How Will Buhari Be Remembered?

President Buhari, on Monday May 15, in Abuja, at the last Ministerial Performance Review Retreat of his administration, said high-impact projects have been implemented across the country, meeting the yearnings and aspirations of Nigerians.

Nigerians have given the outgoing President Muhammadu Buhari greetings of “well done, great work done, thank you for the strides taken in building roads, bridges and railways,” etc. This is in addition to several other commendations that have poured in for the great work done by President Buhari’s administration, in infrastructural development across the country.

President Buhari, on Monday May 15, in Abuja, at the last Ministerial Performance Review Retreat of his administration, said high-impact projects have been implemented across the country, meeting the yearnings and aspirations of Nigerians.

Addressing the Retreat organised to evaluate the level of progress made in the implementation of the Nine Priority Agenda of his administration, the President in a statement by the presidential spokesman, Femi Adesina, highlighted remarkable progress made in different sectors of the economy, infrastructure included.

The President told participants and guests at the retreat that over 3,800km of roads have been constructed across the country. He said: “In recognition of the importance of critical infrastructure in economic development and the quest of this Administration to leave a lasting legacy, we have implemented high-impact projects across the length and breadth of the country that meet the yearnings and aspirations of Nigerians”.

He noted that “Some of the notable achievements in infrastructure include the completion of 326km Itakpe-Ajaokuta-Warri rail line and railway ancillary facilities; the completion of over 156.5km Lagos-Ibadan standard gauge railway modernisation project, with extension to Lagos Port, Apapa”. On road projects, he said the Administration has constructed 408Km of roads; 2,499Km of roads funded Sukuk Bonds and maintenance of 15,961Km of roads across the Country.

Key among these projects are the construction of 1.9km 2nd Niger Bridge at Onitsha linking Anambra and Delta States with 10.30km approach road, rehabilitation, construction and expansion of Lagos-Shagamu-Ibadan dual carriageway, the ongoing rehabilitation of Abuja-Kaduna-Zaria-Kano Roads, among others.

Stressing that the Federal Government under his watch has sustained commitment to infrastructural development, President Buhari said over 941km of completed Sukuk road projects nationwide have been handed over. Furthermore, he said the Federal Government has embarked on the reconstruction of 21 selected Federal Roads totaling 1,804.6km, under the Road Infrastructure Development & Refurbishment Investment Tax Credit Policy.

He explained that the roads, which are funded by the Nigeria National Petroleum Company Limited, are in addition to similar existing collaboration with Messrs Dangote Industries Limited, and other corporate organisations, to improve the stock of the country’s road infrastructure.

For President Buhari, despite the several other areas Nigerians were looking forward to more performance from, the infrastructural developmental strides seems to have come to the rescue in mirroring some of the notable achievements of the his administration. Buhari has written his name in the sands of time, with key infrastructural developments undertaken by his administration.

The former Lagos State Governor and outgoing Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Raji Fashola, recently encapsulated the array of work done by his Ministry in a compendium tagged “PMB Administration Scorecard, 2015-2023 – A Time and Economic Resource Report”. Not only did the document communicate work done with money expended, it also went the extra mile to create an overview of the government’s income during the period under review and how resources were managed to maximise deliverables.

He said “Hundreds of roads, bridges, and houses were constructed and built during the eight-year tenure of President Buhari, with a budgetary allocation of N1,584, 192, 986, 487.24 (N1.58 trillion). With N964, 840, 060, 932.12 (N932.1 billion) already released and N619,352,925,555.12 (N619.35 billion) outstanding, very remarkable aspects of the scorecard are the details of the spillover effects of the massive government investment on infrastructure, especially, as it improves human capacity development and the consequential empowerment of the Nigerian populace.

Between 2016 and 2022, a total of 8,352.94km of roads were constructed or rehabilitated. To achieve this, a total number of 339,955 jobs directly related to the project were created. Not only that, with tonnes of cement used totaling N1,652,190.22, diesel (N1,002,026,851.29), bitumen (N3,371,136.57), petrol (N51,716,271.07), fine aggregate sand (N18,515,735.06), coarse aggregate/gravel (N40,881,234.03) and reinforcement put at 512,505.20, several hundreds of thousands of indirect jobs were created.

These laboratories departmentalised into soil laboratories, asphalt and bitumen laboratories, concrete and aggregate laboratories, steel laboratories, and chemistry laboratories, are saddled with the responsibilities of ensuring that materials used on the projects, meet the specified standard and guarantee durability requirements.

To really understand the effects of government infrastructure development, it is best to take a closer look at the impact analysis on the underlisted completed road rehabilitation projects: Lafia-Obi-Awe-Tunga Road, Nasarawa State; Vandeikya-Obudu Cattle Ranch Road (Phase I) Cross Rivers State; Hadejia-Nguru Road (Phase II), Kirikasama-Nguru Road, Jigawa State; Nguru-Gashua-Bayamari (Phase I) – Nguru-Gashua (phase II), Yobe State and Nguru-Gashua-Bayamari (Phase II) (Gashua-Bayamari).

