APC denial of 100 days promises

As the Muhammadu Buhari administration clocks 100 days in office, mixed reactions have trailed claims by the Presidency and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) that President Buhari never promised Nigerians that he would achieve specific things within his first 100 days in office.

In his response, Wale Oladipo, national secretary, People’s Democratic Party (PDP), said Nigerians may have entered a “one chance bus”.

The tradition OF 100 days in office performance scorecard was popularised by former United States President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was able to accomplish much within his first 100 days in office. During his first 100 days in office, the 32nd US President was faced with the calamity of the Great Depression of the 1930s, which made him push 15 bills through Congress – the beginning of what would come to be known as the New Deal. Time magazine claims that the tradition dates as far back as Napoleon Bonaparte in 1815 because that was how long it took him to return from exile, reinstated himself as ruler of France and waged war against the English and Prussian armies before his final defeat at the Battle of Waterloo.
As Nigeria’s democracy is fashioned after the US model, the first 100 days in office have been used to predict how each administration – since President Olusegun Obasanjo was elected in 1999 – has fared.

It is used to measure the successes and accomplishments of a democratically-elected president or governor of his first 100 days of his first term in office. In Nigeria for instance, the electorates want to see whether there are clear policy directions that they can tap into and make governance a participatory process. They want to see how the lives of the people have been touched on a sector-by-sector basis: education, health,  economy, transport, security, power, youth employment, agriculture, oil and gas etc.

While the ruling party insists that it can only be held accountable for  two documents: its constitution and manifesto, critics say the denial of ownership of the publication of two campaign documents: ‘My Covenant with Nigerians’ and ‘100 Things Buhari Would Do in 100 Days’ on APC’s website on March 12 amounts to shifting the goal post in the middle of a football game. The documents covered promises on what Buhari would do in his first 100 days as the president of Nigeria.

A peep into ‘My Covenant With Nigerians’ indicate that some of the campaign promises include: public declaration of assets and liabilities; empowerment scheme for 740,000 graduates across the country; establishment of a free-tuition and scholarship scheme for pupils with exceptional aptitude in science subjects; creation of a Social Welfare
Programme of N5,000 monthly to cater for 25 million Nigerians; provision of allowances to the discharged but unemployed Youth Corps members for 12 months, amongst others.
President Buhari and his vice, Yemi Osinbajo only last Thursday publicly declared their assets after they had done so secretly shortly after inauguration, a development that received virulent criticism.

However, those in defense of the President on his seemingly stammering over the 100 days promises have said he is only being ‘blackmailed’, as some of the promises on the documents were unrealistic in the first 100 days.

Former National Chairman, Labour Party, Dan Nwanyanwu, belongs to this school-of-thought. While admitting that expectations of Nigerians were high, he pointed out, however, that some of the promises in the documents were not realisable. “There is no way one naira will be equal to one dollar. There is no way anybody will be paid N5, 000 every month”, he averred.

Findings by BD SUNDAY also reveal that President Buhari had addressed the issue of ‘first 100 days in office’ long before he was inaugurated as president.
In his Chatham House Speech in London on February 26, the then APC presidential candidate was asked about the high expectations of what to do with the first 100 days. He informed Nigerians not to expect miracles from him.

He said: “I respect that question because quietly I was thinking about these high expectations. Those who are following the trail of our campaigns can see how people are turning out, some becoming emotional and crying. I am really getting scared that if I get there they will expect miracles within the next week or months. That would be very dicey handling that one. I think we have to have a deliberate campaign to temper high expectations with some reasonableness on the part of those who are expecting miracles to happen”.

It would also be recalled that while meeting with State House correspondents to mark his first day in the Aso Rock office in June, the President had said the culture of assessing government’s performance in the first 100 days in office was putting pressure on him considering   the mismanaged economy     he inherited.

According to him, “This culture of 100 days (in office) is bringing so much pressure with treasury virtually empty; with debts in millions of dollars; with state workers and even federal workers not being paid their salaries. This is such a disgrace for Nigeria. I think Nigeria should be in a position to at least pay its workers.

