Oshiomhole’s New Blame Game

                                         POLITICAL NOTES

Since the All Progressives Congress (APC) came into power in 2015, the senator representing Edo North in the National Assembly, Adams Oshiomhole, has demonstrated that he is a good apostle of the politics of blame game introduced by the party. Immediately, former President Goodluck Jonathan lost power in 2015 on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Oshiomhole and his APC wasted eight years blaming the 16 years of PDP for all the challenges facing Nigeria since the amalgamation of 1914. 

For eight years that former President Muhammadu Buhari was in power, Oshiomhole never raised his voice to condemn how Buhari plunged Nigeria into a huge debt trap, which he was servicing with 96 per cent of the country’s revenue as the former Edo State governor has suddenly revealed.

But in his renewed the blame game last week, Oshiomhole  admitted that the economic situation in the country was dire, and insisting that President Bola Tinubu inherited “a terrible economic situation.”

Speaking with reporters after a meeting with Vice-President Kashim Shettima at Aso Rock, the former Edo State governor said: “The government inherited a terrible economic situation. Everybody knows it. The government inherited an economy in which our total national revenue was barely enough to service our debt burden, spending 96 per cent, which is to say every N100,000 Nigeria earns N96,000 is going to repay debts, to service debt. So, you have only N4,000 left to pay all the salaries.”

Throughout the eight years of the Buhari government, at no time did Oshiomhole blame  or his government for mismanaging the country. But now, he has suddenly found his voice and realised that Tinubu inherited bad economic challenges from the Buhari government.

Oshiomhole’s critics believe that his relationship with Buhari was strained by the former president’s role in his controversial removal as the National Chairman of the APC.

Many analysts also believe that if Oshiomhole falls out with Tinubu and another president takes over in the next general election, he will blame the current president for Nigeria’s economic woes.

To Oshiomhole, the blame game is endless. But he should be reminded that leaders are elected to fix problems and not to keep on ranting endlessly over who created the problems.