Buhari: One year to go! (1)

Some 12 months from today, the curtains will drop on the Presidency of Muhammadu Buhari. To appropriate the language of football, it is possible to contend that his tenure has entered injury time.

Seven years ago, on May 29, 2015, Buhari was sworn in as president for a term of four years, and this was renewed on the same date in 2019. Against this background, there is the need for a reflection on achievements as well as omissions and commissions, of his seven-year journey.

This is with a view to offering suggestions as regards what can still be achieved as the Buhari presidency enters its home-stretch.

We recall that Nigerians, had in 2015, with enthusiasm and hopes, welcomed the All Progressives Congress (APC)-led government that ousted the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) that had been in power for 16 years.

Amid perceived grand and widespread heists within the Goodluck Jonathan administration was the Boko Haram-instigated killings in northeast/northwest, coupled with various shades of horrific banditry in other zones.

By now, he and his cabinet members must have realised that delivering the gains of governance goes well beyond toasting campaign oratories or phantom utopian idealising of populist political grandstanding

Consequently, the development claimed human lives in their thousands and brought billion-naira devastation to properties. This was even as sky-rocketing prices had made life real hell for Nigerians, thus spawning general disillusionment by citizens towards the then administration.

The situation had justifiably fired among a staggering section of the citizenry, a craving for ‘change,’ which incidentally had been the campaign mantra of the Buhari regime.

Against this background, it is important to ask here: How far has the administration justified its election victory and restituted Nigerians in their disillusionment with the erstwhile government, which they found unprofitable?

Today, it is possible to admit, albeit grudgingly that some semblance of achievements have been recorded in the area of road construction, electricity supply, housing/urban development, health, as well as other less obtrusive spheres like tourism, sports and social development.

The robust answer of the administration to the challenge of insurgency and banditry was the setting up of various military operations across North-East (Operation Hadin Kai); North-West (Hadarin Daji); South-South (Delta Safe), among others.

On poverty alleviation and economic empowerment, came the rather revolutionary National Social Investment Programmes, especially Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP), centring on the N-Power Initiative that was initially meant to capture 500,000, but lately expanded to 1 million beneficiaries.

There is also the National Home Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP), which targets provision of free school meals to an awesome 25 million children in the country by 2030, with positive spill over empowerment of thousands of individuals to include cooks, farmers and others.

There is again the Household Uplifting Programme (HUP), comprising basically the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) initiative, which as of March 2021 has allegedly captured 1,676,799 eligible households who receive N5,000 monthly grants countrywide.

These initiatives have been expanded in recent times to other sectors so as to suck in more vulnerable groups into a safety net, particularly those in agriculture and SMEs, who have equally received various cash handouts, as cushion against the sweeping pangs of COVID-19 induced recession.

Despite the foregoing, the general perception is that the Buhari administration, within the last seven years, continues to lag in critical areas like: poverty alleviation, security and the fight against corruption.

On corruption especially, we recall that even before and since the recent arrest of the Accountant General of the Federation, Ahmed Idris, by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on alleged diversion of and laundering funds totalling N80 billion, as well as the N100 million APC presidential nomination forms generously purchased by political appointees and ministers, alongside a few governors, there has been renewed allegations of massive financial misconducts within the Buhari presidency.

How about the alleged mismanagement of nearly N900 billion by the presidency, the condoning of graft perpetrated by a number of government officials in career and appointive offices, including those of the military? There is also the observed government’s ‘secrecy’ over recovery of loots as these relate to the late Sanni Abacha and others.

According to an audit report, Federal MDAs in 2019 alone, failed to account for N323.5 billion, and that in several financial transactions, the spending by public officers violated Paragraph 415 of the Financial Regulations Act. Also, Buhari’s recent approval, through the National Assembly, of N4 trillion for oil subsidy is seen as an icing on the cake of rather many untoward and unhealthy treatment of the national treasury, even when the president himself had condemned similar moves by the immediate past administration.

Indeed and currently, Nigeria’s ranking in the Corruption Index released by Transparency International (TI) has ratified the litany of corruption allegations, particularly by so-called opposition figures and a number of non-government bodies, a situation so worse now that it whips up nostalgia and soft sentiments for erstwhile governments whose financial improprieties seem in retrospect to weigh much less and more tolerable.

Meanwhile, Transparency International in its 2021 ranking of corruption-ridden nations, puts Nigeria at second position in West Africa, and 154th out of 180 countries captured globally.

With current inflation rate at 18.2 percent against 9.1 in 2015, Gross Domestic Product regressed from $487 billion in 2015 to $440 billion in 2021, and the naira receiving merciless blows of devaluation, heading southwards on a daily basis; it is pertinent to ask: are Nigerians indeed not having it real raw with fate lately?