There is the dualisation of Kano-Maiduguri road linking Kano-Jigawa-Bauchi-Yobe and Borno States; completion of Gombe-Numan-Yola Road (Phase II and Gombe-Kaltungo, Gombe State; dualisation of Kano-Maiduguri road linking Kano-Jigawa-Bauchi-Yobe and Borno States (Section III Azare-Potiskum, Bauchi State; rehabilitation of section IA of Sokoto-Tambuwal -Jega-Kontagora-Makera Road (Phase I and II) in Sokoto to Kebbi/Niger States; construction of Nnenwe-Uduma-Uburu Road (Section I 26.2km and Section II: spur to Ishiagu-Mile 2 Road – 14km in Enugu/Ebonyi States; construction of Isoko Ring Road, Delta State and the rehabilitation of Efon Alaaye-Erinmo-Iwaraja Road in Ekiti/Ondo States.

Adding his voice to those who have commended the Buhari’s government for his notable infrastructural strides through the Ministry of Works and Housing, the Emir of Yauri, His Royal Highness, Dr. Muhammad Zayyanu Abdulahi, recently stated that, “I am indeed grateful to the federal government for initiating and completing the rehabilitation works on the roads in Kebbi State, which never received any major rehabilitation attention, until the tenure of the Buhari administration.”

Meanwhile, Fashola has explained the reason for the delay the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway experienced. According to him, “Work resumed there in 2016, after the passing of the first full budget of this administration. That was when a budget of about N30 billion was allocated for the road, and the Contractor had done about N40 billion’s work. In the next year, when we put in another N30 billion, the National Assembly cut it to N10 billion, so we lost a year. I am sure we would have been in a better place, if we hadn’t lost that time.”

He commended the fact that, “It was after that delay, Mr President came up with this Infrastructure Development Fund, investing the proceeds of the NLNG dividends, and also recovered funds from previous administrations that had been stolen out of the country. So, the project, apart from the physical evidence of what you see, the impact in travel time, the employment it generates, was also a very significant example of the anti-corruption crusade; stolen funds came back to be invested in assets in our country”.

Fashola also noted that not only is the second Niger bridge an asset, it is finished. In his words “The road that links to the Onitsha side is also finished, 7km road. It’s the road that connects from the Asaba side, that we are working on now. They are working day and night there, just as they are working day and night on Lagos-Ibadan expressway. We should finish in the next few days”.

He stated further that “I am able to say that we have brought almost everything under control. The only ones still outstanding are Benin-Okene, and now that we have funding from NNPC, it will be built. Benin to Sapele also, we now have funding. The road that links Alesi-Ugep to Ogoja, all through to Katsina-Ala, that one too we made lots of progress, we’ve finished. For the infrastructural work, I’m proud to say that we’ve solved most of the problems and we’ve brought many under management”.

More encomiums have been showered on the government at the commissioning and handover of most of the roads that have been completed. Mike Osifowora, a Public Affairs analyst who wrote from Ijebu-Ode, Ogun State, noted that through these projects, the government, without doubt, is putting money in people’s pockets, food on their table, empowering more businesses, especially the farmers, and creating better traveling conditions across the country. It is only fair to acknowledge these laudable infrastructural achievements of President Buhari.

Buhari’s Scorecard

Corruption Is Still A Major Problem
By Debo Adelowo

Corruption was one of the major campaign planks of Candidate Muhammadu Buhari in his successful 2015 Presidential race, as it was when he ran unsuccessfully in 2003, 2007 and 2011.

Cutting an ascetic image and with the background of his first run as Military Head of State between January 1, 1984 and August 27, 1985, Buhari was the go-to person to kill the hydra headed problem of corruption. And the message sank. So, where are we now?

There was little doubt and there is negligible debate that the previous administration of President Goodluck Jonathan was corrupt, which reports became well known when Buhari took office. But if the attempt was to show how dirty that regime was and how much different the current one is, it failed spectacularly because, before long, cases of corruption and misuse of office began to surface under Buhari. And, Nigerians waited for what seemed like eons for Buhari, a man, we are told, whose body language and ethos repelled corruption to act. He didn’t or didn’t care or wasn’t aware and the stories stayed where they were, as beacons that will now define the essential Buhari on corruption.

Yet, Buhari and his appointees say he has fought corruption the most of any Government in Nigeria so far. Last year in response to a Bloomberg question, Buhari claimed he was leaving Nigeria far better than he met it and said his administration made corruption difficult because People were empowered to report corrupt practices. This is in reference to the whistleblower policy under which people were encouraged to report corrupt practices. Yet, there wasn’t much that came out of that policy and before long it lost its relevance as those who reported were hounded in some cases.

Apart from his first Secretary to Government of the Federation Babachir Lawal who was sacked after protest by Nigerians based on allegations that a company linked to him benefited from contracts awarded by the administration and the minister of power Mamman Sale, no other official has been dealt with despite the avalanche of corruption allegations in the public space.

While the administration will say these allegations do not approximate convictions, Nigerians will not forget the drama of sleaze and corruption that played out on national TV when the interim management of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) led by Professor Daniel Pondei and supervised by the Minister of Niger Delta Godswill Akpabio was put on the spot by the Senate for billions of naira illegally spent in trivia and nonessential items, yet the president did nothing. In that incident the NDDC management had no answers to questions of spending without appropriation and paying themselves stupendous allowances. Professor Pondei admitted in 2020 before the Senate that his committee paid itself N1.3 billion extra allowances for work not done during the COVID 19 lockdown. Nigerians watched as the presidency went deaf-mute. No one was punished and business continued as usual.

