REFLECTIONS!

 The Buhari Years II

The ink on my virtual paper on Buhari’s security scorecard published May 15 had hardly dried up when people who are clearly deranged attacked communities in Plateau State and massacred nearly a hundred people; with government security forces not being able to (more appropriately, not wanting to) respond one way or the other, a trend familiar with that government. Similarly, madness was on display in Anambra State when murderers went after United States embassy officials and killed seven of them, kidnapping two. The two kidnapped victims were swiftly rescued by our security forces due to the embarrassment on the government. Which goes to show that if our security agencies want to get results, they can. Towards the end of the Buhari regime, Nigerians were being massacred daily by non state actors while the man frolicked in the United Kingdom at state expense.

This concluding part of my write up is not about security but economy and corruption. How has the outgone government of Muhammadu Buhari performed in these areas? It is going to be herculean discussing the two areas in an article but I need to do so so I can turn to other pressing matters. Let’s start with the economy.

Economy:

Last month, a friend and a university classmate reminded me of this famous quote:

“We intend for instance, to bring back our National carrier, the Nigerian Airways. We shall do this by bringing all the aircrafts in the presidential fleet into the Nigerian Airways and within a year increase the fleet into about 20. Why should Nigerian President not fly with other Nigerian public? Why do I need to embark on a foreign trip as a president with a huge crowd with public funds? Why do I need to go for foreign medical trip if we cannot make our hospital functional? Why do we need to send our children to school abroad if we cannot develop our university to compete with the foreign ones?” Muhammadu Buhari, speaking to Nigerians in London (Chatham House) on Saturday, February 21, 2015.

These were the words of messiah Buhari who later went ahead to win elections and superintend over the Nigerian state for eight years. The reality of this quote signposts the state of the economy under the Daura General.

I put it to Nigerians that the country splashed one trillion Naira on President Muhammadu Buhari and his immediate family in the course of his eight years presidency. This figure is deliberately provocative and unsubstantiated. However, if anyone wants to refute it, the person should do so with facts. Otherwise, stay off!

Here are some tips to consider: the average number of people who traveled with (or ahead of) the president and the costs of maintaining them abroad. Multiply that by 250 times that the president and his family traveled abroad in eight years; the cost of protecting the president abroad; the costs of maintaining the presidential fleets and the officers who flew them; the costs of the medical treatments of the president; the costs of maintaining Aso Rock in eight years, the costs of maintaining the president and his immediate family in Nigeria; the cumulative costs of his wife staying in Dubai (if it was paid for by the state) just keep adding up and see if it is far from the provocative N1T!

Though statistic does not tell all the stories such as the real people who have been dislodged or propelled by a state’s economic system, it helps tell some of the stories and helps us make inferences.

Here are some economic statistics to consider when reviewing Buhari’s economy: Nigeria’s public debt is technically unknown but said to be somewhere around $150Billion. It was less than $60Billion when Buhari took over. The World Bank, which exists primarily to ensure poor countries do not become rich, says we are spending 96% of our revenue on debt servicing. And the Bank’s sister, the International (read Western) Monetary Fund echoes that it will climb to 100% in three years.

In a piece by BusinessDay, debt servicing outstripped the combined spending on education and health per citizen under Buhari. The country’s debt per citizen jumped by 215% from N68,852 in 2015, when Buhari took over, to N217,136 in 2022, according to data from the Debt Management Office.

In 2015, national debt was said to be about N12.6 Trillion; it ballooned to N21 Trillion in two years. By the end of the Buhari’s first term in 2019, the number had gone up to N27.4 trillion. And N39.56 trillion by 2021; well over three times what he met on ground.

There would not have been a problem with high debt levels if they bettered the lives of Nigerians. They have told us infrastructures have improved. They will easily point to the rail system, but less than 0.1 percent of Nigerians use the rail currently. There is no direct rail connection between the Deep South and the far North. Most people and goods are still being transported by road. And the roads are claiming lives in their thousands; an indication of how the government applied the huge loans. I note that the Second Niger Bridge has been built; and a few major roads reconstructed; and I am not aware any new roads were built.

