President Buhari refused to mark his first 100 days in office. Few presidents would pass up the opportunity to use this universally recognised occasion to engage with their people. But Buhari’s senior special assistant on media and publicity, Garba Shehu, said celebrating such events was “fraudulent” and that the president “will not engage in deceit” by marking it. This was a missed opportunity for Buhari to personally explain to Nigerians what he had been up to in the four months since he assumed office. It’s called accountability!
But, in the end, that didn’t matter! The Nigerian public and commentariat were bound to make their own “first 100 days” assessments of the president’s performance. And they did with gusto! Over the past two weeks, the newspapers have been awash with analyses and commentaries on Buhari’s scorecard. Of course, self-interest shapes people’s opinion, as Jason Weeden and Robert Kurzban argued in their recent book ‘The Hidden Agenda of the Political Mind’. So, it wasn’t surprising that only a few of the commentaries were the result of disinterested analysis. Within the bounds of my own biases, let me give my perspective on Buhari’s first 100 days.
There are many areas on which one could assess President Buhari’s performance so far. But I will consider only four: Boko Haram, corruption, early appointments and the economy. Overall, my view is that Buhari has started well in the areas of his traditional strengths, such as security and anti-corruption, but less well in the area of his historical weakness: the economy. Using an academic grading approach, I would award President Buhari a First on his handling of Boko Haram; an Upper Second Class (2:1) each on his anti-corruption war and early appointments; and a Third on the economy. Let me explain these assessments, starting with Boko Haram.
In July, a TIME magazine journalist emailed me, at the instance of the magazine’s Africa bureau chief, to ask for an interview. She wanted to hear my “insight” on, as she put it, “what’s next for Nigeria’s fight against Boko Haram, following Buhari’s firing of his senior military commanders”. Unfortunately, due to some urgent commitment on my part and her tight deadline, we were unable to talk. But, and this is my point, had we talked, I would have told her that I was confident the Boko Haram insurgency would be defeated under Buhari’s presidency, and that the president was currently doing virtually everything right to achieve that goal.
Everyone seems to agree that the new service chiefs are first-class officers, with the right attitude and competence to prosecute the war against the insurgents. The military itself is undergoing a transformation, with growing investments in equipment and in the welfare of the soldiers, which is boosting their morale. And the president has been working tirelessly to build a strong regional alliance against Boko Haram. He is also reaching out to the wider international community for help. These diplomatic efforts are bound to result in concerted international support for Nigeria’s military campaign against the insurgents. Of course, there is still a long way to success, which must include the safe release of the Chibok girls. But I think the president should be commended for his efforts and leadership, so far.
What about the fight against corruption? Well, I believe that the “new Sheriff in town” factor is having an impact. The climate in the country seems to be less conducive for corrupt practices than it was just a few months ago under President Jonathan, who, as history would now record, infamously said “stealing is not corruption”! However, Buhari’s personality and toughness alone cannot end corruption in this country. As the president himself said in his Washington Post article, corruption thrives in Nigeria largely because of the lack of a good governance framework, and he promised to create “new rules of conduct and good governance”. The truth is that tackling corruption requires, among others, strong institutions and strong, incorruptible leaders. The president has started well, but he needs to build strong institutions and mobilise Nigerians against the scourge!
That brings me to President Buhari’s early appointments. To be sure, the president’s early appointments have been dogged by fierce controversies. The analysis of Buhari’s appointments to date shows that 75% are from the North (with about 43% of this from his North-west geo-political zone), while 25% are from the South. Now, let it be said that hardly anyone has questioned the suitability of most of the appointees. In fact, some of the appointments, such as that of Emmanuel Kachikwu as group managing director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), have been widely praised. Furthermore, it is widely accepted that there are several other appointments that President Buhari has not made. So, given these two factors, one could argue that the controversies about ethnic imbalance are nothing but a storm in a teacup.
Yet, I think it is right to question the seeming “Northernisation” of the president’s inner circle. The truth is that the secretary to the federal government, the president’s chief of staff and some personal aides are more powerful than most ministers in terms of access to the president and those who have his ear. The fact that virtually all these appointees are from the North must raise legitimate concerns about who the president would be listening to and, more broadly, about the nature of the Nigerian nationhood.
In a recent interview, the president justified the lop-sidedness of the appointments on two grounds. First, he said he appointed people who had been with him through “trying times”, adding: “what then is the reward of such dedication and suffering?” Secondly, Buhari said he appointed those he could trust to do the job. Few would question the president’s logic. In fact, these are desirable leadership qualities. Any leader who cannot reward loyalty as well as recognise and promote competence is not a good leader.
But here is the problem. Buhari said the appointments are for “people who will work closely with me”, so trust, loyalty and competence are critical. Absolutely! But that raises a key question: Why is it that, over the course of the president’s long political career, only fellow Northerners are trustworthy, loyal and competent enough to join his inner circle? This is important because it hits at the heart of Nigeria’s nationhood, and any leader who genuinely cares about creating a one-nation government would be sensitive to such concerns.
