By Tony Eluemunor
How many citizens remembered that 29th May was supposed to be a major anniversary? It was on May 29, 2015 – seven years ago – that Gen. Muhammadu Buhari became Nigeria’s President. Also, this Fourth Republic incepted on May 29, 1999, when Nigeria’s last military rule interval which began on January 1st, 1984 came to a frantic end. Frantic? Yes, the military by then, having thoroughgoingly disgraced itself, was forced back into the barracks as Nigerians agitated against military jackboot despotism and campaigned for democracy’s return.
And Nigeria had a party. Hope was renewed. Many of the state governors were young and the smiles on their faces hinted of the goodies to come. The President in that promising era, Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, was no neophyte. He had not only been a military Head of State (1976-1979) he had been almost so superlative in office then, providing leadership to the African continent, standing up to the West in Africa’s fight against the accursed apartheid system in South Africa, that Nigerian university students tagged him “Uncle Sege”.
He had an additional qualification for that high
office; he had been unjustly jailed by the despotic Abacha. So, on Abacha’s
death in June 1988, Gens Abdulsalami Abubakar, Ibrahim Babangida, T Y Danjuma and
Aliyu Gusau schemed for him to become President, a position that could without
question have gone to the late Dr. Alex-Ekwueme, who was Vice-President in the
1979-1993 Second Republic.
That was a great mistake; it made our democracy a sham that
continues till today as it enthroned godfatherism and denied
the political parties the all-important internal democracy. Looking back,
Ekwueme would have made a better President than Obasanjo who behaved like a
bull in a china shop, as he devastated anyone whose opinion didn’t mirror his.
It was as though Obasanjo was doing Nigeria a favour by
accepting to be president for a second time. His ego towered higher than Mount
Everest even as his achievements sank deeper than the Rift Valley.
It was clear by the turn of the millennium that “the most
pressing moral, political and economic issue of our time is third-world
poverty”, as the Economist of London wrote then. By that time, the UN had been
blaring about the Millenium Development Goals. The MDGs were aimed at cutting
the number of those that lived in abject poverty – which is on income of less
than $1.90 per day, by half. The MDGs also had other areas such as education,
housing, health, water provision that it tried to train world attention on.
As poverty is our focus today, we should forget about the other
sectors. By the turn of the millennium, nearly 1.7 billion unfortunates were in
the poorest of the poor category, and a clear one billion of them lived in just
two Asian countries; China and India.
Today, general despair (as opposed to optimism) reigns in
Nigeria while unbounded optimism pulsates in both China and India. For
instance, in 2021, a proud China announced that it has eradicated extreme
poverty. In 2018 the number of people suffering from extreme poverty in India
reached a new low and the world applauded that magical achievement.
But what about Nigeria? Under the President Buhari administration, Nigeria
overtook India in poverty as over 90million Nigerians fell beneath the poverty
line. And with that Nigeria became the poverty capital of the world. And this
happened during an administration which had promised to take Nigeria to “The
Next Level”
So, 29th May should have made Nigerians reflective as it marked
the inception of Buhari’s presidency. And the man has presided over a period of
dashed hopes.
Yet, little introspection is taking place. There is the quiet of
the grave-yard everywhere. All those super-critics of the Dr. Goodluck Jonathan
era have grown deaf and dumb. All those clerics, lawyers, NGO-types who took to
the streets to protest against the petrol pump price and the fuel’s scarcity
when Jonathan was President have gone lame, blind, dumb and deaf. All those
columnists who ridiculed the PDP have seemingly ceased being concerned
patriots. And are all those who picked up arms against Chief James Onanefe
Ibori, claiming there were fighting against corruption still alive? They and
their shrieks have petered out. Did they actually rave and rage against
corruption or they were just hired hands which formed Save Nigeria, Respect
Nigeria, and the likes? And I same shame to them all. They were noting but
pretenders. The time to rave against corruption has finally arrived but they
are playing dead.
How bad is the Nigerian economy under President Buhari? Here is
the answer: in September 2021 a new fact emerged: Nigeria maintained an
infamous position as the poverty capital of the world, with 93.9 people living
below the poverty line. The Managing Director, Financial Derivatives Company
(FDC) Limited, who is above all else a member of President Muhammadu Buhari’s
Economic Advisory Council (EAC), Mr. Bismarck Rewane, quoting a World Bank
data, said in a presentation at the monthly Lagos Business School’s Economic
Breakfast meeting for September 2021, that “seven million Nigerians fell into
extreme poverty in 2020”.
Nigeria first earned that dubious first in 2018 when a Brookings
Institute report declared her the world’s poverty capital as Nigeria overtook
India. The report made it as stark as possible, as though it was written to
rouse the Buhari administration from sleep, stating that six Nigerians fall
into extreme poverty every minute.
