President Buhari’s Illusion Versus Reality

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

It should be clear by now to the citizens who are genuinely concerned about saving the country from careering into mortal catastrophes that their first task is to rescue their president. It is not a redemption from his hobbling medical condition. London doctors are equal to this task. This they have uncannily demonstrated by giving President Muhammadu Buhari a new lease of life. Now, apparently far from an afflicted president who was in dire need of the citizens’ empathy and prayer for his good health, Buhari has resumed office with so much vigour that he easily underscores his toughness by casting his expectations from the citizens in fire and brimstone.

*President Buhari in Zamfra (March 2017)

What Buhari is in urgent need of rescue from is his illusions about his fellow citizens, his country and the world. It does not matter that he claimed to be abreast of developments at home and the other parts of the world while he was away. In less than a week since his return, Buhari has shown that he is fixated on his misbegotten notions of governance that he had before his medical sojourn abroad. A graver danger is that these notions have degenerated as they have assumed a misanthropic character. Those who thought that his ill health would have sobered him up and purged him of his self-created distance from the citizens have been sorely disappointed. He has come back home to reprimand them with a sledgehammer for intolerably going errant ways while he was away. After all, in his reckoning, most of those who want a redefinition of the terms for the co-existence of the people have not been confronted with the prospect of their shedding their blood for the survival and unity of the nation.

Buhari, Payment Of N5000 To The Unemployed And The Future Of Nigeria

By Arthur Agwuncha Nwankwo
The phrase “robbing Peter to pay Paul” is not new to us. It was in 1661 AD that Peter Heylyn in his Ecclesia Restaurata sought to explain the origin and import of this phrase. Though his attempt has been punctured severally by other etymologists, the phrase suggests a calamitous sequence of events where, before the Reformation, taxes had to be paid from the treasury of St. Peter’s church in Rome to defray the running costs of St. Paul’s church in London. At this time, the lands of Westminster upon which St. Paul’s church stood had become so dilapidated and badly run by Bishop Thirlby, that there was almost nothing left to support its dignity. Originally it referred to neglecting the Peter tax in order to have money to pay the Paul tax. In its proper context, this phrase simply means solving one problem in a way that makes another problem worse. 

*Dr. Arthur Nwankwo 

When this type of approach is adopted in managing the economy of a state the outcome is always disastrous especially for countries with teething economic problems. That is what I call casino or lottery economy and no country makes progress in this type of scenario. Even Adam Smith, variously referred to as the father of economics did not prescribe this type of voodoo economics despite the fact that some modern economist have interpreted his economic model as laissez-faire economics because of his insistence that the best policy by which a state can manage its economy was to leave the economy to the free play of market forces. 

Evidently, the interpretation of Smith’s postulations as laissez-faire economics could be linked to his polemics against what he called mercantilism, which was based on the principle of “robbing Peter to pay Paul”. One important role of the government in managing the economy is to provide the institutional framework required for competitive markets to function. In other words, a well-structured political system should be able to provide a secure framework for the market system to work efficiently. 

More broadly, the role of the state is to protect the members of society, both as participants in market transactions and in their private lives, from violence and invasion from other societies and oppression by other members of society. A good reading of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations will reveal that although well-functioning markets are good for society, individual producers might well find it in their individual interests to limit competition by entering into “conspiracies against the public”. Therefore, an important role for government is to design an economic system that as far as possible discouraged the creation of private cartels and monopolies. Buhari’s economic management policies since he came on board are deficit on this principle.

I recall vividly that one of the numerous campaign promises by Buhari is that his administration would pay every unemployed Nigerian the sum of N5000 every month as welfare package pending such a time the person will be gainfully employed. At the time the promise was made and now, I have always maintained that this promise is neither feasible nor achievable for several reasons. I have read from the papers that Jigawa state government has slated March this year for the commencement of disbursement of this money to the unemployed and the poorest youths in the State.