Yet Buhari told an anti-corruption forum by the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption (PACAC) and other anti-graft agencies in July 2022 in Abuja, that he was leaving office in 2023 with the reputation of an anti-corruption crusader, having done his “best in or out of office to get rid of corruption in Nigeria and Africa”.

It is a measure of what the people and the world think of his efforts that Nigeria’s dropped in the corruption perception index from 136 out of 175 countries in 2014 before Buhari became president to 155 out of 180 countries as at 2022.

And analysts are making it clear that if indeed Buhari fought corruption it must have been delusional because the evidence does not support it. For instance, in a 2021 report, the U.S. described corruption under Buhari as “massive, widespread and pervasive.”

Speaking on the issue, Prof Attahiru Jega, a former Chairman of INEC, said: “Nigeria’s 2021 rank is 154 out of 180 countries, with a score of 24 over 100. To paraphrase Chinua Achebe, the ‘Trouble with Nigeria’ is corruption. No matter how we disagree with Transparency International (TI) on its methodology and criteria for ranking countries using the Corruption Perception Index (CPI), this is globally recognised, and the creation has already been created that Nigeria is terribly engulfed by corruption; as is often said, perception sometimes is more consequential than the reality.”

In his view, “This relatively very poor record and ranking is essentially on account of the humongous corruption associated with what is known about its extent and magnitude in the Nigerian public sector, especially at the federal level.” Recall that during the Obasanjo administration, the World Bank reported that over 60 percent of the corruption then was in the executive branch at the federal level. It is not difficult to see why this is so and why it has not changed. The federal government gets the bulk of the share of revenue allocation at 52 percent. Also, all the revenue earning and big spending agencies such as the NNPC, Customs, Federal Inland Revenue Service, CBN, Defence are under the executive. This, any effort to address the corruption issue should look to these areas. Yet, corruption is also massive in states and local governments, which get about 48 percent of federally allocated revenue.

While the failure to tame corruption cannot be said to be the fault of President Buhari alone, his failure to provide leadership to address it is what is why he is seen as leading a regime that fuels corruption, as Premium Times stated in an editorial in August 2022. The paper stated that: “overwhelmed by challenges of governance, President Muhammadu Buhari has said that he is eager to leave office. He made the confession when governors of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) paid him Sallah homage in Daura, Katsina State. “It has been tough,” he quipped. The president has just 10 months for his wish to come to pass. One of the issues that have constantly gnawed at his government has been corruption. He had pledged to cripple it during the 2015 electioneering with his well-known refrain: “If we don’t kill corruption, corruption will kill Nigeria.” Sadly, the epidemic has become so contagious that some argue that it has now reached fairly overwhelming proportions.” It identified ‘cronyism and nepotism in Buhari’s key appointments’ as problem points that ‘conflated with the working of government agencies at cross-purposes to fuel corruption.’ Indeed so.

As one commenter said: “Nigeria is no better but it was good that Buhari had his presidency, else the myths around him would have become legend.” The myth of the anti-corruption fighter is certainly no legend for the soon to become ex-President Muhammadu Buhari GCFR.

Buhari’s Scorecard

The Dot In Buhari’s Legacy
By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu

Power is transient while History with a capital “H” is permanent. History is always there to judge the leader after he has had his days and years in power. Father Time, alias History, can be quite merciless in passing judgement on a ruler.

President Muhammadu Buhari ruled Nigeria as a military Head of State and has superintended over the country for all of 8 years as a civilian Executive President. As he fades into the shadows away from the klieg lights of power, the judgement of his tenure supervenes.

One particular aspect of Buhari’s rule over Nigeria was his well-advertised discomfort with the Southeast geo-political zone. In his early days of civil power, during an official visit to the United States, on July 22, 2015, President Buhari told Dr. Pauline Baker, the Emeritus President of The Fund for Peace that, given the results of the Nigerian presidential election, the people that “gave me 97 percent cannot in all honesty be treated on some issues with constituencies that gave me 5 percent.” Much later in his rule, President Buhari in a rare television interview given to Arise News Network stated that the Southeast, a zone that he aggregated to belonging to the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB), is like “a dot in a circle.”

The issue, for me, is not about Buhari marginalizing the Southeast, or lack thereof. When a leader of a diverse country such as Nigeria makes open his parochial choices, he obviously leaves himself open for overall failure. Small-mindedness feeds nepotism which is the undoing of many a leader. Prof Richard Joseph had astutely put forward the thesis that prebendal politics does so much harm to Nigeria. President Buhari can hardly ever acquit himself from the charges of prebendalism and nepotism.

The signs were ominous from the early days of the Buhari regime. Buhari’s appointments from the very beginning gave Femi Adesina, the President’s Senior Special Adviser (Media and Publicity), a very tough time to defend as he told astonished Nigerians that the President will in due course balance his lopsided appointments tilted too dangerously towards his northern constituency.

Nigerians had not initially raised eyebrows when Buhari in the first instance appointed Lt. Col. Muhammed Lawal Abubakar as his ADC, Malam Lawal Kazaure as his State Chief of Protocol (SCOP) and Abdulrahman Mani as his Chief Security Officer (CSO). When other appointments came almost entirely from the North, many critics instantly dubbed Buhari a President of Northern Nigeria.

In the Buhari scheme of sectional governance, Ahmed Idris got appointed the Accountant-General of Federation while Mordecai Ladan became Director, Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR).

