Nigerians waxed hysterical on May 29, 2015 when Muhammadu Buhari took over the reins of power. They hoped that Buhari was the expected messiah that would take the country to the pinnacle of phantom Eldorado.
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who supported Buhari against his erstwhile godson Goodluck Jonathan, had warned about the man’s illiteracy on economy and foreign affairs, but in the usual Nigerian manner, many people ignored him. Chants of ‘Sai Buhari’ and ‘Anybody but Jonathan’ were evoked whenever Buhari’s name was mentioned.
But few months after Buhari assumed power, many Nigerians began to see through his shenanigans. He did not disappoint Obasanjo and those who knew him well. In his characteristically sanctimonious manner, he went about ministries and parastatals meeting permanent secretaries and directors directly, describing them as superstars. In fact, four months after refusing to appoint critical ministers, Buhari was asked why he did not consider such appointments as important by France 24, and his bizarre response was that ministers were “there to make all the noise”.
As of the time he said this, the capital market had shed N3.255 trillion in one year, with his first four months in power being the worst. Brent Crude, which provides 90-95 percent of foreign exchange and 70 percent of revenue, was already on a pratfall, around $40 per barrel.
Buhari was asked by the TV station whether the absence of a minister of finance was affecting the Nigerian capital market and economy and he said, “No. It is what we know – and which we learnt from the western system. The civil service provides the continuity, the technocrat. And in any case, they are those that do most of the work. The ministers are there, I think, to make a lot of noise.”
One month after, Buhari, who had contradictorily told Nigerians to expect technocrats as ministers, ended up appointing lightweights and well-known round pegs in square holes as ministers.
His finance minister was Kemi Adeosun, an accountant with little knowledge of global economics. His budget and planning minister was and still is Udo Udoma, a lawyer. His industry, trade and investment minister, Okechukwu Enalamah, is a medical doctor with an MBA. His super-minister, Babatunde Fashola, is a lawyer, but handles critical economic sectors such as power, works and housing. Buhari has no economist in his team. The only economist in his administration, Adeyemi Dipeolu, is in the office of the vice president.
“He took over a struggling economy due to falling oil prices but made the situation worse. Unbelievably, for a president facing an economic crisis, Buhari had no finance minister for several months, and when he eventually appointed one, she was so lightweight, lacking any international stature needed to restore investor confidence. Then, for nearly 2½ years, President Buhari stubbornly pursued misguided monetary, exchange rate and trade policies. He described economists as ‘so-called experts’. Inevitably, the economic contracted in 2016, with -1.5 percent growth rate, the first time in 20 years, and growth remains sluggish at 1.8 percent,” Olu Fasan, international trade negotiator and visiting fellow at the London School of Economics (LSE), said in a recent article, ‘Buhari is Nigeria’s most arrogant yet inept leader’.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Russian novelist, said the man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him. Buhari’s self-deceit, unfortunately, could not guarantee him economic prosperity.
Less than one year after he became president, Nigerian economy went into recession. In 2014, under President Goodluck Jonathan of the People’s Democratic Party, CNNMoney had named Nigeria third fastest growing economy in the world, with China and Qatar taking the lead at 7.3 percent and 7.1 percent GDP growth, respectively. In 2016, however, Africa’s biggest economy dropped out of the first 15 countries on growth ranking.
Due to oil price drop that was poorly managed, the economy slipped into recession in the second quarter of 2016, after contracting by -2.06 percent. Around January 2017, under Buhari, inflation rate stood at 18.55 percent. Commodity prices rose sporadically as investors took flight.
A report released by NOI Polls in association with Centre for the Studies of Economies of Africa showed that dollar crunch forced 272 firms to shut down 12 months before August 2016. Fifty of these firms were manufacturers, especially small and medium-scale players. Babatunde Odunayo, chairman, MAN, Apapa branch, said in November 2016 that manufacturers lost N500 billion to foreign exchange woes.
To add insult to injury, Nigeria became the poverty capital of the world in 2018, from being the happiest people on earth in 2013, with 87 million extremely poor people and 8,000 people sliding into extreme poverty on a daily basis, according to the Brookings Institution. India, with a population of 1.3 billion, almost seven times Nigeria’s population, has 73 million people living in extreme poverty. In percentage terms, India’s 73 million extremely poor people represent 5.5 percent of its population, while Nigeria’s 87 million extremely poor people represent 44 percent. This means that almost one in two Nigerians is extremely poor.
In the third quarter of 2014, Nigeria’s unemployment rate was 9.7 percent. But under Buhari, unemployment rate increased to 23.10 percent in the third quarter of 2018, from 18.8 percent in the same period of 2017, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said. Today, inflation is 11.44 percent, with misery index, a metrics used in ascertaining how well an average citizen lives, standing at 34.4 percent.
The NBS said the country’s foreign debt at the end of the first half of 2018 (H1’18) stood at $22.08 billion, representing a 17 percent rise over the $18.9 billion recorded at the end of 2017. The country is hurt by high domestic debt and extremely high-cost debt servicing of 63 percent, meaning that Nigeria pays N63,000 for every N100,000 borrowed!
In 2018 alone, three years after Buharinomics, the stock market lost N1.89 trillion, with investors playing ‘wait and see’. Today, under Buhari, Apapa that provides N3 billion-N7 billion every day for Nigeria, is left to totter. About 5,000 trucks seek access to Apapa and Tin Can ports in Lagos every day, according to a latest maritime report by the Lugo’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI). Consequently, Nigeria loses N600 billion in customs revenue, $10 billion (N3.6trn) in non-oil export sector and N2.5 trillion in corporate earnings across various sectors on annual basis due to the poor state of Nigerian ports.
The truth is that another four years of Buhari will be a disaster. The rich will become poor and the middle-class will fall further down into extreme poverty. Nigeria will become another Zimbabwe, with the naira losing much value and citizens going extremely hungry. Now is time to say goodbye to Buhari, who does not understand what it takes to run a 21st century economy.
ANTHONY IGIEHON
Igiehon is founder, Edo Political Forum.
