As 2019 approaches, those who brought Nigeria to its knees, vandalized and wrecked it and left it for dead before 2015 are busy trying to weave a comeback mantra that will help them access power once again in 2015 after a disastrous 16 years trauma that left Nigeria for dead.

They are being joined in this vain mission by those who thought the coming of Buhari would shift the looting tent to their side and as it never happened, they became bitter, inconsolable enemies of the regime. Also in the train are the confused ideologues who have good intentions initially but are so disoriented as to be captured by the pedestrian feel-good stories of a utopia which Buhari would have wrought even with the fact that he inherited the most austere economic realities.

They have massed together to lead an erroneous chorus that Nigerians should vote out Buhari in 2019. Sho? Some of us who have been assaulted by this perverse gospel have asked why we should vote out Buhari but we have gotten no convincing answer than a rehearse of a more perverse narration of how Buhari has turned Nigeria to a land of hunger and misery and how killings have been happening under Buhari? Is that so? When you prod further, what you get is a string of poorly articulated narration of how life was a seamless bread and butter affair in Nigeria before Buhari came. If you try to run some comparisons to prove this story, they tell you to forget the past and face the future. President Muhammadu Buhari

Truth is that those who weave sordid stories to make Buhari look bad are so afraid to confront the past, which itself introduces a huge paradox to their badly-arranged stories. Can you face the present and the future without excursing into the past? To them, life should start from May 29, 2015 when Buhari took over from the scandalous regime they ran. That itself, is a cut-and-paste effort to manipulate. It is as fraudulent as the claim of these same people that they have repented (and you ask, repent from what?) and their more notorious request to be allowed back to power. They are so pathologically hunted by the past they created that they make every effort to shout down any person that refers them to the hell they presided over here for a whole 16 years. They want Nigerians to abridge their memories and senses and join them in voting out Buhari based on their micro-managed but hardly agreeing narratives, which sees Buhari as having failed. Some of them are even telling Nigerians that Buhari has proven not to be the solution to our problem.

Since we have an Eldorado they claimed they did here in 16 years, which other problems are they talking about? Which problems are they claiming they will offer solutions to when they brought down heaven on earth to Nigeria n their 16 messy years in power? PDP claimed they did beyond expectation so why are they apologizing and telling Nigerians of their readiness to be born-again rulers if given back power?

But then, the question remains; why should I and other Nigerians vote out Buhari and bring back the locusts? Should I vote Buhari out because he is meticulously rebuilding an economy that was eaten down and ran in red during a providential oil boom? Do I vote out Buhari because he is frantically building up our foreign reserve that was so badly vandalized when oil, our solo export product, went at over $120 a barrel and the country was exporting over 2.5million ever day? Do I vote out Buhari in 2019 because he is achieving this unbelievable feat at a period the oil price crashed to between $27 to $50 a barrel and our daily sale volume was cut to as low as below 700,000 barrels a day because those that lost their power to loot saw oil facilities as one of the sectors they must avenge their electoral defeat on? Do I vote out Buhari because at this very arid economic turn, he is making the highest investment in capital projects?

Do I vote out Buhari in 2019 because he has channeled all the money that would have used to service the gluttony and bacchanal greed of party men, cronies, hirelings, friends, subalterns, bed mates and party members of the party in power and its government to critical capital projects that will drive the Nigerian economy? Should I vote out Buhari because he adamantly refused to bow to the pressure to sustain the corruption omnibus and ensure Nigerians live straight and narrowly without stealing from the treasury? Do I vote out Buhari because he has taken up the nation’s decayed infrastructures and is fixing them in a way no other government has done in the past?

Do I vote out Buhari because he decided to implement strict monetary policies to save Nigeria’s resources from yam eaters, rodents and plunderers who are anchoring the noisome battle for his replacement? Do I vote out Buhari because the treasury raiders who looted a richly endowed country dry before he came feel that he should satisfy their senses of entitlement and continue abandoning the infrastructure that should drive our growth as a nation? Do I vote out Buhari because he has stopped evil servants from operating millions of phantom accounts through which they bleed the treasury while we collectively suffer? Do I vote out Buhari because the economy is no more about looting, plundering, sharing and stealing?

Should I vote out Buhari because he has insisted that he will neither chop nor allow pests to feast on our commonwealth? Should I vote out Buhari because he insists that Nigerian wealth must serve us all instead of a ravenous few? Do I vote out Buhari because in a period of austerity, he saved states that went bankrupt when we were having oil boom and had made them solvent through prudent and honest management of our economy? Do I vote out Buhari in 2019 because he insists that Nigerians should work for what they earn? Should I vote out Buhari because he is fixing federal roads, the power sector, the energy sector in a way no government has done in the history of the country?

