The Buhari administration: one year after

YESTERDAY, May 29, 2016, was the Muhammadu Buhari administration’s first-year anniversary. It is easy to assess the President’s and his administration’s performance during the past one year because the President’s and his administration’s performance should be measured against the background of the extent to which his/party’s campaign promises were or were not fulfilled. This assessment must be weighed against the socio-economic, political and security rubrics. Under the “social” category, we shall take a look at energy supply (electricity, motor fuel), infrastructural facilities, education, healthcare delivery, etc.; in the realm of the economy, we shall examine the 2016 budget, the naira-dollar exchange rate, the economic policies of the administration. In the area of politics, we shall take a cursory look at the ruling party’s political maturity and readiness to rule, and in the realm of security, we shall assess the administration’s successes or failures against the background of the party’s and President Muhammadu Buhari’s campaign promises in this direction.

To start with, it took President Muhammadu Buhari about six months to put a cabinet in place, and when the Federal Executive Council was constituted, the Ministers turned out to be largely a pack of recycled politicians that will hardly be able to give expression to the CHANGE mantra on the platform of which the APC was brought to power. During the year under review, Fabianism or gradualism, tardiness or deceleration characterized the administration, and Nigerians were advised to exercise their souls in patience, because “speed kills.”

President Buhari and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), made mouth-watering promises during the presidential election that brought him into office that electricity, which oscillated between 2,700 and 4,000 megawatts during the electioneering campaigns, would make a frog jump to over 10,000 megawatts within the shortest possible time if elected into office. Today, all of Nigeria is reduced to a big village in terms of unrelieved blackouts; that, in order not to reduce more Nigerians below the poverty line, there would be no deregulation of petroleum oil; today, one year later, a litre of premium motor spirit (or petrol) sells for N145.00 from N86.50; that decayed or decaying infrastructural facilities, especially roads, would become apian ways: President Buhari angrily noted during the campaigns that “The Naira used to be more powerful than the Dollar; now it is N185.00 to $1. And that’s my country! When elected, I will bring the Naira into parity with the Dollar.” Today, one year later, the Naira exchanges at more than N320.00 with the Dollar in the parallel market and over N200.00 at the official rate, and threatens to go much higher! On the social plane, too, the then presidential candidate and his party, the APC, promised to pay every unemployed graduate a monthly allowance of N5,000.00. That promise has been honoured in the breach. The roads, which, under former President Jonathan, were very bad, are now death traps, indeed.

Nigeria, which used to be the largest economy in Africa and the 26th in the world under the corrupt regime of Goodluck Jonathan, is now in the doldrums. Almost 30 States are unable to pay their workers’ salaries, and the national minimum wage remain N18,000.00. The 2016 budget took about six months to come out of the National Assembly as either the legislators or the executive or both padded it for personal gains, each of the National Assembly and the Executive accusing the other of tampering with the budget, which the President had formally presented to the National Assembly. The N6.08 trillion 2016 budget, the highest in the history of this country, depends for its execution, on up to 40% domestic and external borrowings, and so much to service the resultant loans. Presumably by reason of the problems associated with the implementation of the 2016 budget, a fuel hike of N145.00 per litre of petrol was foisted on the people, unannounced. So far, there are no definite economic policies to stem the tide of the country’s precipitate slide into recession.

ALSO SEE: Factsheet on Buhari’s first year in office

The National Assembly, in the course of the year, was mortally divided, the ruling APC insisting on installing officers of the Legislature on the basis of “party supremacy”, contrary to the provisions of the 1999 Constitution (as amended). The unfortunate upshot is that the Legislature was unable to carry out its constitutional duty of law making and oversight functions during the year.

Within six weeks and just before the Buhari Administration came to power on May 29, 2015, the Boko Haram insurgency was almost over, except for incessant suicide bombings. The APC and its presidential candidate, Muhammadu Buhari, a former military general, solemnly promised, during the electioneering campaigns, to put an end to Boko Haram insurgency and to rescue the 219 kidnapped Chibok girls, within two months of Buhari’s assumption of office. One year on, Nigerians has just celebrated the reappearance of one of the Chibok girls rescued by a vigilante group; the Boko Haram insurgency, in spite of the boasts and spirited assurances by the administration, is anything but over even though the Hon. Minister of Information gave out more than six months ago that the Boko Haram insurgency was “technically over”. More people would seem to have been killed and more property destroyed by the Boko Haram insurgents and by the emboldened Fulani herdsmen during the last year than in previous years of their operations.

During the year under review, the Federal Government waged a selective “war” against corruption. The “war” was more against the administration’s immediate predecessor.

However, much would seem to have been achieved in this area as tonnes of Naira were recovered from the corrupt politicians of the Jonathan’s administration, even though the rule of law and the due process of the law were set at naught in the prosecution of the war to recover the looted funds.

The Buhari administration has to put its best leg foremost to achieve more in the socio-economic, political and security arenas in order not to disappoint the teeming millions that voted for him.