What Battles Has Buhari Won For Us?

By Eddy Odivwri

Many of those– including this reporter– who rooted for General Muhammadu Buhari in 2014 and then again in 2019, had the belief that he was coming to clean the Augean stable. The Goodluck Jonathan administration was perceived to be weak and unassertive. He was in the palace but not on the throne. He did not seem to know enough about what was happening in his government.

Matters were not helped with the wholesome abduction of the Chibok girls from their school hostel.  The Jonathan administration did not immediately know of the incident. It even tried to dismiss or deny it, until clearer clarion calls began to confirm the abduction. That was like some three or so days after. That was in April 2014. The presidential election was just months away. The Jonathan government did not seem to know what to do. It somewhat wringed its hands in helplessness. And many thought, rightly and wrongly, that the emerging security challenges facing the country would simply get worse under the leadership of a “bloody civilian” president who appeared blank on military warfare.

Standing a breath away was a touted no-nonsense retired army general, reputed for fierce hatred for corruption and lousiness. And many Nigerians thought he was the messiah: the square peg in the empty square hole. And pronto, he got voted for massively. He won.

And after he assumed office, it took six months to assemble his team. That was the first sign on the horizon that all that glitters is not gold.

If Charles Dickens lived in our time and age, he sure would have written another version of Great Expectations.

Some of us tried to argue that President Buhari was like a heavy-duty truck that revs its engine for a long time before all its cylinders get fired up for a distant journey. But seven years after, we cannot quite tell whether the engine is still revving or whether the cylinders refused to be fired up. The expected long journey to the redemption ground has practically not started.

As politicians are wont to do, President Buhari was somewhat trim in his projected promises. He said his government would stand on the tripod of: anti-corruption war, economic rejuvenation and tackling security challenges, with all the other socio-metrics of good life in-between.

With just about a year to go, when I take a look at the scorecard, I am bemused as I can’t see which of the wars he has fought and won for us as a country.

Let’s look at them one by one.

Anti-corruption fight: Let me be the first to admit that the name of Buhari commanded fear and compelled propriety at the beginning. Many people feared that the days of “any-how” were over. That it was surely not going to be business as usual anymore, with Buhari in the saddle. Many were still awe-struck with the memories of the 1983/84 fierce Buhari—the War Against Indiscipline (WAI) days.  It did not take long for those understudying him to realise that the General was now a mere Biblical Ichabod—one whose glory had long departed. He was not even the typical toothless bull dog who could bark and not bite. This one was neither barking nor biting. He was just there. The fear of him vanished. We practically returned to our old ways. Stealing of public funds increased, most times with vexatious audacity, so much that a young lady in JAMB    office would claim that snake, yes, snake swallowed N36 million. Bizarre! That was in 2018. Till today, we do not know what happened to that matter.

If corruption was a mere monster before, it has long grown horn under Buhari’s administration.

Little wonder the EFCC, itself a bouquet of corruption, has been having a rich harvest of arresting corruption suspects. It recently celebrated achieving 978 convictions in one year, just as it recovered N150 billion from the various suspects. Great? Yes, perhaps. But I guess a serious government should not just celebrate the conviction of that large swathe of “bad guys” in the land, but should worry more about a system that is so easily exploited and manipulated by crooks to feather their own nests. What is worse, many of them slip out of detention either because of light fines and punishment or they just ‘settle’ their ways out. There is perhaps nothing more ridiculous than seeing people who had been indicted by the courts, jailed and many are out and now strutting to become the nation’s president.  Cry Beloved Country!

For most of 2020 into 2021, we were suffused with the talks about forensic audit of the Niger Delta Development Commission.  After what looked like eternity, the report of the audit was released showing astounding records and cases of deep malfeasance: 13,777 projects “compromised” (whatever that means), just as the commission was said to have had and operated 362 bank accounts! That was in September last year. Three months later, last December, Mr President, in Akwa Ibom, boasted that he would “recover every kobo stolen from NDDC”. Three months after, not a whiff of that promise has been activated. 

Has anybody wondered why street-lighting projects (in every year’s federal budget) across the country are the exclusive preserve of federal lawmakers? Yet the streets are darker than the pathway to hell.

Yes, corruption is endemic among us, what seems to have remarkably changed is the “smartness” to steal and not be caught. The corruption index has just been climbing faithfully and courageously.

The other concern is that of the Economy. Gash! It is crushing so much that even the rich are not just crying, they are wailing. The poor are groaning. Ours is an import-dependent economy. The balance of trade of the country is skewed against Nigeria. That means that we are importing more than we are exporting. That explains why the Nigerian Customs Service generates over a trillion naira per year (despite the sharp practices).

Our exports have largely been reduced to the oil and gas resources. Even at that, when we import refined petroleum products, whatever gain we should have made from exporting crude oil, is wiped off. While other OPEC countries are happy that the price of crude in the international market is rising, and are  making more money, we are crying because we are burning more money importing the products. Suddenly, our oil and gas has become our liability. What a country!