Do I vote out Buhari because he is no longer feeding corrupt-former leaders who not only looted Nigeria to the bones but insist on being serviced by what remains of the treasury? Do I vote out Buhari in 2019 because he is no longer pandering to the indecent corrupt interests of the legislature whose members are being ran ragged by frustration that they are no longer enjoying the bazaar as they used to do? Should I vote out Buhari because he is no longer deploying sacks of billions of Naira to bribe the legislature on sundry issues? Should I vote out Buhari because some of his party men who expected being spoon-fed from the national purse are disappointed he is not doing so? Do I vote out Buhari because those that stole the country to the bones and who thought they had escaped with their loot are being called by to return what they stole?

Do I vote out Buhari because the professional scavengers that flood around the seat of power with the hope of free-loading from our commonwealth have been made extinct? Do I vote out Buhari because he stopped the murderous escapades of Boko Haram that killed in tens of thousands, that took a huge size of Nigerian landmass and subjected the entire country to unrestrained attacks and untamed danger? So do I vote out Buhari because he is building the Second Niger Bridge for which past regimes duped my Igbo people? Do I vote out Buhari because he is building the enormous Mambilla Power Station which past governments played around with for decades without as much as turning the foundation soil on the project site?

Should I vote out Buhari because he is building massive railways across Nigeria? Should I vote out Buhari because he is meticulously building a viable economy from the rubble of the chaos he met on ground? Should I vote out Buhari because the vampires that wrecked the public treasury are angry and baying bare blood because, for the first time in the country’s history, they have lost access to the treasury? Do I vote out Buhari because the vampires that sucked life out of us especially in the fatal 16 years’ period before 2015 are wailing their eyes out and feigning hunger as an elaborate dubious project to take another injurious bite on us?

Do I vote out Buhari because he paid off trillions of Naira past governments owed contractors for contracts they used to enrich their members? Do I vote out Buhari because he paid off over N600 billion subsidy the past regime owed fuel importers and saved the energy industry from collapse? Do I vote out Buhari because he has rebuilt what remained of the four refineries that previous governments abandoned as scraps? Do I vote out Buhari because he stopped the payment of fraudulent subsidy to phantom fuel importers as was the culture before he came? Do I vote out Buhari because sundry, corrupt interests are no longer being awarded fake contracts where they walk away with the contract monies without even visiting the project sites? Do I vote out Buhari because he paid off trillions of Naira owed pensioners in federal government ministries, parastatals and agencies during our unfortunate oil boom? Do I vote out Buhari for the trillions spent on the most ambitious social intervention scheme to rescue the most vulnerable in our society, which is the most elaborate any government has ever embarked in Nigeria?

Why should I vote out Buhari? Do I vote out Buhari because he has stopped the drainpipe of freaky importation of freebies that served as feeding bottle for corrupt politicians before he came? Do I vote out Buhari because he stopped the importation of foodstuffs and through this bold action, has made Nigeria a sustainable agricultural country where citizens feed themselves? Do I vote out Buhari because of the agricultural revolution he is doing in Nigeria, which has seen the country unravel as sustainable food producer from its recent past as a top food importer? Should I vote out Buhari because he has made politics a non-rewarding venture unlike in the past? Do I vote out Buhari because he had securely locked up our treasure box and restrained access to it to even his appointees and supporters? Do I vote out Buhari because he is strongly ranged against the gargantuan corruption complex from which most Nigerians eke out a living?

These are just few posers I want those that have launched a project to get Nigerians to turn against Buhari. I don’t know of any incoming leader but I make bold to say that President Buhari has done far more than any other President that ruled Nigeria. I am open to correction by any person that feels otherwise and this would be done through telling us any president that has done better by listing what such president did. So are these reasons why I should vote out Buhari? Make no mistake about it, the project to stop Buhari flows from no patriotic reasons but squarely on the reality that Buhari has capped official stealing and plundering. It is for the singular reason that Buhari has plugged our treasury from these leeches that he is making huge investment in growth-driving capital ventures even when we are going through difficult economic realities because the oil we have, over time, depended lazily on, has met turbulent times.

So, on what ground will I and millions of Nigerians that endured very desperate pressures in 2015 to vote out the moths and rodents, not vote in Buhari in 2019 to continue the good works he is doing? Is it because the looters and their accomplices that neigh the country’s treasury have weaved enough incoherent and contradictory lies against Buhari that I will dive into a fatal voyage in 2019? Is it because those that ate down our country are breathing enough vain fury? Is it that we are simple-indeed enough to be taken advantage of by desperadoes that want power for its corrupt ends? Is it that those who raped and pauperized us before 2015 are right in their feeling that we are a simple-minded and memory-challenged people as to fall for any silly prank Never! I see no reason why we should not vote more emphatically for Buhari in 2019; not based on who he is but on what he had done with the mandate we gave him in March 2015 and based on the fact that he is the most assured hand to deepen the recovery of Nigeria and the setting of a credible template for the growth of Nigeria.

Peter Claver Oparah.

Ikeja, Lagos.

E-mail: [email protected]