Every 4 years, a new government comes into power with the promise to fulfil some obligation made during campaigns that invariably voted them into power, but in the end, many of these promises go unfulfilled.
The current administration is not left out of the trend.
The Buhari campaign which ran on a ‘CHANGE’ mantra made numerous promises to Nigerians.
Here are charts to show how Buhari’s promises have fared.
Food inflation at highest in 8 years
Nigerians are poorer than they have ever been in seven years as people cannot afford to buy as much as they used to as food costs continue to surge.
In one of his campaign promises, Buhari said he would guarantee a minimum price for all cash crops and facilitate the storage of agricultural products to overcome seasonal shortages of selected food crops. These measures were supposed to be geared toward driving down food costs.
There has however been a spike in food prices since the beginning of his tenure in 2015 and jumped by the most in 2021 with a 22.7 percent increase compared to 9.4 percent in 2014.
GDP growing slower than population
If economic growth does not keep pace with population growth, the economy will not be able to accommodate a rapidly growing population, signalling escalating poverty levels.
Nigeria’s growth rate has failed to match its annual population growth rate of 2.6 percent, owing to two economic recessions in just five years.
Read also: How Buhari turned deaf ears when opportunities knocked
Buhari promised to make the economy one of the world’s fastest-growing emerging economies, with real GDP growth averaging at least 10-12 percent annually, but the opposite appears to be the case, with the economy not even approaching a 5% growth rate, and little or no progress to offset the negative effects on the economy, leaving the country worse off with insufficient resources.
Buhari promised to restore financial confidence in citizens by putting in place more robust monitoring, supervising, and regulating of financial institutions; however, it appears that citizen confidence has been jeopardized as debt service has surpassed government revenue, implying that for every 100 naira a country earns, 87 naira is spent on debt, leaving little to meet the needs of the citizens.
To have a favourable balanced trade, a country’s export must be greater than its import, or both import and export must be equal; Buhari promised to embark on export and production diversification to strengthen the economy, but imports have increased in value over the past seven years, putting more reliance on the outside market than the inside market, resulting in lower revenue generation and a worsening of the economy.
Unemployment has risen in recent months, despite the promise made after the inauguration. “As of 1999, the Nigerian rate of unemployment stood at about 8%, today it is estimated from official statistics to be close to 30%. I will embark on vocational training, entrepreneurial and skills acquisition scheme for graduates along with the creation of a Small Business Loan Guarantee Scheme to create at least 5 million new jobs by 2019”.
Naira to the dollar has seen more than double over the past seven years, even though this administration promised to equate N1.00 to $1.00
Per Capita GDP indicates how much economic production value each individual citizen can be ascribed to. Individuals are nonetheless worse off every year than they were the year before, despite the promise of stabilizing the exchange rate and enhancing economic productivity.
Nigeria has endured its greatest downturn in six years, putting a strain on Nigerians who have seen both inflation and the value of their currency rise.
