Buhari, APC: Stop This Hubris!

 By Tony Eluemunor

Why this brazen contempt for any opposing viewpoint. What has made Nigerians known to be the most vociferous critics on Moth­er Earth to lose all convictions?

*Buhari 

Please dear reader, if you were not in Mars during a period of petrol scarcity when the President Goodluck Jonathan-led Peoples Democratic Par­ty (PDP) administration held sway in Nigeria, you would have noticed the cascading of rambunctious criticism both Jonathan and the PDP faced – and rightly too. They had failed to make the refineries work maximally even as corruption trailed the pet­rol importation regime of that era. Apart from the trenchant criticism, all sorts of activists took to the streets to protest the belittling of Nigeria; an oil-producing country that was made to be importing petrol for local con­sumption just because she could not get her petrol refineries to work optimally.

Please, compare the Jonathan era to now. Anoth­er administration is in place. For two or three weeks now, Petrol scarcity has gripped Nigeria. To kick-start it, toxic petrol was imported into the country. How was it imported? Why was it imported? Who has been pun­ished for the multi-level failures that the importation showcased? What about the earth-shaking bribery corruption involved in importing into Nigeria petrol, 20 percent of which was meth­anol, a much cheaper commodity than petrol. Did Nigeria pay full price for pure petrol and not one mixed with 20 percent Ethanol? What is the conse­quence of that corrupt act?

What happened to still the cacophony of such numerous and seemingly patriotic and angry voic­es? Yes, what happened? We will leave that issue for another day? Instead, we should face a related matter, the ‘no-nothingness” of our opinion lead­ers and one of its unpalatable results; the chest-beating and unabashed boast­fulness of those in power despite the suffering pummeling the public, a suffering brought about by the fail­ure of the Buhari administration to end the national insecurity, buoy up the economy, check the ever depleting purchasing power of the Naira, to re­pair the refineries and so stop petrol importation and subsidy (the greatest source of danger to the value of the Naira in the forex market), to grow jobs and check unemployment.

Instead of being humble and explain reasons for the abject fail­ure of governance, the members of the present administration have hero-ized themselves, and are thus heaping praises on themselves, too, disdaining the few voices that tell them otherwise. And I wonder: what­ever happened to all the claims that President Muhammadu Buhari is a listening President?

Well, as the May 29 handover day when a new President would be in­augurated is fast approaching, Mr. President has begun to award himself pass marks in the style of the ablest, brightest, handsomest and in fact the ‘mostest’ President the United States of America has ever had, Donald Trump. Ironically, Trump is seriously mentioned these days as the ‘mostest’ in two things; self-delusion and as a threat to democracy.

The most recent claim from Presi­dent Buhari is that were it not for his administration, Nigerians would by now be walking from Lagos to Abu­ja for the absence of a good road. Why this desperate claim? But may we please put things in their proper perspectives. If by the Lagos-Abuja bragging, the President means that he has completed the Lagos-Ibadan ex­pressway, then his Minister of Works must have misled him. That road, yes, that famous Lagos–Ibadan Expressway is 127.6- kilometre-long (79.3 mile). Now wait for this: repair work has been go­ing on there, yes on that same partic­ular stretch of road since 2013, that is for nine long years. So far, Buhari has been in power for seven and half years of those nine years. Last year, the Works Minister, Babatunde Fash­ola promised that the reconstruction work on the expressway would end in 2022. But without waiting for the expressway to be fully repaired, Bu­hari has awarded himself full marks.

Now, that is surprising. The La­gos-Ibadan Expressway is a small frac­tion of the length of the Lagos – Abuja Road. So, what is the state of the frac­tions of the entire road that leads to Abuja from Lagos? Choose whichever direction in which you would decide to travel to Abuja from Lagos, and it is pot hole-filled; whether you travel through Ibadan and from there to Ilorin and Bida and from there to Abu­ja, or if you go from Ibadan through Akure and then connect to Lokoja or you head towards Shagamu to Benin and Auchi, Okene before connecting to Lokojo and then on to Abaji and Abuja, it is the same nightmare that would be experienced. Yes, the Shag­amu- Benin stretch would provide you with some succour and I thank Buhari for that.