For instance, the British Prime Minister David Cameron was accused early in his first term of populating his inner circle with his old friends from Eton and Oxford, and of not giving prominent positions to women in his cabinet. A one-nation politician, Cameron was deeply touched by these criticisms. And so towards the end of his first term and particularly at the beginning of his second, he corrected the anomalies: women were given prominent cabinet positions, and his inner circle was diversified. There is a lesson there for President Buhari. He should ensure that no section of Nigeria is marginalised by his government. So far, despite the president’s sound judgement in appointing competent people, his seeming insensitivity to ethnic and gender imbalance is problematic.
Finally: Buhari’s handling of the economy. Well, my view is that, unlike fighting corruption and insecurity, where the president is really strong, managing an economy is not one of his main strengths. And, lest we forget, Nigerians elected Buhari for his track record as a military head of state in handling corruption and national security issues, and not for his past economic record, which was hardly discussed during the election! Now, I also believe that, since becoming president on May 29, Buhari has played well to his strengths on anti-graft and national security issues, as I argued above. But, in my view, he has demonstrated early weaknesses in his economic management, which is still largely based on his economic worldview when he was a military leader. In other words, broadly speaking, Buharinomics, Buhari’s economic philosophy, is today as it was about 32 years ago. To understand this, let’s examine Buharinomics – as practised between 1983 and 1985 – and then compare it with how the president is practising it today.
First, let’s look at the good side of Buharinomics. A key element of Buhari’s economic policy as military head of state was the prudent management of public finances, through blocking waste and leakages, pay freeze and other cost recovery measures. In their paper, titled “Nigeria: Economic and Political Reforms at Cross purposes”, published in a World Bank publication, ‘Voting for Reform’, in 1994, Jeffrey Herbst and Adebayo Olukoshi said that “Indeed, the Buhari regime was the first Nigerian government since the late 1960s to implement real cuts in government spending and change the trajectory of overall expenditures”. That was a well-deserved endorsement of a central plank of Buharinomics: prudent management of public finances.
But there was also the bad side of Buharinomics. As Herbst and Olukoshi also put it in the same paper, “But the Buhari regime rejected fundamental structural and institutional changes that could allow Nigeria to adjust to the changing oil market.” In particular, the regime rejected the devaluation of the naira, frowned on privatisation, opposed the removal of the petroleum subsidy and rejected trade liberalisation but, instead, adopted strong trade restrictions. In other words, the Buhari regime refused to adopt pro-market reforms. Inevitably, it lost credibility with the international financial system, with foreign investors and the multilateral institutions refusing to do business with Nigeria. Now, what does Buharinomics look like today?
During the general election, Buhari’s campaign organisation issued a press statement, saying that his government would run market-based economy. The statement, signed by Garba Shehu, the organisation’s media director, reads: “Make no mistake about it, the Buhari/Osinbajo government will run a market-based economy”, adding that: “General Muhammadu Buhari recognises and appreciates that the world has changed with market economy being the norm in an increasingly competitive global village”. Yet, few students of economics would regard President Buhari’s economic policy, as practised since he assumed office, as market-based, within the context of the term’s proper meaning.
First, trade restrictions became a policy tool, with the Central Bank’s refusal to grant foreign exchange for the import of 41 goods. Secondly, President Buhari said during his recent visit to France that there will be “no further devaluation of the naira”, effectively saying that government, and not the market, will determine the value of the naira. Thirdly, Buhari has expressed his strong opposition to the withdrawal of the petroleum subsidy. Fourthly, Buhari’s attitude to privatisation is unclear, but the government has been showing nationalistic tendencies by ordering, for instance, that there should be a national airline even when this may not result in an efficient allocation of resources. Furthermore, industrial policy is now driven by government interventions to achieve “self-sufficiency” even when such interventions are not economically viable from a market efficiency point of view.
Inevitably, tensions are emerging between Nigeria and the international financial community. The Economist magazine criticised the CBN’s foreign exchange ban. The Financial Times describes Nigeria’s approach to economic management as “unorthodox”, and JP Morgan recently removed Nigeria from its emerging market bond index. All of these, of course, raise concerns about déjà vu. Are we seeing Buharinomics mark 2, with all its attendant consequences?
For me, President Buhari is doing well in his fight against corruption and the Boko Haram insurgency. The cost-cutting side of Buharinomics is also commendable. But, let’s be clear, the interventionist side of his economic policy will enrage the markets. I believe it’s important to understand market behaviour. For instance, if the dominant view among market operators is that the naira is overvalued, simply saying that “there will be no further devaluation” would not cut the mustard. And restricting access to foreign exchange in order to stabilise the naira would not be a market-based solution. Furthermore, the Central Bank picking a fight with the international financial community through less subtle press statements is also not helpful. Nigeria needs greater acceptance by the international financial community, not less!
Certainly, there must also be a strong and coherent economic team that understands the market. If the market believes the president is weak on the economy and also has a weak economic team, well, that would be damaging to Nigeria’s credibility with the international financial community. President Buhari needs to consider this as he forms his cabinet!
Olu Fasan
