Buhari And The Savaging Of The Poor

By Okey Ndibe

Before the 2015 presidential election, Candidate Muhammadu Buhari essentially advertised himself as a magician. Even though oil prices were tumbling, Mr. Buhari promised to pay N5,000 a month to unemployed youth, make the country more secure, fix the perennial electric power crisis, root out corruption, strengthen the naira against the dollar and reduce the price per litre of fuel.

*Buhari 

Once elected, Mr. Buhari began a serial retreat from his promises. Nigeria’s hapless youth have received no cash.  Boko Haram may have been weakened in the northeast, but heavily armed herdsmen have maimed and killed and ramped up Nigeria’s violence quotient. And – thanks to the administration’s hectoring tone and strong-arm tactics – the southeast and oil-rich Niger Delta have become highly volatile. Power outages are as bad as ever, and arguably worse.

The war against corruption has targeted some well-known persons, among them Senate President, Bukola Saraki, former National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki, and the spokesman of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Olisa Metuh. Even so, the war appears imperiled in several ways.

One is Mr. Buhari’s failure to devise a fresh, innovative approach to combating corruption. The cases currently in court are making plodding progress – and are likely to drag on. Given the sheer number of suspects out there, the lesson is that the prosecutorial route is not particularly promising.

Besides, as I suggested shortly after his inauguration, Mr. Buhari is mired in an ethical bind: As some of the financiers of his campaign are perceived as plunderers of public funds.

More troubling still is that the president has paid scant attention to ways of plugging the loopholes that permit public officials and their cohorts to loot funds. What we have, then, is a policy of patching a system that demands an overhaul.