President Muhammadu Buhari’s eight-year score card – A disaster in all ramifications

By May 29, President Muhammadu Buhari’s eight-year tenure will come to an end....CONTINUE READING

Unfortunately, rather than leave the country better than he met it, going by the endless flighty promises he and his party, the All Progressives Congress, APC, made to Nigerians in the 2014/2015 election campaign season, or at best, leave the country the same way he met it, Buhari is leaving behind a country tottering on the brink of collapse, far worse than he met it…..CONTINUE READING

Buhari’s government has succeeded in inflicting heavy hardship and sufferings on Nigerians.

But contrary to the reality on ground, Buhari claims to have met the yearnings and expectations of Nigerians. From issues like power, communications, digital economy, oil and gas, national security, anti-graft war, social investment, health, and agriculture, Buhari scores himself rather high.

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Even his own wife, Aisha in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation, BBC, acknowledged that her husband performed poorly when she apologised to Nigerians for the dismal performance of his administration.

The promises made in the APC Manifesto were numerous cutting across a review of the constitution, restructuring, national security, conflict resolution, national unity and social harmony, job creation and the economy, agriculture and food security, industrialisation, infrastructure, oil and gas industry, education, healthcare, senior citizens, youth, sports and culture, women empowerment, environment and foreign policy.

Buhari’s performance in all of them is at best, woeful.

Below are some of the areas that underscores his woeful performance in office as compiled by The Street Journal.

Galloping inflation
Since he became president, the inflation rate has continued to rise thus translating to about N133 million Nigerians living below poverty line and unable to afford the basic things of life. Prices of food items and services continue to experience a constant increase almost every quarter.

Under his watch, the country experienced the first recession in 2016, two decades after the first one of 1984, which incidentally took place under his watch as a military head of state. In 2021, Nigeria recorded one of the highest inflation rates in the world at around 17 percent and the seventh highest in sub-saharan Africa. It was also the first time in the country’s history it was experiencing such a high inflation rate.

Although Buhari’s government increased the minimum wage to N30,000 from N18,000, inflation which skyrocketed from 9.78 per cent to 22.72 per cent inflation eroded the increase. Similarly, despite the 40 per cent pay rise recently approved by the Federal Government to cushion the effect of inflation, for government workers, the pay rise has been lost to rising inflation.

When Buhari took over in 2015, petrol was sold at N87 per litre but it is presently dispensed for N196 despite the payment of subsidies by his government. Cooking gas prices also shot to N822.16/kg from N256/kg in eight years while electricity tariffs were hiked to N68 per kilowatt per hour from N27.20/kWh despite power outages.

Job loss
Naturally, with rising inflation, job loss will be imminent. Not only did state governors and private companies lay off so many of their workers, so many indigenous and international conglomerates, closed shops. The few indigenous companies that have managed to keep their doors open, either owe staff salaries for months on end or resort to paying half salaries. What is more, state governors now use the excuse of job loss as a result of inflation, as an excuse not to either pay the contributory pension to the Pension Fund Administrators or blatantly refuse to pay retirees their pension as has been done by previous governments, thus creating a lot of hardships for retirees.

Insecurity
Nigeria has never been faced with an unprecedented wave of different but overlapping security crises, from kidnapping to extremist insurgencies as much as it has these past eight years. Despite assurances that his government has dealt decisively with kidnappings and disruption of schools by criminals across the country, the reverse is obviously the case. Insecurity has ravaged Nigeria so much so that no one is safe from any region in Nigeria. To say that business of kidnapping for ransom is booming would be an understatement. The irony is the fact that insecurity grew in huge proportions under him as a retired senior military officer. From Jihadism to clashes between farmers and herdsmen to separatist insurgency to oil militants to banditry and kidnappings, the country is to say the least, a ticking time bomb. So far over 1 million Nigerians have been victims of kidnappings and killings by bandits, coupled with the menace of a Boko Haram faction affiliated to the Islamic State group.