Another important segment of that Abuja-Lagos Road is the Abu­ja to Lokoja section. The contract to dualise it was awarded sixteen years ago. On April 1st last year the 'Vanguard' quoted the Director of Highway, Construction and Reha­bilitation, Ministry of Works and Housing, Engr. Funso Adebiyi, who while inspecting Section One of the project (Zuba-Gwagwalada-Sheda axis) assured the road projects have attained various stages of completion and would be completed in 2021.

Yet, just this immediate past Wednesday, The Federal Executive Council (FEC), re-awarded the con­tract on a 49 kilometres section of Abaji to Kotokarfi, a part of the Abu­ja-Lokoja highway, in favour of Mess­ers Galt for N56.175 billion. The 49 kilo­metres section of the Abuja – Lokoja road’s contract was first awarded in 2006 but was terminated and repre­sented for execution by the Ministry of Works and Housing.

This is a part of that same Abu­ja-Lagos Road.

Now, a very long section of that Lagos-Abuja Road is the 209-kilome­tre stretch which carries traffic from Benin City by-pass to Okene By-Pass. It has largely been abandoned.

So, which Abuja- Lagos Road was Mr. President talking about?

Well, Mr. President had explained that he focused on the infrastructure because the nation cannot develop without its being in pristine health. That is all well and good but he must be told that his efforts so far have been much, much (and much again) less than what Nigeria deserves. The Onitsha- Enugu and then on to Port Harcourt Expressway has remained dilapidated for years. The East-West Road was never completed by Presi­dent Goodluck Jonathan. But then, he has been out of Aso Rock since 2015, seven plus years ago.

One major bragging right Buhari may earn, should come from the com­pletion of the Second Niger Bridge. Fashola said last year that “For the second Niger Bridge, the plan is to complete it in 2022 and it is on sched­ule. The contractors tell us that the bridges will be fully connected by the end of quarter one in 2022”. The first quarter of this year ended in March, and this column was first published on February 27! Beyond that, the life of this administration expires on May 29, 2023 – just next year, so, if care is not taken, another administration may take the glory for completing that consequential bridge, which surpris­ingly, had no section for rail lines.

So, if Buhari is focused on the Abuja-Lagos Expressway as his main achievement, he has, unfortunately, nothing to boast about there. And it will become worse if he begins to make claims of how remarkably he rejigged Nigeria’s infrastructure. This is because the basic physical and organizational structures and facilities such as buildings, roads, power supplies needed for the opera­tion of a society or enterprise are all subsumed in that all-encompassing term: infrastructure. The social and economic infrastructure of a coun­try includes highways, streets, and roads, bridges, Mass Transit systems, Airports, and Airways, water supply and other aspects of water resources, waste management and waste water management, power generation and transmission, telecommunications, hazardous waste removal and storage.

In Infrastructure alone, all past administrations have failed woefully.

Unfortunately, the Buhari admin­istration has just until May next year to join them in that dismal record. So, it has just a few months left to pull off some magic and pull itself out of the gutter in which it dwells as regards its infrastructural development re­cord. Think electricity provision for instance.

And note that I have not brought in the national insecurity issue. No, I’m not that wicked; that would sink the Buhari record deep, deep beyond even the gutter. Here is my advice: the Pres­ident and his aides should please talk less, boast less, justify their actions less, and listen more to the people. They wear the shoe of inadequacy in the country and so they know where it pinches. And the President was voted into office to serve their inter­ests. Only ingrates will not praise a good President…and Nigerians are not ingrates. They are dying to have a messiah and they even embraced the  election candidate Buhari as one and voted him into power.

*Eluemunor is a commentator on public issues