Matters are not helped with the huge manipulations of the number of litres of petrol NNPC and PPMC claim we consume in the country. Because of the illicit deal the operators get from this importation (in the name of petroleum subsidy), they ensure that the refineries are never going to work, no matter how many tons of dollars we pour into  servicing them. And Mr President is the substantive Petroleum minister!

So, for an import-dependent economy to have the United States Dollars exchanging for $1 to N580, something is clearly wrong with the managers of such economy. Inflation is heading to 16%

How much progress can we make on such a path? Yet, the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics says our GDP grew by 3 per cent or so last year.  But government organs hardly talk about the huge debt profile mounting up for Nigeria.

Housewives are complaining badly about sustaining the homestead. Now they go to the market with a basketful of money and come back with a pocketful of items. It was the other way round a few years ago. 

Perhaps the worst indicator of our weak economy is the number of unemployed persons that has continued to be on the rise. The Buhari administration had promised the creation of three million jobs per year, in 2015. But more than that amount of jobs has been lost each year because of several factors, chief of which is our huge import-inclination. COVID-19 only helped to worsen an already bad situation.

 Many companies have shut down, sacking their workforce. That is why the urge to leave the country by the old and the young is highest in recent years. 

Today, we are losing our youth population to the twin malaise of drug addiction and  internet/fetish fraud aka ‘yahoo-yahoo’.

 Life has become tougher and even brutish. The frequent collapse of the electricity grid has only helped to worsen the woes of many Nigerians. It is practically snuffing off life from the SMEs. With the cost of diesel over N650 per litre, even the remaining big companies are gasping for breath. Our debt profile has hit N35.5 trillion!  At a glance, it would seem like nothing is working in the country. Everything points to the fact that we are in a depressed economy. Didn’t they say we have come out of recession? But are we progressing right now, if we ain’t still receding?

Unfortunately, the attention of the federal government does not seem focused on how to solve these myriad of problems, but on how to conduct the next election. Tomorrow, the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC) will be having its national convention to elect its national officers. After that, it would be the holding of party primaries to elect standard-bearers. Governance is on suspension.

Almost all the other political parties including the PDP are also busy preparing for the next contest.

The Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) has issued an alarm of the impending economic doom if things continue the way they are.

Hunger arising from the high cost of food items is threatening, essentially because of the inability of farmers to go to their farms. And that takes us to the next promise point of Mr President.

Security Issues

This was a cardinal issue that not only swept former President Jonathan off the stool, but brought President Buhari into office. With his military background, one famed for being a no-nonsense army General, many, including this reporter, assumed that dealing with the Boko Haram and other terrorist threats in the country would be a workover. But alas, here we are, insecurity has not only been maximally escalated across board, it has threatened every facet of the Nigerian economy. The security challenge has simply quadrupled.

 It was as  if the terrorists were pouting their lips at us when we believed President Buhari would soon smoke them out and crush them all, saying “you ain’t seen nothing yet”.

 It was just the abduction of Chibok girls and the Dapchi schoolgirls, in 2014, and then we voted Jonathan out, accusing him of incompetence and being clueless.  But under President Buhari, we have gone ahead to have an al- round abduction from nearly everywhere, including the Kankara Boys abduction in Katsina (near Mr President’s Daura town) , the Kagara abduction in Niger State, Salihu Tanko Islamic School pupils’ abduction (including minors) in Niger State,  the Greenfield University abduction in Kaduna State, the daredevil abduction at Nigeria Defence Academy (NDA), Kaduna; the abduction of 30 students at Federal Government College, Birnin   Yauri, Kebbi State, just to mention but a few. In many of the cases, there were deaths, just as parents paid huge sums of money running into hundreds of millions of Naira as ransom to get their children released. Some are still in captivity. Eight years after, Leah Sharibu, the Dapchi girl who refused to denounce her Christian faith is still in captivity, with unconfirmed stories of her being mother of two children now, even as some Chibok girls are yet to be seen or heard.

In Borno, 43 rice farmers were beheaded by Boko Haram terrorists, for daring to come to the farm. In some Niger State communities, they contribute money on a daily basis to “settle” bandits and kidnappers to enable them gain access to their farms.

Zamfara State has long become the daily playground of bandits and wild terrorists as they kill and burn villages and communities. The Killings and abductions in Kaduna State are beyond measure. Benue State was a theatre of the absurd with Fulani herdsmen and local farmers frequently clashing and the latter being killed. Just everywhere, we are overwhelmed with the plague of terrorism in a manner we had never seen it. Journeying from Abuja to Kaduna has since become a suicide mission, ditto many other highways in the country, especially in the northern part. We are simply perplexed at what has befallen us under President Buhari.

So, looking back and round, in which area can we clap for Mr President? I am not less patriotic in holding this view. And I am not unaware of the feats being recorded in infrastructure development: the tarring of many roads in the country (though through tax credits), the gigantic rail projects across the country (from huge Chinese loans), the soon-to be-inaugurated second Niger bridge, the building of the first Deep sea port in Nigeria etc., …. yet let me remind those who think I am less patriotic that trains, ports and bridges are only useful for the living.