It was President Buhari’s appointment of Mrs. Amina Bala Zakari as the acting Chairperson of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on June 30, 2015 that raised the decibel of objection to impunity. The opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) then demanded the removal of Amina Zakari, stating that her appointment which “was influenced by personal relationship with the Presidency and one of the new governors of the North West, ostensibly to pave the way for the APC at the electoral tribunals, has completely eroded public trust in the commission… her appointment is a clear case of nepotism.”

As further proof that he did not care a hoot about the feelings of Nigerians in their diversity, Buhari appointed his Daura kinsman Lawal Musa Daura as the Director-General of the Department of Security Services (DSS) in replacement of Ita Ekpenyong. Lawal Daura was actually recalled from retirement to head the DSS.

The hope that President Buhari would rise up to the largeness of the Nigerian nation in making future key appointments was dashed when he named Babachir David Lawal, from Adamawa State, as Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF); Abba Kyari, from Borno, as his Chief of Staff; Hameed Ali, a retired colonel from Bauchi, as the Comptroller-General of Nigeria Customs Service; Kure Martin Abeshi, from Nasarawa, as the Comptroller-General of Nigerian Immigration Service; Ita Enang, a former Senator from Akwa Ibom and the only southerner, as Senior Special Assistant (SSA) to the President on Senate affairs; and Suleiman Kawu, a former House of Representatives member from Kano, as Senior Special Assistant on the House of Representatives.

The Constitutional demand that the government must guarantee “the principles of proportional sharing of all bureaucratic, economic, media and political posts at all levels of government” was only observed in the breach throughout the Buhari regime. In the words of Ikechukwu Amaechi, Editor-in-Chief of The Niche, “Buhari is the most provincial leader Nigeria has ever had.”

Some lily-livered excuses were put up that Buhari is only interested in merit and competence over Federal Character. If distinction is only domiciled in the North, why would a pupil from Anambra State, for instance, need to score as much as 139 marks to get admitted into the so-called Unity Schools when a pupil from Yobe State is only expected to score just two (2) marks? Why is merit not extended to the school admission policy?

Buhari apparently does not understand that great leaders all over the world preach inclusiveness. A complex country such as Nigeria cannot survive without the accommodation of all the ethnicities. The parochial preaching of dividing Nigeria into “97 percent and 5 percent” as per voter-support is of course reckless. The eminent critic Chinweizu dismissed Buhari’s charge as “Caliphate Colonialism”.

The promotion of parochial policies even if intended to hurt a particular zone almost always leads to unforeseen national calamity. For instance, when the RUGA policy was touted, there was a nationwide outcry that people’s ancestral lands were being targeted for capture. Local armies had to be formed to go into the forests to chase away the intruders in the forests. This led to criminality of all sorts in the Southeast, for instance. Kidnapping is now a national malaise, and hardly anybody can travel through the roads across the states. Herders and farmers clash all over the land, leaving behind multitudes of casualties.

Nigeria is in such a bad shape today that Buhari can hardly point to a landmark legacy.

In his time, President Obasanjo engineered through his Finance Minister, Mrs. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, for Nigeria to exit the debt-trap peonage. Late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua achieved the Niger Delta Amnesty Programme. Even with all the negative bashing from the press, the then President Goodluck Jonathan undertook the rebasing of the Nigerian economy that shot the country up as the leading economy in Africa ahead of South Africa. Today Nigeria lags behind as the poverty capital of the world.

In the end, it is not just about the marginalization of the Southeast but the decimation of Nigeria. To give him his due, Buhari has remarkably undertaken the construction of the Second Niger Bridge, but it is as yet uncompleted, just as the age-long reconstruction of the Lagos-Ibadan expressway is yet to end.

The dot metaphor may have been meant for the Southeast, but it has somewhat turned out to be the full-stop of Buhari’s legacy in his tour of duty as Nigeria’s 15th President.  

Buhari’s Scorecard

An ECONOMY In Crisis
By Christopher Okpoko

During the 2015 Electioneering campaign, the All Progressives Congress (APC) and its flag bearer at that time, Muhammadu Buhari, made loads of promises to Nigerians, upon which they won the election. As the countdown for the Buhari regime to hand over to the incoming administration is only a few days from today, it is pertinent to review the state of the economy now compared to what it was eight years ago using selected macroeconomic indices.

Gross Domestic Product (GDP)

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, Real GDP stood at N21. 04 trillion in Q4 2022 or about $457.39 billion at N460 exchange rate compared to $493.03 billion in 2015. The economy grew at an average of 1.12 percent contrary to the promise to make our economy one of the fastest-growing emerging economies in the world with a real GDP growth averaging 10% annually.

Manufacturing Capacity Utilization

According to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) report, Nigeria Capacity Utilization Rate: Manufacturing data was reported at 51.300 percent in June 2022, but was at an all-time high of 60.5 percent in Mar 2015 and a record low of 43.8 percent in Sep 2020.

According to the Director General, Manufacturers Association of Nigeria, Segun Ajayi-Kadir, the decline in manufacturing capacity utilization could be attributed to the adverse effect of high cost of energy and the Russian Ukrainian war, the grave effects of the naira redesigning policy and other perennial challenges such as acute shortage of forex for importation of raw materials and machines, high cost of borrowing and many more.

