Let’s Match Buhari’s Fairy Tales With Realities
THEFRONTLINES
Nothing amazes me more like President Muhammadu Buhari’s penchant for self-adulation, puritanism, and a very poor attempt to rewrite and stand history on its head. To him, he is the best thing that has ever happened to Nigeria since 1960. Soon, he would pass himself off as the father of modern Nigeria. Whatever that would mean, only time will tell.
While the President seems to be ensconced in his fairy tale world of make-belief, the reality is befuddling and captures the deep-rooted insensitivity and detachment of the President from the same people he professes to be serving.
After exit polls in the Ekiti state governorship election called the outcome in favor of the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Biodun Oyebanji, Buhari declared that the victory was an indication that things are getting better.
Hear him: “I loved how the APC governors mobilized and supported you. I think the party is very lucky, and things are getting better.” Rather than investing in the people who voted for him and through whom he took an oath of office to serve, the President’s overriding interests are politics and how to perpetuate himself and the party in power.
For a man who does not fail at every given opportunity, especially while hosting donors, to boost his ego by promising that he would deliver a free and fair election in 2023, the cacophony of voices including the opposition parties, election monitors, and aggrieved voters alleging widespread vote-buying were all lost on him.
At the same time that the President was praising his party and candidate for their exploits in the Ekiti elections, people were still protesting and alleging vote-buying against the ruling party. As it has become his hallmark approach to state issues, the President preferred cherry-picking what appealed to him.
While the President ignored these allegations, the declared winner, Biodun Oyebanji at least acknowledged the allegations of vote-buying but was quick to say that “I did not witness any vote-buying in the polling unit where I voted.”
With barely a few months to another general election holding in February 2023, these allegations cast a huge shadow on the likely outcome or credibility of the polls. Will Buhari keep a straight face and still vouch that he would deliver free and fair polls next year? I have strong doubts.
Listening to the President speak, sometimes you begin to wonder whether he is in the same Nigerian space or operating from Mars. Apart from his delusional answers, for somebody who should be a unifier, the President is openly divisive. While he sees people of his ethnicity as saints, he exhibits outright hostility and voices his hatred for other tribes, especially the Igbo.
To him, Nigerians should learn to tolerate his tribesmen who have constituted themselves into a major nuisance and security threat to the entire country. Nigerians are told to tolerate the idiosyncrasies of his tribesmen who have turned kidnapping, banditry, and insurgency into a new way of life and demonize the genuine self-determination of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) as terrorists.
In a recent interview with Bloomberg, when asked about his legacies, the President said “We leave Nigeria in a far better place than we found it. Corruption is less hidden for Nigerians feel empowered to report it without fear, while money is returned; terrorists no longer hold any territory in Nigeria, and their leaders are deceased, and vast infrastructure development sets the country on course for sustainable and equitable growth.”
The question is: is Nigeria better off under Buhari now after almost eight years on the saddle than when he came in 2015? A recent fact check undertaken by Daily Trust in collaboration with the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) returned a negative verdict. It emphatically stated that using world bank measuring standards, Nigeria has done far worse under Buhari in eight years making Nigeria far worse than how he met it in 2015.
On the economy, the President told Bloomberg how his administration boosted domestic production. According to him, “For years we have been criticized by the likes of the FT, the Economist, and others for supposedly mistaken attempts to de-globalize and re-localize food production and boost manufacturing. Now with the war in Ukraine breaking global food supply chains “Davos Man” is in retreat as the energy crisis makes countries everywhere think again about energy independence and security. We have spent our two terms investing heavily in the national road, rail, and transport infrastructure set to unleash growth, connect communities, and lessen inequality. This is structural transformation.”
But Buhari was quick to add a caveat stating that these achievements “may not show on standard economic metrics now, but the results will be apparent in good time.” If for almost eight years that he has been in the saddle, the economic metrics can not show now how many more years would it take them to manifest? The truth is that because Buhari’s economic policies were rooted in quicksand, they could not stand the test of time and therefore evaporated in thin air.
The stark reality is that Buhari, who plunged the country into its first recession the first in 26 years as soon as he took power, according to the facts check is economical with the truth because “Nigeria’s inflation rate in 2015 was a single digit of 9.01 per cent. A breakdown of inflation figures year on year showed that the inflation rate at the end of 2015 was 9.01 per cent. In 2016, in the thick of the recession, it skyrocketed to 15.68 per cent. In 2017, it further moved up to 16.52 per cent. It however slowed to 12.09 per cent in 2018 and later 11.40 in 2019.
The check went on to show that inflation again rose to 15.75 per cent in December 2020 which is the highest recorded in the past three years. In 2021, the inflation rate rose for the first time in eight months to 15.63 per cent, the reason attributed to the high yuletide spending. Subsequently, the latest Consumer Price Index report by the National Bureau of Statistics indicated that Nigeria’s inflation rose to 15.7 per cent in February from 15.6 per cent in January.
Continuing its upward swing, the check revealed that contrary to claims by the President Inflation rose to its highest level since 2017, rising from 16.82% recorded in April 2022 to 17.71% in May, according to the recently released Consumer Price Index report, by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
On the debt level, as of 2015 before President Buhari took over power, Nigeria’s debt revenue stood at N8.8 trillion, according to the Debt Management Office.
However, recent statistics from the DMO showed that Nigeria’s debt skyrocketed from N8.8 trillion in 2015 to N41 trillion as at June 2022. This represents an increment of over 500 per cent,
The country’s debt rose from N39.56 trillion in December 2021 to N41.60 trillion in the first three months of 2022 alone.
