The Christmas Holiday that ended yesterday was arguably traumatic for many Nigerians, not just on account of the difficult economic challenges but even more because of the lingering fuel scarcity that kept many Nigerians including Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo at the fuel station on Christmas Day. It was as such not surprising that the political parties are making issues out of the situation.

By Emmanuel Aziken, Political Editor

When last Friday as Nigerians prepared to enter into a four-day holiday to mark the Christmas Holidays, that the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP  threw down the gauntlet to the Muhammadu Buhari administration, it inevitably set the stage for a politically feisty holiday.

Osinbajo dispenses petrol in Lagos

Taking knowledge of the biting fuel scarcity in the country, the PDP had called on President Buhari as the minister of petroleum to immediately resolve the crisis to enable Nigerians to enjoy the holiday season.

The party in the statement issued by its spokesman, Kola Ologbondinyan said that it was not enough for Buhari to sit in his comfort zone and put the blame of the fuel scarcity at the doorsteps of marketers, while Nigerians continue to suffer untold hardship.

“The unbearable fuel situation in the country is completely unacceptable. Mr. President must be up and doing. He should not allow anybody to push him to claim that the issue of fuel scarcity is not under the purview of the Minister of Petroleum Resources. When he took office as President of Nigeria and also as the Minister of Petroleum Resources, he was aware that the buck stops at his table. “Nigerians must not be made to suffer especially at this time of the year when we have the Yuletide and New Year festivities, which come with a lot of activities.

“This is the same APC government that promised that it would make fuel available and affordable. Today, under their deceitful and corrupt watch, fuel has not only become extremely scarce, but the price has also risen from where the PDP left it at N86.50k per liter to as high as N300 per liter and above.”

Predicting that the difficulties would lead the APC to its Waterloo, the PDP said:  “But should Nigerians be subjected to this type of anguish and pain after supporting APC to win election in 2015? Does APC indeed deserve another support in 2019?

“Whereas we know that the time is already up for the APC, we nevertheless urge Mr. President to, within the remaining short time, rise to his responsibilities as the minister of petroleum or immediately relinquish that position and allow a competent person to run the ministry. Enough is enough”, the party added.

The go-getting statement from the PDP immediately roused the APC’s which in a rebuke to the PDP flayed the opposition party for trying to make politics out of the suffering of the Nigerians.

The APC in its rebuke, however, committed a seeming faux pas when it claimed that the phenomenon of fuel scarcity predated the Buhari administration in an apparent slip of its duty of solving whatever problems it inherited. The party in a statement issued by its National Publicity Secretary, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi also flayed the opposition People’s Democratic Party, PDP for trying to make political gains from the pains of Nigerians.

The APC statement while acknowledging the pains on Nigerians due to the scarcity and the efforts of the Federal Government to remedy the situation said: “We also understand the unhappiness of Nigerians at this situation, which is happening for the first time in the Christmas period since the APC administration came to power.

“We also wish to note that while we accept the choice of the opposition PDP to make political gains out of the difficulties that Nigerians are experiencing as a result of this fuel scarcity, we however condemn their desperation to make the government and our party look bad by maliciously fabricating and circulating fictitious statements in the names of our government and party officials and then attack us on the basis of those same statements that they fabricated in the first place. This is bad politics.”

The APC’s admonition that the problem preceded the Buhari administration was, however, one that received serious flaks especially in the social media.

The APC had said that “this problem that has bedevilled every administration in our country, including the PDP administration under whose government, Nigerians would recall, the oil cabal enjoyed unprecedented prosperity.”

The criticism of the administration was enough to force Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo who was holidaying in Lagos to the fuel stations on Christmas Eve and even on Christmas Day in a way to empathise with the pains of the citizenry.

If that was not enough, a seeming gaffe in the President’s Christmas Day message was enough to draw the attention of one of the administration’s leading critics into the fray.

Mr. Reno Omokri, who served as a special assistant to President Goodluck Jonathan while noting Buhari’s apparent innocuous admonition that better days were ahead for Nigerians took observation of the faux pas where the president referred to Christmas as being in the Holy Scripture.

Drawing from the fourth paragraph of the homily where the president said: “The Holy Book describes Christmas as a festival of peace, joy, healing, hope, and fulfillment.” Omokri, himself a pastor, took it upon himself to draw attention to what he referred to as the seeming failure of the president’s speech writers.

“The statement above is a fallacy. The Holy Bible does not mention the word Christmas, neither does it mention that Christians should mark any festival surrounding the birth of Jesus the Messiah,” Omokri, who has operated from California as one of the most strident critics of the administration said.

Omokri, a pastor, took the opportunity to feast on the regime noting that birth of Jesus, The Christ was never for once marked out in the bible to be celebrated even as he went to great extent to prove that the Christmas Holiday was invented by Emperor Constantine to replace a heathen Roman festival.

“It is celebrated in Nigeria and much of the world, for the simple reason that it was Europeans that brought modern day Christianity to Nigeria, Africa and much of the world.

“The President can celebrate Christmas. Try as my conscience would, I could not persuade President Jonathan not to celebrate Christmas. It would have been political suicide. However, let no President lie against the Holy Spirit and say that “The Holy Book describes Christmas as a festival of peace, joy, healing, hope, and fulfillment,” the fiery pastor said. The issues before the APC were not helped as the holiday season tailed off as it was alleged that Governor Rochas Okorocha had renamed one of the popular landmarks in Owerri, the Imo State capital after President Buhari. The decision to rename the popular Asumpta Avenue which leads to one of the oldest church buildings owned by the Roman Catholic Church was being seen in some quarters as another faux pas on the part of the administration. That came after online criticisms trailed the broadcast of a human interest documentary on the president at the peak of the fuel scarcity in the country.

The controversy over the renaming of the avenue emerged is only another issue in a Christmas Holiday both the administration’s supporters and its critics would better live to forget.