Rising Public Debt

Nigeria’s public debt has been on the rise. It has gone up a massive fourfold since 2015 from N12.12 trillion to N46 trillion as at the last quarter of 2022. This is taking Nigeria back to the period before the President Obasanjo administration commenced a deliberate debt reduction plan in the early 2000s.

Despite securing debt relief during the Olusegun Obasanjo-led administration, successive governments have continued on a borrowing spree — the federal government’s component of the public debt surging 658 percent to N26.9 trillion in the last 21 years. This has raised concerns among Nigerians on the debt sustainability of the country amid dwindling revenue to meet the debt obligations to creditors.

Nigeria’s total public debt stock rose to N67.58 trillion as of September 2022 as compiled from the website of the Debt Management Office and the Central Bank of Nigeria. Similarly, according to CEIC data, Nigeria Government debt accounted for 20.5 % of the country’s Nominal GDP in Dec 2022, compared with the ratio of 20.2 % in the previous quarter. Furthermore, nairametrics, in their latest reports, state that federal government Debt reached $91.2 billion in Dec 2022. As of June 2015, Nigeria’s debt-to-GDP ratio was about 13.1% compared to 34.7% in September 2022.

On external borrowings, President Buhari increased debt from $7.3 billion in 2015 to $28.57 billion as of December 2020. This means that the president incurred $21.27 billion on foreign loans to the country’s debt portfolio.31 Jul 2021 (naira metrics)

Nairametrics estimates Nigeria’s public debt could rise to as high as an unprecedented N78.1 trillion if the FG’s planned deficit borrowing in the 2023 budget is fully actualized.

The federal government plans to borrow N7.04 trillion from Domestic sources and another N1.76 trillion from foreign sources while the balance of N1.77 billion is targeted at Multi-lateral/bi-lateral loan drawdowns. The Director General of the Debt Management Office, Patience Oniha weighted in on the notion that the current government could hand over debts in excess of N70 trillion to the next government when it hands over the reins of Government on May 29th.

Via Poltiticsnow

There is also the massive borrowings from the CBN using ways and means by which the federal government under Buhari has printed over N20 trillion in paper money to finance its operations. This has been done in negation of the fiscal responsibility act which provides a maximum 5 percent ways and means financing of the budget. That ways and means became the major source of funding Government business is a problem that the new administration will deal with because it means the government is not generating enough money to run its operations.

The government has explained that it had no option but to borrow given low income from oil exports in much of the the latter part of its term in office because of crude oil theft. Now serious efforts have been made to address these and may see a change in revenue in future years.

Unemployment Rate

Unemployment refers to the share of the Labour force that is without work but available for and seeking employment. Global audit and tax advisory firm, KPMG, recently projected that Nigeria’s unemployment rate is expected to rise to 40.6 percent as compared to 37.7 percent in 2022. The unemployment rate in 2015 was 4.31 percent. But the promise was to:

create an empowerment scheme to employ 740,000 graduates across the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory;
create 9,720,000 jobs by the 36 states in the federation per annum (20,000 per state) Three million Jobs per year
embark on vocational training, entrepreneurial and skills acquisition schemes for graduates along with the creation of a Small Business Loan Guarantee Scheme to create at least 5 million new jobs by 2019
Create an additional middle-class of at least 2 million new home owners in its first year in government and 1 million annually thereafter.
There is no evidence that any of these was achieved. Instead, the Government has pushed back, with Femi Adesina, the president’s special adviser on media, saying that it is not the federal government’s job to employ people. Some of its officials still insist that it has created more jobs than any other administration when the evidence is that there is massive unemployment.

Inflation

Inflation as measured by the consumer price index reflects the annual percentage change in the cost to the average consumer of acquiring a basket of goods and services that may be fixed or changed at specified intervals, such as yearly. The recent data published by National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) put the headline inflation rate in Nigeria at 22.04 percent in March 2023, the highest for almost two decades. According to the NBS, food items contributed more to the increase in the headline index at 11.42 per cent. In 2015, headline inflation stood at 9.01 percent.

The food price inflation is directly linked to the pervasive insecurity that enveloped the country during the outgoing administration. Kidnapping for ransom and herdsmen attacks have dissuaded farming across many agrarian states like Benue, Niger and other parts, resulting in reduced farm output

Exchange Rate

According to report from CBN website, the US dollar to Naira increased by 0.03 percent to N460.36 as at May 18, 2023. Meanwhile, the average official exchange rate in 2015 was N 197.87 in fact, the rates are far higher in the black market and exchange rate has been everything but stable.

Economic Growth

The average GDP growth for Nigeria over Buhari’s eight years is 1.35 percent, so low that nor much impact is made. The debt service to revenue ratio is over a hundred percent, meaning that the country does not have the means to make critical investments for growth.

Spectre of Insecurity Prevails
Ganiyu Obaaro

The Nigerian security system during the expiring administration of President Muhammadu Buhari is not immune to the collapse of the state.

Virtually all aspects of the security architecture – Army, Airforce, Navy, Police, Department of State Services, DSS- were affected by economic crisis, poor leadership, indecision and lack of kinetic coordination of the entire gamut of the Armed Forces.

