Why Lai Mohammed is wrong about diaspora

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So, Nigeria’s loquacious information minister, Lai Mohamed, recently irked the diaspora and their family at home when he accused the latter of financing secessionists agitators and spreading fake news.

He made his unfounded allegation in Abuja while meeting with a delegation of Nigeria in Diaspora Organization (NIDO), U.K. Chapter.

In his usual obtuse and imprudent style, the minister blamed millions of Nigerians in the diaspora for spreading fake narratives about the country.

Because the minister’s statement is ill-advised and dangerously divisive, it is a vain attempt to respond to it. Without normalizing his faulty reasoning and spreading his confusion, this piece will instead focus on the country’s more palpable and impeding state under Lai Mohammed and the administration he represents.

After six years of this management, the report is out. A quick rundown of the state of the country shows a nation in precipitous decline.

When his boss, Buhari, was first sworn into office in 2016, he promised to rein in on Boko Haram, stop the kidnapping and banditry, cleanup corruption by showing a model for good governance beginning with his administration, and transform the economy. He even chided his predecessor for the failure of leadership during his campaign for president. Howbeit, after six years, a cursory observation shows the country has gone from bad under its antecedent to worst under Lai Mohammed and Buhari.

When the current administration was handed the keys to Aso rock, notwithstanding the many challenges facing the country at the time, Nigeria was at least riding towards economic success. She was flagged as one of the world’s emerging economies in what Goldman Sachs called the Next Eleven (or N-11). These were countries with a high potential of becoming the world’s largest economies in the 21st century. They were: Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, South Korea, Turkey, and Vietnam.

Regrettably, Lai Mohammed and Buhari have managed to throw a wrench in an upward economy movement and completely wrecked it six years later. Under their leadership, Nigeria went from being called among the ‘Next Eleven’ to earning the ignoble title as ‘the world’s poverty capital’, where over 90 million people live in severe poverty overtaking India, which has a population size seven times greater.

The country is now more unsafe than ever since its formation; Boko Haram insurgency is more brazen, deadly,  advancing, and gaining more territories in the northern region. Gangs and kidnappers continue to prey on innocent school children with impunity. The menace of adoptions took a new turn with the perpetrators now demanding ransoms through bank deposits. Terrorists and Jihadists purporting to be nomadic cattle herders are on rampage in the south, sending locals into a state of frenzy, causing farmers to abandon their farms, and citizens afraid to go out in the dark. Out of control banditry victimizing the people and wantonly taking lives indiscriminately. Including many returning diasporans who have been robbed, maimed, and even killed while visiting.

Many parts of the country are in a state of extreme fear and distress. The country’s dire state has caused separatists groups to surface in virtually all states below the Niger/Benue river, clamoring for disintegration or seeking to disconnect from a decaying unit before the entire body collapse.

Corruption remained endemic and now even far worst than in 2016, making Transparency International rank Nigeria in its latest Corruption Perception Index at the bottom.

Its national debt from both external and internal since 2016 has ballooned to a jaw-dropping 151 billion U.S. dollars from 58 billion USD in 2016, according to recently published stats by Aaron O’Neal. With nothing to show for that money, the country has continued its borrowing spree.

Investors and corporations are fleeing the countries in droves. The few who still see Nigeria’s growing population in the region as a haven for profit are instead building their plants and corporate offices in neighboring countries like Ghana. I.e., Toyota, Twitter, ShopRite Holdings, etc.

The Nigerian people are watching in disbelief as their beloved country regress and quickly fell behind the rest of the world.

Newspapers worldwide report on the country’s dismal state. Nigerians home and abroad not only feel the pain but also read and watch the sobering news of a crumbling country that they have hoped will emerge from the precipice it was heading.

The signs appeared to be encouraging until Lai Mohammed, and his boss took over.

The above is the irrefutable stark report of 6 years of maladministration.

Not fake news or fake narrative as Lai Mohammed and his government would want the world to think, but an objective, dispassionate account of the country’s reality.

Ask any Nigerian on the street, and they will lament and tell you the country is heading in the wrong direction. I dare Lai Mohammed to refute any of the facts above.

The diaspora, which has continued to sustain Lai Mohammed and his boss’s failed policies with billions of dollars in direct remittances, is in complete despair. Many of them worry they may not have a country to return to. Amid a cratering economy and the exhaustion from supporting families at home due to bad governance,  the diaspora pulled back remittances for the first time in decades. According to the World Bank, remittances to Nigeria declined by a whopping 27.7%.

So, Lai Mohammed can continue to accuse the diaspora of spreading fake narratives about the country if he likes. It won’t serve him well. Instead, it would have been better for him if he and his cohorts put on sackcloths, rub their bodies in ashes, take full responsibility, then forge a Nigerian version of truth and reconciliation on how to salvage the country from its current social-political and economic crises.

But I won’t hold my breath.

Instead, in his typical self, he engages in finger-pointing, false accusations, and divisive rhetoric.

However, Lai Mohammed failed to understand that Nigerians are not naive of his administration’s intentions, whether in the homeland or the diaspora.

We are aware that they have ruled us like medieval fiefdoms, hopelessly and ineptly mismanaged our commonwealth, and allowed sordid lootings of our national till by rabid ministry and agency administrators while leaving trails of hunger and hardship.

Notwithstanding, Nigerians refused to be numb to these new threats; if we survived more than 30 years of military juntas, we’ll survive a civilian autarch whose mindset is that of a villainous reprobate.

So, finally, to Lai Mohammed, the diaspora is not spreading fake narratives.

The Nigerian narratives which you created are spreading themselves like wildfire.

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