Nigerians expresses displeasure over W’Bank projects – Ohanaeze, M’Belt groups berate Buhari

President Buhari directives to the world Bank
President Buhari
The controversial directive issued to the World Bank by President Muhammadu Buhari has generated a lot of argument and condemnations from different sections of the country as two North-Central groups frankly stated that the President did not have the Middle Belt at heart.

Not left out from the hard feelings, also, the Southern Leaders’ Forum condemned the decision of the President, saying Buhari deployed Army in the South and World Bank projects in the core North.

According to the President of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, had, on Thursday, in Washington DC, United States of America, said that President Buhari directed the bank to concentrate its major developmental projects in northern Nigeria.

In responds to the controversial statement misinterpreted by Nigerians as purportedly defended by the Presidency, the Presidency, on Friday, lashed out at its critics, saying Buhari’s statement was manipulated by unguided mischief makers.

The group berated the President that none of the developmental projects is in the North-Central, South-East and South-South, according to a report by the World Bank website on projects.worldbank.org.

Commenting on the omission of the North-Central from the projects, President of the Middle Belt Youth Council, Emma Zompal, said Buhari was anti-Middle Belt.

He stated, “The coming of President Buhari to Aso Rock has divided Nigerians to the extent that it will take us another century to mend. Middle Belt has been at the receiving end of this administration. Others may think that we have been part of the surplus appointments he has given so far.

“The Middle Belt people are worst hit in terms of Boko Haram attacks and the marauding Fulani herdsmen. We lost lives and property more than recorded in the history of our existence in Nigeria. It is obvious that the regime of President Buhari does not have Middle Belt at heart.”

According to him, the Middle Belt has been  a graveyard of crisis and displacement as result of Fulani herdsmen attacks.

Zompal added, “We have not seen any remedial efforts by this administration. It’s so sad that the World Bank projects in this administration are mainly for his people excluding the Middle Belt. All the areas affected in the Middle Belt have never been rehabilitated and there is no plan by this administration to do so.”

Also, the President of the Middle Belt Patriotic Front, Yusuf Hamman, noted that Buhari had seen no reason to rehabilitate the Middle Belt.

He stated, “Insecurity will bring hunger and increase poverty. Despite the loss of lives and property in Benue and Plateau states as well as in the Southern Kaduna, the government has seen no reason to include these areas in the intervention programmes.”

Also, the Southern Leaders Forum, in a statement on Sunday, said the President’s directive was directively sectional, discriminatory and mischievous in view of the deployment of troops in the southern part of the country and the World Bank projects in the North.

The statement was signed by Chief Guy Ikokwu for the South-East; Senator Bassey Henshaw for the South-South; and Yinka Odumakin for the South-West.

It reads, “This directive, without mincing words, is sectional, discriminatory, divisive and against the laudable promise of Mr. President at his inauguration that he would not be beholden to anyone as he was elected to be the President of everybody.

“It riles the more when we have a situation of provocative deployment of ‘Operation Python Dance’ and ‘Crocodile Smile’ in a section of the country while the World Bank is being dispatched to another.”

The forum noted that asking the global financial body to concentrate its attention on the region, where the President hailed from, “throws a knife at the heart of our nationhood and challenges the hackneyed expression that the ‘unity of Nigeria is settled’.”

It argued that there could be no rational explanation for such a decision, criticising what it called the knee-jerk and bellicose reaction from the Presidency to the issue.

Also the apex Igbo leadership group in the South-East, the Ohanaeze says that the President directives to the World Bank indicates no proof of fairness to Igbo yet.


The National Publicity Secretary of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Mr. Uche Okpaga, told one of our correspondents in Enugu on Sunday that Buhari’s fairness or lack of fairness to the Igbo was an open secret.

Okpaga noted that the Buhari administration’s attitude to the Igbo contributed to the agitations in the South-East.

He stated, “The issue of fairness or otherwise to the Ndigbo by this present administration is an open secret – open to the Presidency and yet a secret to Ndigbo – as we are yet to see the proof, hence the uncommon agitations in the region.

“However, let me use this medium to thank President Muhammadu Buhari for approving the reconstruction of federal roads and other capital projects in the eastern region.

“He should see to its proper completion, for only then we will rate his fairness to Ndigbo in all ramifications.”

Also the President Buhari’s directive echoes well to the Arewa Consultative Forum as the group canvasses that it considered the World Bank’s claim as most uncharitable to the North.

“It is, therefore, the considered view of the ACF that ascribing primordial considerations to projects where the President comes from is preposterous and uncharitable,” the National Publicity Secretary of the Forum, Muhammad Biu, told one of our correspondents in Kaduna on Sunday.

Biu said Nigerians should appreciate the fact that each region had its peculiar natural problems which needed special intervention by the government.

While saying Buhari was elected as Nigerian President and not that of the North or south, the ACF’s spokesman appealed to Nigerians to always harp more on what would unite the country.

He stated, “In the last two years, he had presented national budgets to the National Assembly which contained developmental projects for the entire country being his constituency.

“The budgets were passed into Appropriation Act and implemented according to available resources which Nigerians are fully aware of.

“The claims of favouritism or marginalisation by one part of the country against the other, which have created unnecessary mistrust among the various components of the country, are, in most cases, not based on facts but rather on speculations.”

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