For the first few months of taking over the leadership of the country with his Vice President Professor Yemi Osinbajo in May 2015, from President Goodluck Jonathan, whose party, Peoples Democratic Party’s 16-year reign was terminated by the then main opposition party, All Progressives Congress, APC, Buhari’s government has had to contend with poor economic base, a disoriented public service and insecurity.

For example, the entire North Eastern part of the country was under siege. The Boko Haram (education is sin) insurgency, led by the late Muhammed Yusuf and his band of religious extremists, had ravaged the region, especially Borno and Bauchi States, such that by 2009-2010, the suicide bombing incidences were common and before long spread to Suleja, Abuja, among other areas in the nation’s capital.

Under Abubakar Shekau, Abuja, which hosted the United Nations Building, was bombed, while in Suleija, and other areas, churches, mosques, educational institutions were reduced to ashes, leaving colossal damages including deaths, on their trail during the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan, whom Buhari later defeated to ascend the presidency in 2015.

Following the death of Yusuf in the hands of the military and the takeover of Boko Haram leadership by Abubakar Shekau, now late, the entire North east became fully threatened, as maiming, burning of faith-based institutions, particularly churches, among others, became their targets, leaving humanitarian crises, as people, particularly children, lacking sufficient healthcare, were camped in decrepit IDP camps.

Apart from these monumental losses, migration across the region worsened, as desperate people left their comfort homes for other secure places.

With an election promise to tame the security challenge, Buhari and his team gained the trust of Nigerians and swung into action. The government rejigged his service chiefs, appointing, for example, Yusuf Buratai as his Chief of Army Staff, while others were appointed into various positions in the Navy, Airforce, among other areas.

Consequently, extra budgetary spendings were made to beef up security and enhance the combat readiness of the Armed forces.

Buhari had said that the remnants of the war in Libya, Sudan, Chad were the ones causing security challenges in the country, as those who fled those countries to Nigeria, came with their sophisticated weapons like AK47, AK49, gun trucks, hand grenades, among others. But the explanation had hardly died down when the security challenges diffused all over the country in herdsmen attacks on farmers and kidnappers operating on public highways and villages, abducting men, women and children for ransom.

As if this was not enough, deadly clashes began erupting between Fulani herders and Hausa farmers.

Also, cattle rustling ravaged the North, while the Middle Belt region of Benue, Plateau, Kogi, and other adjoining states of Niger, Kaduna, became the epicentre of killings, strategic targets of churches, schools, agricultural systems, among others.

In Benue, Nasarawa and other States, thousands of innocent persons were and are still being sent to their early graves. For example, nearly on a daily basis, mass burials are being conducted for the dead across the region.

As a measure of the efficacy of the president’s security measures, only recently, governors of Benue and Plateau states, Gabriel Ortom and Simon Lalong, respectively, cried out over killings in their domains. No fewer than 50 persons were alleged to have been killed by Fulani herdsmen in Plateau state in a midnight raid on local communities there. Recall that a Catholic Church in Owo, Ondo state, was attacked by insurgents last year, leaving over 40 worshippers dead.

The regime faced a crisis of confidence when herdsmen attacks moved down south from the middle belt region, with several villages and farms rampaged and no action taken. Rather than address the issues, the regime seemed to justify the attacks, asking the people to be more accommodating. It was what postured the Buhari administration as a nepotistic regime with a bias for the Fulani, despite the best explanations from those in the administration.

In 2014, 276 young girls were seized by Boko Haram from Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok, Borno state. Years after, only a few of them, some with children, have been rescued by the military, despite the agonising cries of their parents, human rights groups, International organisations like UNICEF, the US, Britain and others, for their safe return. Rather, more kidnappings were to come in Katsina, Kaduna, Benue, Zamfara and elsewhere, without a response from the Government.

One of those kidnapped, but yet to be found is Leah Sharibu, a Christian girl from Chibok who reportedly refused to be converted and released and is the symbol of the resistance.

There have been several attacks on schools, kidnappings in Sokoto, Zamfara, and Kaduna, where places like Kajuru, had been under siege, forcing Governor Nasir el-Rufai to have sleepless nights.

But this is not all. The Nigerian elite military school, Nigerian Defence Academy, NDA, was attacked and one of its officers, a Major, was seized. It took days before he was reunited with his family and colleagues! Same for a brazen attack on the Kaduna Airport and the Abuja-Kaduna rail route where a Nigeria Railway Corporation train was attacked in commando fashion, holding the passengers hostages for many days. A Warri-Ajaokuta train was also attacked in Edo State, taking in hostages. Indeed, after eight years of the administration led by what was a tough talking Army General, then President, Nigerians do not have kind words for Buhari.

As Chief Simon Jide, a security expert says, the Nigerian situation is worrisome. He said that although the nation has the capacity to address it, the leadership is too weak and lacks modern warfare ideas. For him, the Kuje jailbreak, which took place under the outgoing administration and others, including kidnapping in Abuja, are a nagging sore in our throats. It was even worrisome that the security threats in Katsina, Buhari’s home state, became worse as his convoy was attacked, and the bandits even threatened to kill him and his governor, Aminu Masari, if they got hold of them.

Elsewhere, roads like Lagos -Ibadan Express, Lokoja- Abuja, suffered greatly in the hands of kidnappers, who collected ransom or killed at will.

