For directing the World Bank to focus on the North, the monarch of Gbaramatu Kingdom in Warri South West Local Government Area of Delta State, Pere Oboro Gbaraun II, Aketekpe, has described President Muhammadu Buhari as a dictator that will never imbibe or exhibit any of the traits of a democrat.
The monarch in an interview with our correspondent in Warri, Delta State, said that Buhari’s parochial directive to the World Bank was oppressive and a demonstration of the President’s bias for his kinsmen.
Recently, World Bank’s President, Jim Yong Kim, disclosed that Buhari had directed the global financial institution to give priority to executing its projects located in the Northern part of the country, a claim the President has yet to deny.
But the monarch, who spoke through the Secretary General of the Traditional Council of Chiefs in the Kingdom, Chief Godspower Gbenekama, faulted the President’s policy statement, saying that such a declaration had only portrayed Buhari as a true dictator.
He stressed that if Buhari was a democrat, he should have made a similar pronouncement, when the Niger Delta region was under siege and bombardment of the Nigerian military.
“Buhari is not a democrat, he remains a dictator. Otherwise, why should he give a body that covers all nations, and all people, such a directive, when it is known all over the world that the Niger Delta region also needs such development initiatives? Nobody would have raised any eyebrow over his directive to the World Bank, if he had replicated the gesture when our area was under siege and military firing,” he said.
The Ijaw monarch, therefore, cautioned the World Bank not to bring its credibility and integrity into disrepute by succumbing to the oppressive tendency of the President Buhari-led administration.
He further said the policy statement credited to the President was not a surprise to the people of the Niger Delta region, noting that Buhari had been oppressive to the people of the region.
The monarch said it was disheartening that Buhari gave such a standing order to the World Bank to concentrate its development initiatives on the North, when such a pronouncement was never made when the Niger Delta region was in turmoil.
“The report saying President Muhammadu Buhari gave a standing order to the World Bank is not a surprise to us. It is not a new thing. The President had earlier said that it was proper for him to develop the area where he got 95 per cent vote more than where he got five per cent vote, which, according to him, was the Niger Delta region.”
