One Year of Buhari

President Muhammadu Buhari was sworn into office exactly one year ago, on May 29, 2015 after winning the March 2015 presidential election. His political party, All Progressives Congress [APC] also controls majority of seats in the National Assembly’s two chambers, 23 state governorships and majorities in as many state Houses of Assembly. As Buhari himself […]

President Muhammadu Buhari was sworn into office exactly one year ago, on May 29, 2015 after winning the March 2015 presidential election. His political party, All Progressives Congress [APC] also controls majority of seats in the National Assembly’s two chambers, 23 state governorships and majorities in as many state Houses of Assembly.
As Buhari himself noted many times, expectations had never been higher for an incoming government in this country. The Peoples Democratic Party [PDP] which ruled the country for 16 years squandered all public goodwill and most national resources as well. It had perfected misrule, squander, impunity and election rigging. It lost the 2015 elections only because the Independent National Electoral Commission [INEC] put in place a system of permanent voter’s cards and card reader machines that made it nearly impossible to rig the elections.
Has Buhari lived up to his very high billing and has he met the very high expectations of Nigerians? Yes and no is the mixed bag answer. Beginning with the Yes part, Buhari’s rule has recorded tremendous progress in the Number One problem facing the country last year, which is Boko Haram insurgency. Even though the Jonathan regime managed during the six weeks’ election postponement period to reclaim all the major towns occupied by Boko Haram, the terrorist group was still very potent when Buhari took over, the army was demoralised and poorly equipped, its leadership steeped in corruption and its ranks rife with dissention.
How Buhari was able to turn things around in less than a year is nothing short of miraculous.  Boko Haram is now a shadow of its former self. It has no heavy weapons and little ammo, probably has no central command, is reduced to small bands constantly on the run from one village to another as well equipped, better motivated and well led Army battalions ceaselessly conduct “fighting patrols.” Army and Airforce, together with hunters and Civilian JTF have also invaded Boko Haram’s once redoubtable Sambisa Forest and have even rescued two of the abducted Chibok schoolgirls.
Buhari’s personal reputation for incorruptibility and his total aversion to corrupt deeds has been cemented nationally and internationally with revelations his regime made of the sordid corruption under his predecessors. Never before in the history of Nigeria was so much public funds corruptly, ignobly and consciencelessly shoved from public coffers into private pockets as happened under former President Goodluck Jonathan. That Buhari unearthed such corruption and is relentlessly pursuing the culprits has revived the good image of government in Nigerians’ eyes for the first time in a very long time. The international community too has recognised Buhari as an unusual type of Nigerian leader, the anti-thesis of what was earlier thought to be the typical Nigerian ruler.
Buhari’s solid personal reputation enabled his regime to get away with the most unpopular of all government policies, namely increase in petrol prices. Over the years there was nothing Nigerians hated quite as much as petrol price increase but when the Buhari regime caved in after months of resistance and increased [maybe deregulated] fuel prices, most Nigerians refused to take to the streets in protest despite mobilisation efforts by the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC.
The sordid legacy bequeathed by his predecessors apart, Buhari’s second coming as Nigeria’s leader, as he himself said last Thursday, “fabulously coincided” with the drop in international oil prices to $30 a barrel at one point. This led to the sharpest drop in revenue for all three tiers of government in a long time. Many states were unable to pay workers’ salaries and the Federal Government had to extend to them a bailout package through the Central Bank. With so little foreign exchange available, the naira also nosedived on the parallel market and CBN is struggling to maintain the official forex window and meet importers’ needs. As a combined result, the country is now on the verge of economic recession.
The Buhari administration’s successes on the security, public image and anti-corruption fronts have not been matched on the economic front. In fact, severe problems on the economic front threaten to negate the other achievements. Two days ago the Lagos Chamber of Commerce complained that the Buhari regime lacks a coherent economic policy. Unfortunately, this view is shared by most observers. The government has no high-flying economic management team or high flying economic managers, and it is caught between rival policy outlooks. Delay in passing the federal budget compounded the problems. Going forward, this is the area that Buhari must pay special attention to so that it does not unravel his regime’s gains on other fronts.
Right now, international oil prices have risen to $50 a barrel, but that is because Nigeria’s production has slumped by more than a million barrels a day due to the terrorist activities of a new group called Niger Delta Avengers. The group’s blowing up of oil and gas installations has also affected power supply, and power generation is now the lowest in many years. So far Buhari has responded to the group’s challenge with military force but we urge him to complement that with political measures.
In the next year, the most urgent tasks before the Buhari regime will be to reverse the country’s economic decline, to appreciably improve power supply, to conclude the war against Boko Haram and ensure the return of millions of Internally Displaced Persons [IDPs] to their homes, to end the Niger Delta Avengers’ violent campaign one way or another, to tackle other internal security problems such as kidnapping, and to systematise and institutionalise the anti-corruption campaign. We congratulate the president on the anniversary and wish him more successes ahead.