By Editor 
The Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, says Nigerians will only see the achievements of President Muhammadu Buhari, if they “calm down”.
EyewitnessMedia gathered that Adesina said this in an article titled, ‘Why We Need to Calm Down’.
The President’s spokesman made several references to a viral video showing a little boy Oreofeoluwa Babalola, pleading with his mum not to beat him but rather calm down.
He said like the little boy pleaded in the video, Nigerians need to calm down and stop being angry about the problems plaguing the nation.
Adesina wrote, “But if the truth the told, that message from the boy is for the entire country. We need to calm down. We are too uptight, nervy, edgy. We grumble, murmur too much, call the government a lot of names, try to demonise those serving the nation, when it could be ‘our last chance; last chance in the world’ to really fix things.
“If you listen to some people; angry youths, religious leaders, political analysts, newspaper columnists, news reviewers, so-called activists, then nothing positive is happening in the country. It is all about insurgency, banditry, killings, joblessness, corruption, lack and deprivation. True? False!”
The President’s aide said the things many complain about are not peculiar to Nigeria, noting that Nigerians would only see good things if they calmed down.
Adesina wrote, “Those things are there, as they are also in many countries of the world. But they are not the only things happening in Nigeria. Only that we would not see the positive things except we calmed down. We would never enjoy the rainfall, if we expect rainstorm to carry away our rooftop at any moment. Calm down. I’m just telling you to be ‘calming’ down.
“We will see the things that pertain to the peace of our country, if we would just calm down. As the young boy said, “this is my last chance; last chance in the world.”
He said last Sunday, a retired Group Captain, Sadeeq Garba (Retd), said the killings in the country were sad and regrettable, but things were not as completely negative as some people and interest groups would want to make them seem.
Quoting what he called reliable statistics from the Centre for Research in the United States, the retired officer gave these figures of the evil development from 2011, in number of total killings as thus: 2011 (1096 deaths), 2012 (3761), 2013 (7167), 2014-(15,600) 2016 (4618), 2017 (5763), 2018 (6565), 2019 (8350) and 2020 was 6195 deaths as of June.
Adesina said the figures showed that killings under the current government were less than the previous one.
“But why do some people want to make it appear as if we hadn’t passed through worse times in this country? Forget about who was in power as President. It is not about individuals now, it is about the descent of a country into the Hobbesian state of nature, where life is nasty, brutish and short.
“Killings dropped from 15,600 in 2014 to 4,618 in 2016 but not one positive word simply because their eyes are blinded by negative thoughts and sentiments. And they now need to calm down. Rather than upbraid, our security agencies should be challenged and encouraged to rediscover what they did in 2016,” Adesina added.