Fuel prices
In the same vein, checks show that fuel price at the Buhari government’s inception stood at N87 per litre. As of May 2016, it had moved from N145 per litre representing a 66 per cent increase.
In 2020, it was further reviewed upwards to N162 per litre. The same year, the product sold for between N165 per litre and N220 per litre at the fueling stations. This was further compounded by the unavailability of the product with the major oil marketers saying they could not continue selling fuel at N165 per litre.
Exchange rate
In 2015 when President Buhari assumed office, the dollar was exchanging at N198/$ in the parallel market. By 2018, it was N306 to the dollar, and in 2019 it went up to N360 to the dollar and eventually exchanged at N520 in 2021. From 2021 to date, the dollar at the parallel market is exchanging for between N600 to N610 as a result of the recently concluded party primaries where delegates were said to have been bribed with dollars.
Unemployment
Nigeria’s unemployment rate in the last quarter of 2015 stood at 10.4 per cent according to the National Bureau of Statistics. The figure went up to 14.2 per cent at the end of 2016. At the end of 2017, it moved up to 20.42 per cent. It moved up to 23.1 per cent in 2018 and the latest figures from the NBS indicate that the unemployment rate now stands at 33.3 per cent.
Gross Domestic Product
A breakdown of the GDP figures from the National Bureau of Statistics and the World Bank from 2015 to 2020 shows that Nigeria’s GDP in 2015 when President Buhari assumed office stood at $486 billion; it declined to $404 billion when the country slipped into recession. In 2017, GDP figures further declined to $375 billion. However in 2018, as the economy began to recover, the figures improved to $397 billion. In 2019, the figure surged to $448 billion. By 2020, in the heat of the COVID-19 pandemic which affected virtually every sector of the world economy, Nigeria’s GDP figures declined to $432 billion.
The GDP figures were estimated to have risen to $440 billion in 2021, with 3.98% growth of the economy even though official figures by the World Bank are still being expected.
Security
While it could be true that Nigeria’s territory may not be under the control of the insurgents, the ferocity of attacks on soft targets by the insurgents has become very daring with huge civilian casualties. These persistent attacks do not show that the rank of these insurgents is being depleted and there is a reason to believe the President.
This same government that claims to be fighting insurgents has come up with a policy of deradicalizing them and reintegrating them into the military.
A corollary of this is that majority of them turn out to become informants and saboteurs endangering the lives of other patriotic soldiers whom they put in harm’s way. How can this be a solution to ending insurgency and is it not surprising that the insurgents are getting bolder and more daring? If Nigeria is making progress in the fight against the insurgents, why do we still have IDPs and why have the people who fled their ancestral homes not returned yet?
To underscore Buhari’s hypocrisy and hatred for the Igbo, how can he call on the “international partners to take additional steps costing them nothing, by proscribing another group – IPOB – as a terrorist organization. Their leadership enjoys safe haven in the West, broadcasting hate speech into Nigeria from London, spending millions lobbying members of the US Congress, and freely using international financial networks to arm agitators on the ground. This must stop.?
Between Miyetti Allah and IPOB which of the two groups has done more harm under Buhari’s watch than Miyetti Allah? The Miyetti Allah group has constituted itself majorly as a parallel government flouting laws and threatening state governors who have enacted anti-grazing laws. While it is an offence to fund IPOB, the same government had set up a committee to meet with MACBAN and offer them N100 billion to appease the insurgents including the establishment of a radio station which was to make fulbe its official transmission language.
Can the Buhari government claim to be unaware of the activities and utterances of Sheik Gumi who fraternizes with the insurgents, issues ultimatum and calls for the adoption of amnesty for the insurgents as was done for the Niger Delta insurgents for peace to reign? Who provides security and funds Gumi? These insurgents and bandits kidnapping and terrorizing innocent citizens reside on Nigeria’s soil. Is it that the Buhari government does not know where they reside or occupy? why then is it difficult to flush them out? If you tolerate these insurgents simply because they are your tribesmen why hound IPOB and unleash the military on the people of the Southeast under the guise of looking for IPOB?
Buhari claims credit for being the “only one in Nigeria’s history to implement a solution to decades-long herder-farmer conflicts, exacerbated by desertification and demographic growth. The National Livestock Transformation Plan, putting ranching at its core, is the only way to deplete the competition for resources at the core of the clashes. Governors from some individual states have sought to play politics where ranches have been established, but where they have been disputes have dramatically reduced.”
It is not true that competition for resources is at the core of the conflict between herders and farmers. What is at the core are territorial expansion and Islamization. In Kajuru for instance, entire villages have been sacked by the Fulani militia with the assistance of the military and they have taken over swathes of land forcibly. The same deliberate expansionist policies are being deployed in Benue, Ondo, and some states in the Southeast. Yet, the President is saying something else.
You need no soothsayer to tell you that while the President is claiming credit for establishing cattle ranching as a policy, deep down within him, he is subtly pushing the recreation of cattle routes from the north down to the south. This is why, no matter the criminalities of these herders, the President would rather seek tolerance than move against them. Within the Fulani circle, it is held that the Fulani are victims and have been marginalized and need to be compensated.
From the economy, debt profile ballooning into several trillion from just $10 billion in 2015, provision of petroleum products based solely on importation with none of the four refineries rehabilitated in the entire seven years, electricity supply which dropped from 2300MW to 9MW today, exchange rate peaking at N620 to $, and internal or local production less than 20 % to medicare, the President’s score sheet has come short. It is rather too late in the day for him to turn things around. Here is a President who came, saw, and failed woefully.