“This bad management that we find ourselves in, we really need your help to protect us from people before they march on us.”

Similarly, some analysts have submitted that 100 days is too short to evaluate a government. Using the maxim: ‘Rome was not built in a day’ to buttress their argument, this school-of-thought believes since the four-year tenure of a President of Nigeria has 1,461 days out of which 100 days represent a meagre 6.8 percent, it would be unfair to expect much from a government within 100 days.

But the opposition PDP would have none of such rationalisations. The party’s National Secretary, Wale Oladipo, who exclusively spoke with BD SUNDAY, said Nigerians may have entered a “one chance bus”.

‘One Chance’ is a local parlance which indicates that someone has been duped, jilted or deceived.

According to Oladipo, those who voted for change should live with the consequences.

The PDP chieftain who mainly asked rhetoric questions, said: “What will be the reaction of Nigerians? That is the important thing. My reaction is not important. It is that of Nigerians who craved for change, voted for change, I hope we are not in a one-chance bus.

“Will Nigerians not respond without me prompting them? When we were in government, were they not responding to our programmes? We are not fools in this country”.
Oladipo’s sentiments were shared by some other Nigerians on social media, who expressed dismay at the Presidency and the APC for allegedly being insincere with their electioneering promises. To drive home their demand, they created a hashtag on Twitter titled, #100dayspromise.

To some Muslim followers, Buhari has not lived up to his name as ‘Mai Gaskiya’, an attribute of Prophet Muhammad (SAW), which means the most trustworthy.

An analyst, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he was mortally shocked that APC could deny its promises, even with a deluge of evidence all over the place, particularly in the social media.

“I watched Lai Mohammed on television on several occasions speaking on many things his party would do as soon as it was inaugurated. I am now shocked by the denial that neither APC nor the President promised anything within 100 days in office. I think it is a reflection of the character of those who are masquerading as leaders. If they came out to tell us that because of the state of the economy, the party would not be able to meet up with the promises, that would be understandable, but to deny outright that it made some promises is condemnable,” the analyst said.

Speaking on a live television programme recently, Dan Nwanyanwu, who had said 100 days were not sufficient a time to make a desirable impact, however, expressed the belief that the President and his party, APC, were ill-prepared for governance.

Using the adage, “The morning shows the day” to buttress his argument, Nwanyanwu said President Buhari ought to have a template for governance having contested the Presidency on four different occasions.

“There are some politicians who want to attempt a position to give them room for negotiation. But President Muhammadu Buhari contested three times and succeeded the fourth time. It will be wrong to assume that he had no intention of governing Nigeria. But what is astonishing is whether he prepared himself during this period,” he said.

Also, an Abuja-based legal practitioner, Kayode Ajulo, said the President’s performance so far is “being fraught with ominous signs that Nigerians would do well to pay attention to.”
Ajulo, the national secretary of Labour Party (LP) said President Buhari’s first 100 days would be the best time for Nigerians to reflect on their electoral choices, evaluate the successes of the party in the period under review and ask relevant questions.

“Nigerians should ask questions about their achievements. Nigerians should take that campaign pamphlet ‘My Covenant with Nigerians’ and ‘100 Things Buhari Would Do in 100 Days’ and interrogate the administration vis-a-vis the promises contained in the documents.

“The president is reputed to be a man of integrity. Let him come forward and tell Nigerians how well he has done on delivering on his campaign promises. We would like to see if the nation is moving forward, stagnating or even retrogressing. This is not a matter of baseless criticisms; there are available benchmarks to judge him by.

“For me, my desire is to see him succeed as this would translate to a better life for my countrymen. It is nothing personal and it is all about the progress of our nation but people are free to interpret our work as they deem fit,” he said.

He called on the public to stay vigilant and rigorously examine the decisions and policies being enacted by the administration.

“It is our constitutional right to demand good governance and we will not relent. We call on all lovers of equity to continue to do their bit, and play their role in ensuring that President Buhari succeeds. Eternal vigilance, they say, is the price of liberty, so all hands must be on deck to ensure that  the government does not renege on the promises made while it was wooing the nation for support and for votes,” he further said.