statistics were still on the high side and the issue of about 17 million housing deficit, due to social contract neglect by past administrations remained outstanding! They also criticized the recalcitrant issue of unemployment - especially tertiary institutions graduates- in Nigeria under the present administration and described it as unacceptable. President Buhari's two-pronged attack on national insecurity and declaration of war on corruption right from his investiture, on 29th May, 2015, was the necessary foundation and panacea to establish urgent economic revival from the ashes of 16 years of terrible maladministration! However, critics cannot dispute the following positive achievements of the APC Government, which had to be addressed through diplomatic corridors and unregulated market forces, no matter how hard they tried:
(1). Within 365 days regional military co-operation sought through early foreign journeys to neighboring countries of Niger, Cameroon, Chad, and Mali by President Buhari, yielded positive results of the virtual defeat of the Boko Haram insurgency which had subsided to very minimal level in which the terrorists, who held sway between 2009-2015,  have reluctantly accepted defeat and are on the run! (a) Many of them voluntarily surrendered to the Federal Forces and are being "rehabilitated in safe corridors".(b) Two of the Chibok Secondary School girls, one of them mother of a baby girl, had been rescued from the Sambisa Forest, along with her suspected Boko Haram "husband" who had given useful information to the security agents.
(c) Security agents have successfully blocked all of the terrorists routes of food, arms, medical and communication supplies; a move that actually destroyed their base in the Sambisa Forest, within the leap year! (d) Another Regional Security Summit was held by Buhari in Abuja on 13th May, 2016, to further strengthen the military agreements of the Military Joint Task Force (MJTF), between Nigeria's neighboring countries which had produced much gains and successes! (e) The campaign for military support for Nigeria against the Boko Haram terrorists was not limited to the West African Sub-region, but extended to the United States of America and European Union countries, through which concrete modern military support in the form of hardwares and intelligence gathering, had been favourably received and acknowledged!

(2). The war on corruption is in full swing and according to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Switzerland would repatriate $300m US dollars deposited by money Nigerian launderers to the Federal Government. All monies recovered so far through "plea bargain" from fraud suspects would soon be made public while criminal prosecution of those who have been apprehended was at the peak! (a) Some of the big swindlers are already tenants of the various Nigerian prisons while several others are going through competent court processes. (b) The President also made other international trips to the Arab countries of United Arab Emirate,(UAE), Saudi Arabia and to China to seek both economic and financial investments support to take Nigeria out of the imminent quagmire of economic recession, which had now begun to take its toll because of the unpatriotic attitude of past managers who celebrated the culture of national institutional corruption! (c) At the recently concluded International Anti-Corruption Summit in London, (12th May, 2016), President Buhari, in spite of the reproachful comment of his host, appealed to all foreign countries to retrieve and repatriate all laundered, looted and embezzled monies by Nigerians and deposited in their bank vaults, to the country to boost its economy. (d) The re-introduction, implementation and entrenchment of the Treasury Single Account (TSA), within the period of 366 days under review in spite of vehement opposition by former treasury looters was a landslide victory of a righteous government under the divinely-anointed servant, Muhammadu Buhari!

(3). Though it took a whole quarter of the year to put the "socialist" 2016 Budget into operation, the yoke of annual padding by the technocrats was completely broken once and for all and the culprits were shown the door! (4). On assumption of office, many States of the Federation were unable to pay backlog of monthly salaries for up to 10 months in some cases and had to request for financial credit bailouts to avoid social unrests - which he gladly obliged without querying what happened to all of their Internally Generated Revenues (IGR), but still, 27 States are owing workers!

Unregulated Market Forces Of Supply And Demand Will Salvage The Economy!
It has been revealed that the Federal Government was completely pushed to the wall over the various challenges of the dwindling economy and had no alternative option than to allow the Petroleum Downstream Sector flow with the tide of market forces of supply and demand which in economic terms meant, that the price modulation mechanism, would enable the petrol's new price to find its level in the international market without let or hindrance! Since, Wednesday 11th May, 2016, when the new price regime debuted, there had been abundant supply of the product all over the country and scarcity stopped permanently! It is strongly believed by economic analysts that in less than one month from the price increase operative date, market forces would lead to competitive prices at all filling stations and consumers would embrace the best options and the numerous palliatives would flow to cushion any manner of challenges that might surface.

***Snippets from President Buhari's First Leap Year Anniversary Message.
A N500 billion Social Protection Programme already appropriated for in the 2016 Budget was launched as a social intervention policy for the recruitment and training of 500.000 Teachers, 100.000 Artisans; Conditional Cash Transfer to provide support for 100.000 vulnerable beneficiaries, including 1million market women 460.000 Artisans and 200.000 Agricultural Workers nationwide! The President announced the Education Grand Scheme for Universities and Polytechnics and paid tribute to the gallant men and women of the Armed Forces. There will be more snippets of the anniversary speech in our subsequent editions. LET US SUPPORT THIS AMIABLE, RIGHTEOUS, FAITHFUL AND CHARISMATIC LEADER WHO IS ON THE RIGHT TRACK TO SAVE THE ECONOMY OF NIGERIA FROM ABSOLUTE RUINS! GOD WILL AVENGE THE POOR MASSES FROM THE PIPELINE VANDALS WHO ARE BENT OF DESTROYING THE ECONOMY IN JESUS CHRIST NAME! AMEN. (Romans. 12:19.)

Please look forward to more divine revelation in the next edition of Zion B-BC Newsletter as you share this with friends and remain blessed in the Lord. [For weekly access, to this newsletter, log on to:  facebook.com/zionfaithbible.believingchurch or http://www.zfbbc1.blogspot.com, https://www.google.com/+zionfaithbiblebelievingchurch.
If you have not accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Saviour, don’t miss this great opportunity as you pray this prayer: Lord Jesus; I confess that I am a sinner who needs to be saved through the grace of the New Testament of your Blood, shed on the Cross at Calvary; I renounce every sin in my life and accept you as my Lord and Saviour. Please forgive me and write my name in the Book of Life. Amen. If you prayed this prayer, you have been admitted into the family of sons and daughters of God, who are born-again. Congratulations.

I am, yours sincerely, Dr. David B.A. Olufon, Resident Pastor and Editor. 08130669886, 08098194390.  08080243066   g-mail- dvdolufon@gmail.com.