Obasanjo’s persistent, unenviable legacies

Twice in the life of his administration, former President Obasanjo promised to raise electric power generation to 10,000 megawatts by the end of 2007. But because of the insincerity, incompetence, corruption and greed the characterized the former Obasanjo administration, Nigeria didn’t even achieve 5000 megawatts up to the point Obasanjo completed his 8-year-tenure on 29th […]

Twice in the life of his administration, former President Obasanjo promised to raise electric power generation to 10,000 megawatts by the end of 2007. But because of the insincerity, incompetence, corruption and greed the characterized the former Obasanjo administration, Nigeria didn’t even achieve 5000 megawatts up to the point Obasanjo completed his 8-year-tenure on 29th May 2007. While he presided over the affairs of Nigeria, the collapse and deterioration of national infrastructure got rapidly worse under his self-righteous but obviously incompetent administration.

We should feel sorry for the Yar’adua administration, which had thought naively that it would salvage something out of Obasanjo’s epic failures. Officially, about five billion dollars was purportedly committed to improve electric power generation in Nigeria by the former Obasanjo administration. However, at the end of the day, Nigerians had to eat the bitter fruits of disappointment, thereby making the so-called dividend of democracy a mere hot air!

President Yar’adua promised to raise power generation to 6000 megawatts by December and, as the deadline got unmercifully closer, the officials of the administration are now admitting openly that the deadline is no longer realistic. To many Nigerians however, this grudging admission didn’t come as a surprise because the Yar’adua administration took over on a very weak foundation left behind by former President Obasanjo.

While former President Obasanjo was too busy destroying the positive legacy left behind by the late General Sani Abacha administration, such as the Petroleum Trust Fund, his own alternative policies turned out to be disastrous failures. Even the blind could perceive how the PTF transformed the conditions of roads, schools, hospitals, water supply systems and other aspects of national infrastructure.

In July 1995, when the PTF was established, Nigerians had for the first time seen the direct evidence of the benefits of petroleum subsidy withdrawal proceeds. The former Obasanjo administration had a notorious record for introducing the most frequent fuel price hikes under the guise of providing better social services through subsidy withdrawal.

In terms of rising oil revenues, the late General Abacha was not as lucky as the former Obasanjo administration. While the Obasanjo administration earned over 63 billion dollars in foreign reserve and secured 18 billion dollars debt relief, the Abacha regime had no more than 10 billion dollars in foreign reserve. Yet despite this comparatively smaller revenue figure, the Abacha administration was able to achieve better results in terms of direct benefits to Nigerians from government policies.

The excuse by the Obasanjo regime for desperately wanting deft relief was that almost 50 percent of annual national budget was going to debt serving, thereby making it impossible to adequately provide social services. Consequently, the Paris and London club of creditors sympathetically granted Nigeria an 18-billion dollar debt relief, which was celebrated with so much hype by the former Obasanjo administration.

However, even the Western creditor nations were eventually disappointed by the gross incompetence and the inability of the Obasanjo administration to justify the 18 billion dollars debt relief. Million of Nigerians are, therefore, left with nostalgic memories of the late General Sani Abacha administration, which had demonstrated that what matters was not the level of resources available but the level of competence, commitment and sincerity of those in government. In fact, General Abacha had proved that the substance government is more important than its form. Therefore, the failure of a democratic government, which was elected, is more intolerable than a government you didn’t elect. Yet ironically, though not elected, the late Gen. Abacha administration has become the gauge to judge the performance of the former Obasanjo administration. Passage of time is on the positive side of General Abacha who today has become a reference point of how a government can prove its relevance and desirability in the lives of the citizens.

Donatus Bakut wrote in from Block 29, Anguwar Dosa, Kaduna