With insecurity comes the danger of food scarcity. According to UNICEF, about 25 million Nigerians are at risk of hunger before the end of 2023 if urgent action is not taken against persistent violence in the northern Nigeria where most of the food consumed by Nigeria, is grown.

Debt profile
By the time Buhari leaves office on May 29, he would be leaving a total of N77 trillion debt for the incoming government to service. This whooping sum has been made easy to accumulate, no thanks to the rubber stamp National Assembly that endorses every request for borrowings, which appears top on their agenda every six months (no exaggerations). Dependent on oil for 70% of government revenues, rather than seek more ways to cut down on expenditure as a government or fashion out ways to generate revenue, Buhari’s administration chose to adopt a laissez-faire attitude. Expectedly, while his government defends these borrowings as a boost for food production, to ensure food security, supporters of the administration defend it by claiming that Nigeria is simply not earning enough money to fulfil its financial obligations. Unfortunately, these loans generally do not have any sustainable impact on the common man and they have been taken and left for posterity.

Education
The plan to attain up to 15% of the annual budget for this critical sector as well as make substantial investments in training quality teachers at all levels of the educational system ended up being a pipe dream. The proportion of the budget that went to education under his administration hovered between 5% and 7%. Despite criticising the Goodluck Jonathan administration in the handling of the strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Buhari has failed to make any difference in the matter in which he had positioned himself as someone who had a magic wand to address the issue. For much of 2020 and 2022, the public universities were shut and frustrated students from poor homes were left to their fate while officials of the administration sent their children and wards abroad. Buhari by May 29 will be leaving behind at least 10 million out of school children.

Healthcare
Under the Buhari administration, the health sector has witnessed the highest brain drain in the history of the country. Also, contrary to his commitment in 2015 to receive medical care in Nigeria, he made it a regular pastime to fly off to London at the slightest discomfort at great public expense.

Economy
The promise to create 6 new Regional Economic Development Agencies (REDAs) to act as champions of sub-regional competitiveness and put in place an N300 billion regional growth fund, an average of N50 billion in each geo-political region, to be managed by the REDAs, encourage private sector enterprise and support to help places currently reliant on the public sector were all wishful thinking as this project never saw the light of day.

Infrastructure
Despite the billions of dollars being pumped into numerous building projects, the Securities and Exchange Commission has estimated that Nigeria’s infrastructure deficit will hit $878bn by 2040, making it hard for businesses to prosper.

Nepotism
The current administration is riddled with nepotism with Buhari consistently favoring his Northern constituency in key appointments to the detriment of the South, especially the South East and South South geopolitical zones where he got the least number of votes in the 2015 presidential election. Absurdly, he had said a few days into his administration in 2015 that constituencies that gave him five percent votes should not in all honesty, expect to be treated in some issues as constituencies that gave him 97 percent. From his kitchen cabinet to those manning the country’s major security apparatus as well as revenue generating agencies, all are headed by Northerners.

Corruption
One of the highlights of Buhari’s election campaign in 2015, was his vow to fight corruption. He was even nicknamed the ‘grandmaster of the anti-graft war,’ or the ‘anti corruption crusader.’ But how well did he perform in his unconvincing war on corruption? Your guess is as good as mine. His veil of pretence was finally lifted when he not only repeatedly, refused to take action against some of his corrupt associates, he went ahead to pardon two ex-governors, Joshua Dariye of Plateau State and Jolly Nyame of Taraba state after some years into their separate jail terms of 10 and 12 years for stealing N1.16 billion and N1.6 billion respectively from their states. These two were the only two highly politically exposed persons that the weakened criminal justice system had been able to put behind bars. They were both pardoned on health grounds. Expectedly, his spokesmen, Femi Adesina and Shehu Garba defended this ignoble perfidy on behalf of their boss.

No doubt, the country is badly in need of leadership, a paradigm shift that will reposition the country in the right path and hopefully, the incoming government meets those indices and perform better…..CONTINUE READING