The airports are still not fully modernized though some work has been done there. Three days (yes, three days) to the end of the administration, its aviation minister borrowed a plane from the Ethiopian Airline, wet-painted it in national colors but forgot to erase the Ethiopian Airline registration number and flew it into Abuja airport and claimed that Nigeria now has a national carrier which Buhari promised eight years earlier! This shameful act could only have happened here.

Nigeria is still largely in darkness, still staggering in a generator economy. After eight solid years, the government could not increase its electricity output by a kilowatt. According to the World Bank, we spent a handsome $7.5 Billion dollars on electricity transmission (transmitting darkness). Many serious businesses have moved on generating their electricity and transferring cost to consumers. Had the government doubled power supply alone, it would have had an enormous multiplier effect on the economy.

The petroleum sector is still the lifeblood of the country’s economy. At the minimum, it is still the oxygen government breaths. This sector’s performance under Buhari was a mixed bag. The high point of the sector’s performance was the signing of the Petroleum Industry Bill into law in August 2021. The Government of Muhammadu Buhari should take full credit for this. If 75 percent of the Act’s provisions are faithfully implemented, it will set Nigeria apart in many ways. The appointment of the first Chief Executive of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission is commendable. Mr. Gbenga Komolafe is steering the upstream sub-sector in the right direction with lots of focused regulations and enforcements. One wishes he is allowed to complete his term.

The second plus is the transmutation of the industry behemoth, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, into a limited liability company and the appointment of its Group CEO, the formally informal Mele Kyari who is leading the company in the right direction, given what used to obtain. His task can be likened to getting the elephant to dance.

And that is where the pluses stop! Just as in the quote above, the president during his electioneering campaign in 2014/2015 promised to revamp our four refineries. Not even one of the four came on stream under him; and Nigeria imported all of its petroleum products for all of the eight years of the government. To my mind, it was also the greatest killer of our currency, the Naira.

Only if this was all! Just as in his monumental failure to secure Nigerians, his government failed to secure our crude oil and pipelines. Crude oil theft as never before seen in the history of Nigeria occurred under his administration. It became so widespread and embarrassing that General Buhari had to swallow his pride and sign a controversial multibillion Naira pipeline protection contract with a former militant his government was looking to arrest.

Yes, COVID-19 happened (and it must be acknowledged that, on the whole, his government managed the outbreak well); yes, for two or so of the eight years, oil prices were down; but the regime mismanaged, if not outrightly damaged, the economy.

The Naira was battered by his regime. The parallel market exchange rate moved from 205 naira to one dollar in 2015 to 750 naira to one dollar now. This had far reaching implications on the value of life of an average citizen. The per capita of a Nigerian is less than $2,000, which is one of the lowest in the world.

The currency swap policy was not only mismanaged but added to the agony of many Nigerians; few people actually died, and many kobo kobo businesses were obliterated thus driving many a household into abject starvation and despondency.

His economic policies, if ever there was one, dried up foreign portfolio and foreign direct investments. The SBG Securities analysis showed that “foreign participation in the Nigerian equity market continued to diminish through 2022, with the level of participation declining to the lowest level since the data was actively tracked. Foreign participation declined to 8.2% in YTD (May 2023), from 16% in 2022. Foreign portfolio holdings in the equity market stood at 6.4% in April 2023 versus eight-year average of 15%.” Foreign transactions on capital market dipped by 75% in eight years.

In 2014, investments coming into Nigeria’s economy from the United Kingdom and the United States were $10.9B and $3.7B respectively. By 2018 they dropped to $6B and $3.5B each. And by last year, they were a miserly $2.7B and $287M respectively.

After all said and done, here are some  of the resultant effects of the economy under the Buhari government: unaccounted number of people who died; 133,000,000 now below poverty level, the highest in the world (even above India with a population seven times Nigeria’s); many millions have become sick and despondent; unemployment is at its highest level at 33% (45% of youths are unemployed); millions are starving and in abject lack; underemployment is very high as graduates keep aside their certificates for minimum wage jobs; hundreds of thousands of professionals have relocated to Europe and North America; according to a recent survey by Philips Consulting, “52% of professionals want to ditch their jobs and head abroad within the next one year”; according to the report, “Nigerian businesses face numerous challenges in the post pandemic world with employee retention and brain drain prevention as the most pressing challenge”. According to the Nursing and Midwifery Council, the number of nurses, midwives and nursing associates from Nigeria to the United Kingdom rose by 46.6% (10,639) in the 12 months to March 2023 from 7,256 in the same period of 2022.

