Buhari has failed Nigerians, HURIWA insists

Civil rights advocacy group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, (HURIWA), on Friday, said outgoing Nigerian President, Muhammadu Buhari scored a woeful F9 in all sectors of governance, from economy, to insecurity, unemployment, education, infrastructure, oil and gas, electricity, and every other sector.

HURIWA, in a statement by its National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko said it is lamentable and extremely embarrassing that Buhari promised Nigerians change in 2015 but has only succeeded in changing the country for the worse, one Nigerians will never forget in a hurry and one that will take decades to recover from.

The group, rolling out a scorecard of Buhari who hands over to the President-elect, Bola Tinubu on May 29 after eight full years in office, said Buhari and the All Progressives Congress (APC) deceived Nigerians into power and only enriched themselves and the few cronies  and bootlickers around them with taxpayers’ funds and the people’s commonwealth and resources.

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Buhari, a former Nigerian military head of state who hailed from the rustic town of Daura in Katsina State, North-West Nigeria had during his campaign in 2015 vowed to combat endemic corruption in the country.

However, under his watch, Nigeria fell from 154 out of 180 countries and territories in the latest ranking of the 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index released by Transparency International in January 2023.

Also, according to the data by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Nigeria’s inflation rate in May 2015 when Buhari took over leadership was 9.0%. But Nigeria’s inflation rate jumped to a 17-year high of 22.04% in April 2023, according to the Consumer Price Index (CPI) report released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

Naira to dollar in May 2015 was less than N200 but today it has gone as high as N800 at the parallel market.

The unemployment rate was about 8 percent when Buhari became the president in June 2015. It surged to over 33 percent, according to the latest data from the NBS.

Thousands of businesses crumbled due to his thoughtless border closure, forex policy and generally harsh economic decisions.

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In addition, it was under his watch that Nigeria became the poverty capital of the world. Over 130 million Nigerians are multidimensional poor under Buhari.

Nigeria’s per capita GDP has reduced. From $2,687.5 in 2015, it fell to $2,097.1 in 2020, according to the World Bank.

Under Buhari, a litre of petrol moved over N100 higher than what he met in 2015. Under Buhari, none of the four Nigerian refineries worked yet billions of dollars splurged on salaries of refinery staff and routine maintenance when not one drop of petrol or diesel was produced. Under Buhari, electricity tariff went off the roof yet epileptic power supply was his gift to the nation, forcing many businesses to fold up as they can’t cope with the high prices of diesel to run their generating sets.

About 100,000 Nigerians were killed by herdsmen, bandits, terrorists and unknown gunmen under Buhari. The statistics of those kidnapped is another alarming spectacle.

For the records, posterity will not be kind to Muhammadu Buhari’s presidential tenures of eight years. His regime is a catastrophic example that the incoming administration should deviate from totally. He is a bad example to follow in governance.