In the Eastern region, the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, who are fighting for independence from Nigeria at the behest of their leader, Nnamdi Kanu, are a thorn in the flesh of the people. Apart from wanton killing of innocent people, they also collect ransom, clash with herdsmen and others. In some instances, they killed politicians, threatened governors and burned down public and private institutions like police stations, INEC, FRSC, among other facilities.

In the face of what is an obvious underperformance, if not failure,

President Buhari, while reviewing his administration, said he had delivered on his promises. He said he had tamed Boko Haram, built roads, bridges and united the country. For a man who did not consider anyone from the southeast region worthy to command any of the military or paramilitary forces in his right years in power, and who reeked of nepotism, to say he United the country may seem farfetched.

Given the billions of naira that have been allocated to security and the negligible returns, if any, the CSO CISLAC led by Ibrahim Musa Rafsanjani, has called for transparency in the management of military budget and quick response to community crises.

But, apparently living in a world of its own, Minister of Information and Cultural Orientation, Lai Muhammed, repeats the administration’s mantra that the insurgents had been “degraded”, pointing out that the military had killed several insurgents and had dislodged them from the dreaded Sambisa Forest in Borno State.

Unfortunately, these are some of the challenges that would be inherited by the incoming administration of President-elect Bola Ahmed Tinubu when he takes the baton on May 29th.

Buhari Fails To Deliver On a Vibrant Social Sector
BLOSSOM CHUKWU

Education

As President Muhammadu Buhari prepares to hand over power on May 29, 2023, many are still wondering when he intends to bring to pass his promise of revitalising the education sector. In his statement during the 2017 retreat on education, two years into his first term, the President said Education was Nigeria’s launch pad to a more productive and prosperous future. He assured of his administration’s commitment to revitalise the country’s education system and make it more responsive and globally competitive. Yet, he has failed to manage the sector effectively.

Nigeria’s education system has been rocked by incessant strikes under Buhari’s leadership. Students in public tertiary institutions spent most of their time at home rather than being in the classrooms. Only as recent as last year the Nigerian university system was thrown into a huge crisis as all federal and some state universities were shut down for eight months because of the strike action by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU). The system is still being afflicted by depleted facilities, poor research funding, staff remuneration, among others. In the eight years of the Buhari administration, public university students lost two academic sessions to strikes.

In the first instance a strike action by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) in 2020 coincided with the COVID 19 global lockdown, which also affected Nigeria. From March 2020 universities were locked but while private universities deployed social media platforms to teach remotely, the government was content that ASUU and other unions were on strike, making no attempt to address the use of technology in schools. University students lost a full academic session and again in 2022, beginning from February 14 till September 2022 the unions were again on strike over conditions of service and it only took a court injunction to get the lecturers back to work.

Quarrels with ASUU and other tertiary unions over service conditions and the state of the institutions have been ongoing for several years and was a campaign subject for Buhari when he ran for president in 2015. He painted a picture of a very callous federal administration, while he was in opposition, and gave hope that he would right the wrongs and students will not lose a day to lockups.

As if to show his commitment, he chose a journalist and newspaper columnist, Adamu Adamu, who had written extensively on the tertiary education strikes and sided with the unions in their quest for improvement in the facilities at public universities. But, Adamu failed spectacularly. He had no agenda for the education sector and either spoke above the heads of the stakeholders or dodged them completely. During the two major strikes which cost students two academic sessions, Adamu was absent, had nothing to say and could not even engage the striking workers. He was a failure and that rubbed off on the president.

However, like all of his fellow cabinet members, Adamu rates himself highly. He said he had impacted the education sector positively and, at an extraordinary meeting of the Federal Executive Council presided over by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo at the State House, Abuja on May 17th that he posted one of his successes as the high number of tertiary schools approved during the Buhari administration. They include 14 Federal Universities, 21 State Universities and 37 Private Universities.

The commitment of a government to a sector is gauged by the financial contribution it makes to that sector in its budget. In 2017, N550 billion (7.38 percent) was allocated to education out of the N7.29 trillion total budget. In the budget, the Ministry of Education was allocated N398.01 billion meant for recurrent expenditure. The Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) got N95 billion while education as a sector got N56 billion for capital expenditure respectively. President Buhari subsequently reduced allocation to the sector, from 7.1 percent in 2019 to 6.9 percent in 2020.

Though the allocation to the sector rose from 7.9 percent in 2022 to 8.8 percent in 2023, for his two terms of eight years in office, the President did not attain up to 15 percent of the annual budget allocation for Education which is seen as a critical unit of the economy, nor did he make substantial investments in the training of teachers at all levels of the system. Its primary school feeding plan, which was another campaign item, was riddled with allegations of corruption.

Health Sector

In the Nigerian Health Care sector, the story is not different from what is being experienced in the Education sector. The Health care system is still poorly developed, especially at the Local Government Levels. No adequate and functional surveillance systems are developed and hence no tracking system to monitor the outbreak of communicable diseases, bio-terrorism, chemical poisoning, etc.

Though President Buhari met a decaying Health sector after his election in 2015, most Nigerians believed his government would help fix the sector. The emergence of COVID-19 further re-echoed the necessity for prioritising the Health sector, but it appears only a little has changed.

This goes to say that Health Financing did not improve under the Buhari administration. In 2016, the Federal Government had a budget of 6.06 trillion, out of which it earmarked 550 billion to the Health sector. The amount represented 4.1 per cent of the nation’s budget. The government allocated 221billion naira and N28.6 billion as capital and recurrent expenditure, respectively.