The economy also witnessed low wages and low purchasing power; low productivity; and lower rate of investments in key sectors; irreparable damage to the national currency; very high interest rates; galloping inflation (22.22% as of April 2023); drop in GDP to 2.3% by end of first quarter 2023 from 3:52% in the fourth quarter of last year. Inflation is said to have driven 64million Nigerians into food crisis.

Just at the end of the regime, the president rushed a request to the National Assembly to approve N22.7trillion loan his government took illegally from the Central Bank. This loan had already been borrowed and the huge amount spent on God-knows-what. The revelation of this loan approval request was enough to commence an impeachment investigation against the President. To be sure, the law allows the state to borrow money from the central bank up to 5 percent of previous year’s spend. But the N22.7 Trillion loan was way out of whack. Typical of the Lawan Ahmed-led National Assembly, the malfeasance was not only not investigated but the request was promptly approved.

In its April 28, 2023 editorial titled The Buhari Years: An era of gross economic fiasco, The Punch newspaper wrote “AS he bids farewell to Nigerians on May 29, an overwhelming verdict of gross failure on the economic front pockmarks the two-term tenure of the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.). This era witnessed a relentless upsurge in human misery, rising national debt, two recessions, record unemployment and inflation levels, and receding foreign direct investment. While so much had been expected of him, he delivered eight locust years.

He made bad choices, failed to demonstrate any real grasp of modern economic ideas, and lacked the presence of mind or leadership acumen required to turn the ailing economy around.”

I need not say more!

Corruption:

There is not much to write on how the Buhari Government fought corruption than to say that, in retrospect, the anti corruption campaign was a grand deceit. Corruption appeared to have fought and defeated his government.

Which explains why the government, which rode to power on anticorruption mantra, even worked against the efforts of the anticorruption agencies.

Here are proofs:

– For whatever reasons, the Buhari government granted state pardon to the only two former governors, Joshua Chibi Dariye of Plateau State and Jolly Tavoro Nyame of Taraba State, successfully convicted of corruption in Nigeria. This weakened, if not broke, the backbone of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission in prosecuting similar cases.

– Less than a month to leaving office, the attorney general, Abubakar Malami, took over the trial of one Nicholas Ashinze, a former military aide to former national security adviser Sambo Dasuki and eight others; terminated their N1.84B corruption trial by entering a Nolle prosequi.

– In 2019, Malami stealthily  withdrew the corruption trial of Danjuma Goje, Gombe State Former Governor

– Buhari appointed Godswill Akpabio, former governor of Akwa Ibom State, as his Minister while he still had a corruption case against him.

Tell me, with such records, how could the anti corruption agencies do anything meaningful. Throughout his eight years tenure, the government could not conclusively prosecute any high profile corruption case (apart from the two mentioned). Which explains why EFCC is now more interested in chasing yahoo boys and debt collection!

In the 2022 Transparency International Corruption Perception Index report, Nigeria ranked 150 of the 180 ranked countries scoring 24 points over 100; the same position it was in 2021.

In 2015, the year Buhari took over power, Nigeria ranked 136 out of 167 countries, and scored 26 percent. Which goes to show that Nigeria under Buhari was being perceived as a more corrupt country than under Goodluck Johnathan. Unbelievable!

David Cameron, a former British Prime Minister was caught on camera in 2016 when Buhari was the president as saying that Nigeria was a “fantastically corrupt” country.

Conclusion:

Based on the performances of the Buhari government in the three areas of security, economy and corruption which he asked to be assessed, it would appear as if his government was a mistake.

Postscript:

Three days ago, May 29, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, to the amazement of many and joy of his supporters, was sworn in as the President of Nigeria. There is at least a unanimous agreement that his government will be better than the Buhari’s which many now consider as the worst in the history of the country.

Revisionists will be unable to rewrite the history books of the Muhammadu Buhari government.

Esiere is a former journalist!

©️2023