Little wonder the country’s Global Misery Index, as gathered from Hanke’s Annual Misery Index, has plummeted from 15th position in 2020 to 11th as the world’s most miserable country in 2021.

Hanke’s Index focuses on four parameters, including inflation, (bank) lending rates, unemployment figures as well as the GDP. Should it be any news that Nigeria’s Good Governance rating in 2021 by the Chandler Good Governance Index – which classifies countries in terms of government capabilities and outcomes on the citizenry – equally nosedived to third worst nation on earth out of 104 nations considered?

Infrastructure, especially regarding road, health and electricity seems the most hit however. Very many roads, especially in the southwest and southeast, have become plainly unmotorable, claiming scores of lives daily, while medical doctors who exit the country in their thousands annually complement the blatant charade to which hospitals have been relegated.

No less dismal is the picture in the education sector. Students have been home for nearly four months owing to a “running” strike declared by Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) against the Federal Government’s inadequate remuneration of teachers and gross under-funding of tertiary education, which, at 5 percent of annual budgets, remains a whopping 22 places below the United Nations’ recommendation!

Specifically, ASUU demands revitalisation funds for universities, renegotiation of 2009 FGN/ASUU agreement, release of earned allowances for university teachers, deployment of the UTAS payment platform for payment of salaries and allowances of university teachers, rather than the current IPPIS, as well as stoppage of proliferation of state universities.

Insecurity has also presented equally awesome and intractable challenge to the administration, as no day passes without Nigerians being served with news of one horrific act of terrorism/banditry or another in the northern part, as much as other parts of the country.

Although, terrorists and bandits alike have largely reworked their killing/destruction strategies, they continue to harvest more victims by the day. The situation has become so frequent and commonplace that attacks lately, often in excess of hundreds, no longer enjoy whatever shock value!

Indeed, seven years down the line, it is possible to contend along the following lines in a repetitive vein:

if the experience on insurgency, banditry and extra-judicial killings have remained significantly disturbing, with Kano-Kaduna-Sokoto axis assuming leadership in wanton human slaughter; if the economy has not been parleyed to address yearnings of millions of Nigerians, with unemployment figures at almost 35 percent, second highest on global list;

if the cost of governance has remained intolerably high, if inflation has become even more rabid in its destructive trail, and if staggering commitments to electricity generation in excess of billions of naira have failed quite obviously to justify election promises of steady electricity – not with the national grid which of late has routinely collapsed, sending offices, private habitations and major streets to weeks, even months of darkness, thus dealing terrific blows on SMEs and artisanal strivings; how factually can the Buhari leadership attract any less acerbic assessment at this point in time?

Read also: Buhari’s seven years: The gains and the pains

Therefore and under the circumstances, how best President Buhari invests the balance of his remaining one year in office depends on his candid appreciation of his journey so far against the summative essence of governance. By now, he and his cabinet members must have realised that delivering the gains of governance goes well beyond toasting campaign oratories or phantom utopian idealising of populist political grandstanding.

While admitting that governing a complex, multi-ethnic social formation like Nigeria cannot be a tea party, we still believe that the performance of any administration should not be so low as to enforce wonders if any party that clinched power upon all promises, exploring all available channels for electoral victory, should offer such appalling performance!

One year to go, BusinessDay wishes to recommend emplacement of institutions to drive actions on all fronts. These range from controlling inflation, to reining in endemic corruption, fighting insurgencies and miscellaneous banditry, thus assuring performances across broad fronts – executive, legislative, judicial.

President Buhari will do quite well to lay foundations in monitoring/standardising performances in critical areas like in the oil industry and security. The multiplicity of errors that have cogged the country’s desirable advance are routinely attributed to an almost non-existent basic institutional frameworks that ought to under-gird every serious action in public administration.

As yet, programmes and commitments of governments have traditionally been a result of overnight thoughts and fire-brigade responses! But on the other hand, when institutions drive actions, when policies are rooted in unflagging bureaucratic/institutional rivets, results of governance programmes/actions tend to be wholesome, deeper-reaching, steady, systemic and systematic, and predictable to assure delivery of needful services for the betterment of Nigeria and Nigerians.

Indeed, if Buhari pays heed to em-placing strong institutional ramparts as precise indemnity against common, but predictable, vagaries and frailties of leadership, his presidency may still have something to show for the eight years in office. Otherwise, it is feared that at the rate in which very many things are going wrong, the Buhari presidency may go down in history as a disaster to the social formation called Nigeria.