President Muhammadu Buhari was sworn in for his second and final term in office last week, on May 29. He is a man of history. In his political life, he has achieved many things that no other Nigerian has. The first presidential candidate to defeat an incumbent; the first politician to become president after three failed attempts; the oldest person to become president in Nigeria, at 72 in 2015, and, by the time he leaves office in 2023 at the age of 80, almost certainly the oldest Nigerian president ever!
Earlier this year, during the presidential election campaign, I wrote a piece entitled “Buhari proposes, can Obasanjo dispose?” (BusinessDay, 19 February 2019). The context was that former President Olusegun Obasanjo had chosen or influenced the choice of every civilian president in this country since 1979. The common view was that no Nigerian could become president without Obasanjo’s approval. Indeed, former President Jonathan called Obasanjo“the boss of bosses” and warned presidential candidates: “Ignore him at your peril”!
But the theory of Obasanjo’s indispensability was tested in this year’s election. Obasanjo was opposed to Buhari re-election bid. In a stinging open letter, he cited Buhari’s “poor performance”, “impaired health” and the “strain of age” as reasons why “he needs a dignified and honourable dismount from the horse”, i.e., abandon his second term ambition. Instead, Obasanjo threw his weight behind his estranged former vice president Atiku Abubakar, mobilising support across the country for his election.
It promised to be an epic battle. Would Obasanjo win and retain his reputation as Nigeria’s Svengali and ultimate political godfather? Or would Buhari defy the law of gravity and shatter Obasanjo’s reputation by securing his re-election? I wrote in that piece that one of the two retired generals and former military heads of state would have his ego either boosted or busted. Well, as it turned out, it was Buhari who triumphed. He bucked the trend and secured re-election against Obasanjo’s strong opposition. Indeed, Buhari defeated Atiku in Obasanjo’s own polling unit, even by a wide margin, 87 to 18 votes!
So, you could say, from the above personal victories, that Buhari is a history-maker. But what kind of history? The Oxford Dictionary defines a history-maker as “a person who influences the course of history or does something spectacular or worthy of remembrance”. Surely, merely winning elections, even in unusual circumstances, would hardly qualify anyone for that. A leader would need to leave a truly enduring legacy!
So far, however, while President Buhari has“made history”with his personal electoral victories, he has done little positively to change the course of Nigeria’s history. If Buhari had lost this year’s election, he would have left no worthy legacy behind. Think of it: the economy remains moribund; political and social divisions and tensions are rife; insecurity and systemic violence are widespread; state capacity and institutions remain extremely weak, verging on state failure; corruption and abuse of office haven’t gone away; and, of course, poverty is spreading and deepening, with sad stories of suicides across the country. No leader, despite his or her electoral successes, would leave an enduring legacy, and be a true history-maker, in those circumstances.
Of course, Buhari’s loyalists would disagree with that assessment of his first term. Last week, ahead of the president’s inauguration, several sponsored articles were published in the newspapers trumpeting his first-term achievements. For instance, we were told that his government invested heavily in infrastructure and that it gave agriculture a huge boost to the extent that Nigeria had almost achieved self-sufficiency in food production, and that over 2.5 million directly and indirectly were employed through the Anchor Borrower’s Programme. And, of course, we were told that the social investment programme (SIP)“reduced unemployment and depression”, even though Buhari’s wife, Aisha, recently said the programme “has failed woefully”!
George Orwell’s famously said that political language “is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind”. Anyone who says that Buhari’s first-term performance has had any significant positive impact on this country socially, economically, politically and institutionally is guilty of using political language in the way Orwell described.
Nigeria is probably the only country where government is credited for developing physical infrastructure almost wholly through borrowing and government revenue with virtually no private investment. Private investment in infrastructure is a sign that the private sector has confidence in an economy because investors won’t invest in public infrastructure unless the economic conditions are right. But when a government is borrowing heavily and using limited state resources to fund major infrastructure projects,it is nothing to celebrate because it shows, one, that its economic and business environments are not conducive enough to attract private money, and, two, that the government is not focusing on critical human capital, such as education and health, as it’s spending much of its limited resources on hard infrastructure, roads, rails, airports etc, at the expense of soft infrastructure.
What about the so-called boost to agriculture? Of course, every country wants to be self-sufficient in food production, but hardly any achieves it. The UK, which has an efficient agricultural industry, still imports 50% of its total food consumption. Of course, a country can achieve “self-sufficiency” in food production if it has a protected and inefficient agricultural sector that produces all its food requirements. But that would be at great costs to consumers through high food prices and poor food quality. Nigeria wants to achieve self-sufficiency in food production through subsidies and trade protection, but that’s a recipe for an inefficient agricultural sector, with huge adverse impact on people’s food bills. Mis-guided self-sufficiency policies will neither benefit farmers or consumers.
Unfortunately, the Buhari government is driven by such economic illiteracy. In an interview with this newspaper, published last week, President Buhari’s special adviser on media and publicity, Femi Adesina, who described himself as “a Buharist for life” said “the economic direction of this administration is for self-sufficiency”. He also said that President Buhari refused to take certain economic decisions “that should have been taken” because of“the impact that will have on the lives of the poor”.
But it is precisely such mis-guided mindset that has deepened the Nigeria’s economic deterioration. Buhari’s fixation with self-sufficiency has led to protectionist and interventionist policies that have made the Nigerian economy highly uncompetitive. His refusal to sign the agreement establishing the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and the EU-ECOWAS Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) and to liberalise foreign exchange market is also linked to his “concern” about their impacts on the poor. The sad thing is that Buhari doesn’t know that he is harming the poor, who returned him to power with their massive votes, by pursuing these socialist, anti-trade, anti-market, illiberal policies. Yet, Nigeria can only succeed as a dynamic, open and competitive economy.
Furthermore, Nigeria will only succeed as a stable polity, with an enduring political settlement. Recently, President Buhari was hailed when he told APC governors that “true federalism is necessary at this juncture of our political and democratic evolution”. That was like a Damascene conversion for a president who has long been lukewarm about political restructuring. But the devil is in the detail. What does he men by “true federalism”? Unfortunately, he didn’t give an inauguration speech; perhaps that’s for June 12!
But if Buhari wants to leave an enduring legacy, he must be a radical reformist president in his second term. He must radically pursue economic, political, institutional and bureaucratic reforms. Otherwise, he would just be remembered for his electoral victories and nothing more! Sadly, that would be a wasted opportunity!
Olu Fasan