In 2017, the total budget was 7.4 trillion. The Health sector got 304.1 billion, representing 4.0 per cent. Capital allocation for the year was N51.3 billion, while recurrent expenditure gulped 252.8 billion. 2018 saw a further decline in the percentage of the Health budget to the national budget. The total federal budget was 9.1 trillion that year, from which the sector got 356.4 billion. Recurrent expenditure was 269.9 billion, while the capital budget was 86.4 billion.

In 2020, the government reduced budget allocation to the Basic Health Care Provision Fund by more than 40 per cent, from N44.4 billion to N25.5 billion. Out of this year’s budget of 13.6 trillion, recurrent and capital of N380 billion and N134 billion, respectively, were allocated to the Health sector, giving a total of N514 billion.

This is taking into consideration that several International Development Agencies such as the World Health Organisation, United Nations Children Fund, United Nations Population Fund, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Marie Stopes, Pathfinder International, World Bank, among others, also play prominent roles in funding health programmes in the country.

Before President Muhammadu Buhari’s election in 2015, the sector used to experience many industrial actions, resulting from disagreements among the government workforce in public hospitals. Though the number of strike actions have reduced, the Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors (NARD), are still prone to embarking on strikes, following unmet demands by the government.

With the noted challenges in the Health sector, President Buhari has still been criticised for abandoning Nigerian Hospitals, for the United Kingdom Health system over Teeth treatment. In a statement on Tuesday May 9, Femi Adesina, the Senior Special Assistant to the President, disclosed that “the medical treatment for Buhari comes “at the behest of his Dentist, who has started attending to him. The Specialist must see the President in another five days for a procedure already commenced”.

It will be recalled that on June 6, 2016, Buhari came under fire for visiting the UK on a ten days Ear treatment medical trip. He also jetted out to London on March 30, 2021, for a medical check-up, leaving behind a Health sector grounded by a Doctors’ strike across the country. Also, on October 31 2022, the President jetted to London for a “routine medical check-up”. This is why President Buhari’s several medical holidays have raised controversies, despite the country’s budgetary allocation for the State House.

This was as N10.6 billion was released in 2022 to construct the Presidential Wing of the State House Clinic in Aso Villa, according to the Permanent Secretary of State House, Tijanni Umar. Several Nigerians see how these facts, also presented how President Buhari overtook late President Umar Yar’Adua in medical trips abroad. At least, the President traveled out of the country seven times for medical treatments in his first six years in office. The longest he has stayed on a medical trip was 103 days. He embarked on the trip on August 19, 2017.

Inclusive Government

Talking about the notion of ‘Inclusive’ or ‘all-inclusive government’, President Buhari has also not fared very well. Coming from the philosophy of inclusive growth in economics, which is believed to be crucial not only for a fairer society, but also for a stronger economy, when applied to Politics, Inclusive government means a deliberate attempt by the government of the day, to mirror in its personnel and governance philosophies, the diversities in the society and the contending ideas for development from the constituent units.

The fact is that whatever the nation has benefited from the Buhari government, contends with other perspectives such as his alleged disdain for the clamour for restructuring, his alleged nepotism and favouring of Northern Muslims (allegations, which the government constantly denied). In an Inclusive government, efforts are made to reconcile and unite people – irrespective of their beliefs, party affiliations or ethnic and religious identities.

Unlike a ‘government of national unity’, an Inclusive government does not necessarily have to have members of other political parties represented in government, but the interests and agendas of the dominant opposition parties are factored into the philosophy of governance. A defining feature of an Inclusive government which several social experts say the Buhari administration has not achieved, is the fact that it did not eschew the privilege of reconciliation, striving to build consensus among the different regional, ethnic and religious factions and fractions of the political class.

In the same line, Civil Organisations repeatedly asked the federal government to “respect and uphold the pronouncement of the Supreme Court on the old denominations of the naira…”, and similar cases. They also pointed out that the right of citizens to protest must be protected, adding “their legitimate anger must not be met with repression.” They clarified that citizens’ right to peaceful protest “should not be an excuse for the destruction of public or private property…”

Even though the Buhari’s Administration was not known for public repression, there were still concerns that not all Court judgements were being obeyed and some others were giving room for more disobedience of Court orders by specific members of the general public. In a recent statement signed by over 40 NGOs, the Civil Societies Organisation, CSO, strongly cautioned the Buhari’s government to desist from acts of flouting Court orders as much as they work within the borders of their government responsibilities, giving room for appropriate separation of powers.

In the statement, they said “We call on the Presidency to uphold the rule of law, and not to take any steps that will further undermine the system of separation of powers between the branches of government. In this respect, we call for anyone who is implicated in disobeying the ruling of the Supreme Court to face appropriate consequences in accordance with our constitution.”

In all, the President Muhammadu Buhari’s Administration has not succeeded in these key social elements that are very basic to the success of any government in power. More efforts have been put into planning for the success of these key government components, that were not well utilised for better results, than the actual implementation of the road maps, needed in their respective sectors.

From the financial allocations to these Ministries, Departments and Agencies that still cried for more, to the effective utilisation of available funds, a huge gap has been widened further, dashing most of the expectations of the average Nigerian on the Buhari’s administration for better performance, than previous administrations. In other words, a lot more could have been done differently, to achieve better results.