Although several supporters of President Muhammadu Buhari during the 2015 general elections have renounced him ahead of 2019 due largely to what they described as his “incompetent and inept leadership”, the clamour for his second coming seems quite high among mainly his diehard fans and members of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) who are not sure of electoral victory without Buhari’s picture on the ballot papers.
Declaring his intention to seek re-election in 2019, Buhari claimed it was in response to the call from people asking him to declare.
The reality on the ground, however, shows the contrary. The reactions of many Nigerians, both online and offline, show a high level of disappointment with Buhari, just as the tone of discussions and debates on the electronic media is miles apart from the president’s claim.
“President Buhari has a fundamental right to seek re-election, as far as I am concerned. But unfortunately, the president is talking re-election based on the sentiments being whipped up by his supporters, not on his achievements. This is the same Buhari who told us that he will only govern for one term, fix Nigeria’s problems and then leave office,” Dotun Hassan, president, Yoruba Youth Council Worldwide (YYCW), said in an interview with BDSUNDAY.
“When he became president in 2015, he told Nigerians in South Africa that age is not on his side. He has not done what he promised but aggravated the problems he met on ground. Under Buhari, $1 was N520,” he said.
As the political clock ticks towards 2019 and more drama unfolds, what is clear already is that despite the sentimental clamour for Buhari’s re-election, his name as a brand is no longer as it was in 2015. But what is not so clear is how opposition parties in the country will leverage on the incumbent’s identified loopholes to score vital campaign goals against him, like he too did against his predecessor in 2015.
Buhari’s three cardinal promises
During the electioneering campaign that brought them to power in 2015, Buhari and his party had promised, among others, to end Boko Haram insurgency in three months, pay N5,000 monthly to 25 million poorest and most vulnerable citizens through a Social Welfare Programme, give one free meal (to include fruits) daily to public primary school pupils, build an airport in Ekiti State, and revive Ajaokuta Steel Company in Kogi State.
Barely one year into the life of the Buhari government, however, some Nigerians reviewed the administration’s promises vis-à-vis the reality on ground and concluded that the journey was more of promises not kept, leading to the labelling of the ruling APC as All Promises Cancelled.
The economy
Despite Buhari’s juicy promises to revitalise the economy, several lower and middle-class Nigerians are today still bitter about their worsened economic situation occasioned by a debilitating recession that hit the country in 2016.
As the Buhari administration battled to lay the blame of Nigeria’s economic woes on the Goodluck Jonathan government, Charles Soludo, a former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), sometime last year rebuked Buhari for worsening the economy since 2015.
“Nigeria is not just in recession but in a massive economic compression; it will be a miracle for the present APC administration to return this country to the dollar size it met on May 29, 2015, if it stays for eight years, that is, till 2023.
“It is business as usual; propaganda, lies, double-speak. Current government is fighting corruption, insecurity, but we say to them, enough of the blame game. They inherited a bad situation but they have made it several times worse,” Soludo said.
While the government has since announced the country exit from recession, many market women are still waiting to experience the reality of it all.
“There is nothing like Nigeria has left recession because things are still too costly. If there is another word more than recession, I think we should call where we are that and stop talking about being out of recession,” said a mother of five children who is a trader in Ajah axis of Lagos.
Jimoh Razaq, 55-year-old father of four, who was in the market to buy foodstuff, said the Nigerian masses are suffering now more than ever in the history of the country, adding that he went to bed the previous day with an empty stomach.
“No rice of N50 again, everything has gone up, from N100 and N200 and above. The government is only saying that Nigeria is out of recession for formality, but in reality people are hungry and some are dying out of hunger.
“Go to Agege now, many people cook soup without even crayfish inside the soup. Things are very bad under this government like no other. The government can tell the rich that there is no recession because it may not be really getting to them like it is getting to us. But the government cannot tell the poor of this country that there is no recession,” he told BDSUNDAY.
War on corruption
Several of Buhari’s supporters who had expressed belief in him to rid Nigeria of corruption are now either campaigning or contesting against him ahead of 2019 poll.
Fela Durotoye, a leading human capacity developer, and Omoyele Sowore, publisher of Sahara Reporters, an online news medium, are examples of such previous supporters who are now desperately plotting Buhari’s exit from office.