The Brookings Institution’s 2018 report had said: “At the end of
May 2018, our trajectories suggest that Nigeria had about 87 million people in
extreme poverty, compared with India’s 73 million. What is more, extreme
poverty in Nigeria is growing by six people every minute, while poverty in
India continues to fall.” Yes, while the level of poverty among India’s 1.38
billion citizens is falling, it is rising in Nigeria with some 200 million. So,
who is to blame if not the government?
With this perilous state of affairs in the country, why have we
not witnessed holy anger and a stout determination to change things – as the
two leading political parties are choosing their presidential candidates? It
appears that Nigeria has fallen into a most dangerous state; that of
hopelessness; the stiffest tragedy that could befall a people because when hope
is gone, all is lost.
Yet, how would anyone begin to explain what Nigerians
experienced under the burden called the Buhari administration? This time, the
discussion should not be left to the traducers. We should all engage in it and
tell ourselves the very truth – truth about how our hopes were dastardly dashed
and Nigeria was suffocated. We have come to the end of living and are merely
surviving – without electricity, pipe-borne water, employment opportunities,
security, effective and affordable educational system.
The Kaduna state Governor, Nasir el-Rufai who criticised
President Yar’Adua endlessly, allegedly once wrote a memo to President Buhari
and it was later leaked to the public. Even newspaper vendors made photocopies
of it for sale. If that memo titled the “IMMEDIATE AND MEDIUM-TERM IMPERATIVES
FOR PRESIDENT MUHAMMADU BUHARI -SEPTEMBER 22, 2016 mirrored el-Rufai’s own,
then he has redeemed himself. The version that sold publicly was recaptioned:
“YOU HAVE FAILED”. He wrote: “However, we cannot, after more than a year in
office, continue to rely only on this ‘blame them’ explanation”. (For them,
please read PDP!) He continued: “Mr. President, Sir, in every crisis there lies
an opportunity for fundamental change. The current crisis of reduced oil
production, unit prices and earnings, which has led to the deterioration of the
exchange rate, escalation of levels of debt and interest rates, reduced levels
of industrial production and employment constitutes an opportunity for our nation
to change decades of bad habits and wrong direction in our political economy
and governance”.
That was written in 2016 and since then the economy has grown
worse, the Naira value has plummeted further, the number of the absolute poor
has increased, the level of electricity supply has reduced, the price of
petrol, diesel, rice, yam, bottle of ground nut, sachet water, a loaf of bread,
any measure of gari – cost of everything bought and sold in Nigeria- soared and
Nigeria has piled up further debts. Not even the much-advertised rice
pyramid showcased on National TV as a superlative achievement has had an impact
on the price of rice, which has more than doubled since Buhari became
President. And local rice production has been special to this administration.
Not only did APC fail to solve any of the old problems, it brought in newer and
direr ones. Nigeria’s problems worsened even when crude petrol price increased
in the world market – because Nigeria has refused to refine petrol locally. And
Nigeria’s President was an oil minister as far back as 1976. And he holds that
same portfolio even now.
It could be argued that the Aso Rock Cabal never allowed Buhari
to see the genuine el-Rufai’s memo and may never have even heard that a version
of it whether real or faked could have been vended on Abuja streets. Yet, he
must have read a book John N. Paden wrote, Muhammadu Buhari: The Challenges Of Leadership In Nigeria. Page 104 of the 2016 book has this: “The Buhari
administration was confronted with a formidable array of interrelated problems.
The inflow of foreign currency was extremely meagre owing to the low price of
crude oil” and alleged depletion by the preceding administration (headed by Dr.
Goodluck Jonathan who is being courted by some APC bigwigs to attempt to return
to the presidency on APC ticket. It is difficult to beat that joke). “Debts
were piling and coming due and had not been reported previously. And fuel
subsidies were eating a big piece of the national budget”.
Unfortunately, Buhari did not solve any of the economic problems
his biographer had identified in the opening yeas of his administration. Is it
the Naira-Dollar exchange rate? The amount of debt under which Nigeria squirmed
under PDP has more than doubled under Buhari and the borrowing binge continues
unchecked. So, too, the fuel subsidy which now “eats” the biggest piece of the
national cake under the presidency of a past and present oil minister.
No wonder the unbounded optimism and fierce ambition in the
Nigeria of 1999 has today turned into today’s dashed hopes, rotten
bureaucracies, profound economic problems, unmitigated and galloping poverty,
widespread hardship and the absence of safety nets – spreading despair, yes
despair – as Buhari has presided over a period of a total slowdown. Our leaders
appear to be just waiting for the Naira-Dollar exchange rate to hit N1,000 to
US$1 and beyond. This failure has surpassed the failings of all the preceding
administrations – including Buhari’s stint as Military Head of State.
Surpassing failure? Yes, that phrase should be reserved for this administration
as it could be the ineptest government in global history.
*Eluemunor is a commentator on public issues
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