Buhari Cares For Our Generation, Even Generations Yet Unborn

I wish to begin by thanking God Almighty for answering the prayers of the Nigerian masses and granting their wish in making their saviour, President Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR, our president in the 2015 general elections.

For almost 15 years, Nigerians have been yearning for the return of the people’s General and there was no better time for President Buhari to return to power than now when our economy has been seriously pillaged and our treasury rendered nearly empty. President Buhari’s second coming at this unfortunate moment in our history is God-sent; he is on a divine mission to rescue our country.

Therefore, I must commend President Buhari for the various measures he has thus far taken aimed at reforming the Nigerian economy and ridding our country of the destructive menace of corruption. Mr. President you are on the right course and more power to your elbow. May God almighty grant you long life and good health to be able to implement your laudable vision for our dear country, Nigeria.

Mr President, those of us in the Bureaux de Change business in Nigeria are happy with your efforts aimed at sanitizing our business and the foreign exchange market by ridding it of imposters who ordinarily have no business in the Bureaux de Change business.

We were therefore startled by your sad revelation in London last week that some top staff of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, owned BDCs and therefore were diverting most of the foreign exchange to their BDCs and depriving those of us who are legitimately in the business.

It was deeply terrifying to hear that one such CBN directors own as many as 160 BDCs, which shows how low the CBN directors could descend in their efforts to sabotage their country.

No doubt, this serious act of sabotage against Nigerians and their economy must not go unpunished; therefore, we strongly call on the need for a panel to investigate the involvement of CBN top shots in BDCs operations as well as severe punishment for whoever is found guilty of using their public offices to sabotage our dear country.

At this juncture, I will like to call on all fellow members of the Association of Bureaux de Change Operators of Nigeria, ABCON, to please exercise patience and restraint concerning the apex bank’s decision not to sell dollars to us, which has, no doubt, brought an untold hardship on our members, and led to the loss of jobs by over 30,000 of our members, mostly youth.

Our dear president has for long been someone who has Nigeria at heart and therefore means well for all Nigerians, irrespective of our North-South and Christian-Muslim divide; he cares not only for our generation but even generations yet unborn, which explains most of his actions. Therefore we should desist from attacking the person of the President or his lieutenants.

We hope that once investigations into the unfortunate involvement of public officers in the BDC business have been concluded, the CBN will continue to give us foreign exchange so that those of us who have lost their jobs will be able to regain their jobs and therefore help Mr President’s agenda of creating employment for our teeming youth population.

I also wish to seize this opportunity and call on Mr President to intervene and ensure our members have refunded the mandatory #35 million cautionary deposits the CBN requested us to apply for following its suspension of foreign exchange sales to BDCs. As although most ABCON members have properly applied for the refund of the cautionary deposit which was due to be made in 2 weeks, none of us has yet been refunded 3 weeks later.

The government of President Buhari is ours and therefore we undoubtedly believe Mr President will not do anything that is tantamount to the survival of our legitimate businesses as law abiding citizens of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Therefore, I wish to affirm my 100 per cent support to the president’s quest to sanitize BDCs operation in Nigeria as well as call on fellow ABCON members to also do same.

Ahmed Nakura wrote from Bompai, Kano