Sowore has particularly vowed to use his media influence which contributed to Buhari’s success during the 2015 presidential election to send the president packing from Aso Rock come 2019, saying that the current occupier’s incompetence and selective anti-graft war were no longer acceptable.
In a recent radio interview where he was co-guest with Adebayo Shittu, minister of communication, Sowore demanded for answers why the names of Musiliu Obanikoro, a former chieftain of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) who defected to the APC after his travail with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), and Tukur Buratai, chief of army staff, were missing from the looters’ list released by Lai Mohammed, information minister, on behalf of the Federal Government.
“We published the evidence of how Buratai bought two houses in Dubai worth N120 million; we published evidence on how Obanikoro carried N5 million to Ekiti State to rig the governorship election in favour of PDP, and yet, these names are not on the APC’s looters’ list; even those who are in court for corruption cases are not on the list, as far as they are members of APC,” Sowore said.
“This is not fight against corruption but fight against opposition. This is not the government we supported. We will ensure that this government does not come back in 2019,” he boasted.
Although it attracted less media attention, the February 2018 reinstatement of the hitherto suspended Usman Yusuf, executive secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), for official misconduct was a political jab on the jaws of defenders of the Buhari government.
Yusuf was suspended by Isaac Adewole, minister of health, in July 2017 following allegations of gross misconduct. A panel commissioned by the minister subsequently found Yusuf culpable of infractions that ranged from nepotism to theft of public funds.
But the Buhari government that lays claim to fighting corruption violated the civil service rules, which empower the minister to take disciplinary action against erring officials under his ministry, to reinstate the NHIS chief without due consideration to the ministerial panel which indicted him.
Yusuf’s suspension came weeks after the Senate launched investigations into his activities as the NHIS chief. The Senate had accused Yusuf of “corrupt expenditure of N292 million” which he allegedly spent on healthcare training “without recourse to any appropriate approving authority”.
The Babachir Lawal N200 million grass-cutting scandal, the Ibe Kachikwu/Maikanti Baru saga, and the reinstatement and promotion of Abdulrasheed Maina, former chairman of the Presidential Pension Task Team who is wanted by the EFCC and foreign security agents for alleged graft are among the several cases that portray the current corruption war as being selective.
Just in late February, Transparency International’s (TI) latest corruption perception index (CPI) concluded that corruption was getting worse in Nigeria, with data showing that Nigeria which scored 27/100 and was ranked 136th in 2016, now scores 28/100 but is ranked 148th out of 180 countries surveyed, a significant 12 places below where it was the year before.
Security
While it could be argued in Buhari’s favour that his government has largely reduced the capacity of the dreaded Boko Haram, claiming that the insurgents have been “technically defeated”, the terrorists are still on rampage, only recently abducting and later returning over 100 schools girls in Dapchi, Yobe State, unchallenged, while the police and army traded blames.
A recent report by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says the Boko Haram group has abducted more than 1,000 children in the northeast since 2013.
Meanwhile, other criminal activities, especially the menace of killer herdsmen, have largely gone unchecked under Buhari’s stewardship, leading to thousands of needless deaths.
“The Nigerian authorities’ response to communal violence is totally inadequate, too slow and ineffective, and in some cases unlawful. Clashes between herdsmen and farmers in Adamawa, Benue, Taraba, Ondo and Kaduna have resulted in 168 deaths in January 2018 alone,” Osai Ojigho, Amnesty International country director, said earlier this year.
“Hundreds of people lost their lives last year, and the government is still not doing enough to protect communities from these violent clashes. Worse, the killers are getting away with murder. In 2017, 549 deaths were recorded across 14 states, while thousands were displaced,” Ojigho said.
According to him, the FG’s frequent deployment of soldiers has resulted in many cases of excessive use of force, unlawful killings and extrajudicial executions throughout the country.
“The Nigerian military is currently performing security operations in 30 out of Nigeria’s 36 states and the federal capital territory, often taking over routine policing duties.
“The government’s reliance on the military for help in handling what should be public order situations has also seriously undermined the role of the Nigerian police,” he said.
NATHANIEL AKHIGBE
