A YEAR AFTER
Let me start by saying that I supported APC and Buhari in the 2015 election. And even if the election was to be held today, I will still support APC and Buhari though not as enthusiastically as I did a year ago. In the run up to the 2015 election, I identified 4 broad groups in the polity. The first group were people who genuinely believed in Jonathan despite his shortcomings. The second group were the people who didn’t necessarily believe in Jonathan but regarded him and PDP as the lesser of the two evils. The third group were people who didn’t necessarily believe in Buhari but wanted a change and were tired of Jonathan and PDP. The last but not the least is the group of people who believe in Buhari and his anti-corruption message. The second and third groups formed the majority of opinions during the build up to the election. I would say I belonged to the third group.
I didn’t support either Jonathan or Buhari in 2011. Why? For Jonathan, I believed that the rotation principle should have been respected and Jonathan had not shown any seriousness in governance in the period when he completed Yar’Adua’s tenure. For Buhari, he had nothing to offer apart from anti-corruption mantra which is good but not great. An incompetent but honest worker is just as worse as a component but dishonest worker.
Fast-forward 2015, Jonathan didn’t disappoint me but I had reconsidered Buhari. Again you ask why. This time he was running on the platform of three parties — CPC, ACN and ANPP. Now I thought that he can combine his anti-corruption stance with the supposed intellectualism in ACN. This I believe offered a more viable candidacy for leadership.
I won’t say Jonathan was a complete failure but he was incompetent and clueless (ineffectual buffoon according to the Economist). The corruption was mind-boggling while Boko Haram and the Fulani herdsmen (more on the herdsmen later) were major security failures. Yes the economy boomed but it was driven by record-high crude oil prices which in my opinion, is not a measure of economic prowess but a case of extreme luck. But yet like the seven years of plenty and seven years of famine in the Bible, we failed to save then and we are now suffering for it. We also failed to diversify. But in all honesty, Jonathan performed in the areas of agriculture and rail infrastructure.
We all know that Buhari won the election. But a year after, have the hopes and aspirations of the 15 million Nigerians who voted for him been met and have the fears of the 12 million Nigerians who voted against him been dispelled? The very honest answer is NO. I will address why I said no by considering four key areas that we can use to judge his government. The key areas are security, anti-corruption, economy, and nation building.
SECURITY
Buhari campaigned on the platform of putting an end to Boko Haram. While Boko Haram no longer holds territory and the people of Borno were able to celebrate a peaceful Eid-al-Fitri last week for the first time in years, they are still a threat through suicide bombings. Of course this new phase of suicide bombings cannot be easily countered by just conventional forces as better intelligence and engagement of local populace are needed (The United States’ surge strategy in Iraq). However the Boko Haram have been replaced with another group that is just as deadly — The Fulani Herdsmen.
The Global Terrorism Index in 2015 rated the Fulani militants as fourth deadliest group in the world. In 2014, 847 deaths were attributed to Fulani militants. While the problem pre-dated the current administration (the Jonathan administration simply ignore it), yet Buhari’s government’s response is like that of an ostrich that has buried its head in the sand to hide.
Just over the weekend, 81 people were alleged to have been killed in Benue, yet no official comment from the government. The government was more interested in responding to claims that Buhari wore a pair of Gucci shoes. This is a government that finds it easier to commiserate with foreign countries that experienced terrorist attacks than its own people who are dying in their numbers. This was demonstrated by a government statement on the fighting in South Sudan but none on the killings in Niger and Benue states.
Government’s response to the Fulani herdsmen have at best been out rightly ridiculous if not idiotic. Grazing reserves for private cattle rearing enterprises? Or militants being from Libya?
The Minister of Interior, Gen. Abdulrahman Dambazau said on the 6th of June and I quote “This is a non-military issue that borders on law and order. It is not every security issue that you call in the military. It is the responsibility of the police to maintain peace. I believe that if we put the police in proper position in terms of discharging its functions, then there would be no need for military option. The police are equal to the task. If you have to deploy the army, then you are going above board. In any case, I do not even have the power to deploy the military for anything. It is only when the situation gets out of hand that you invite the military.”
Yet the same government was quick to deploy soldiers against the Niger Delta Militants, the IPOB protesters and to be forgotten, the massacre of the Shiite Muslims in Zaria. Such actions and statements only reinforces the perception that the government is more interested in protecting the herdsmen than other Nigerians.
ANTI-CORRUPTION
This is the only area where the government has achieved some progress. Mind-boggling revelations about corrupt deeds through the investigative activities of EFCC have shown how much corruption has eaten deep into the fabric of one of the most religious countries in the world. EFCC is now back alive after the ineptitude during Jonathan’s tenure (though we have had more of media trials than actual court trials). The implementation of the TSA has gone a long way in blocking the various pipelines through which money were being siphoned. The arms deal has revealed how morally bankrupt we are as a country (for some people to be willing to send young souls to die without necessary arms and ammunitions while the money allocated for these are shared like sharing a lunch is callous).
Yet there are two fundamental flaws in the administration’s approach to the anti-corruption fight. The first approach is the body language approach. Everyone knows that EFCC is working now because there is a president who hates corruption. What happens when he leaves and a corrupt man becomes president? We will be back to square one. Which is why, I am worried that as EFCC is fighting corruption, nobody is looking at institution building that will sustain the anti-corruption fight when by 2019 this government leaves. Who is looking at our laws and statues to correct the loopholes in our legal frameworks? How do we prevent ridiculous rulings like the Police Pension Fund Fraud where the accused got a two years sentence with an option to pay a 750,000 naira fine instead?
The second flaw is the perceived bias in the corruption fight. Yes, as the last government was led by PDP, most of those investigated so far will be members. Yet, it is impossible to say there is no APC member without corruption cases considering a substantial number of APC members were former PDP members. From the celebrated case of Amaechi to the recent revelations about the COAS — General Burutai. Yet not a single APC member can be said to have a substantial corruption case in court. If you want to make anticorruption the central theme of your government, then make it holistic and not selective.
ECONOMY
I can write a long essay on this but the bottom-line will still be that this government has failed miserably in the management of the economy. The statistics are damning while the lay man without any economic understanding knows that the economy is tanking at a fast rate.
Inflation rate has been climbing steadily. As at May 2016, the inflation rate was 15.6% compared to 9.6% in January 2016. The GDP grew by -0.36% in Q1 of 2016 compared to a growth of 2.11% in Q4 of 2015. Unemployment rate increased from 6.4% in January 2015 to 12.1% in January 2016.
While it is understandable that the economy has been hit hard by the fall in crude oil price and militant activities in Niger Delta coupled with the lack of political will in the last administration to save, I find it appalling that a year after, we still don’t know what exactly is the fiscal and monetary policies to grow the economy (which is not surprising when you realize the cabinet is divided — Kachikwu vs Amaechi). All we have heard is how the previous administration left an empty treasure and mismanaged the economy. Blaming another government a year after, is ridiculous and shows a lack of preparation and readiness to tackle issues.
Six months were wasted putting together an economic team (ministers). The special adviser on economic affairs was only appointed in February 2016. Eight months after the administration came to power. Four months were wasted over the passing of a budget that we are now being informed might not be implemented in full.
My perception of the current Finance minister is that of a student in the exam hall who doesn’t know the answers to the questions. So the student sits put till when the examiner says “Pencils Up”. I might still be proved wrong but for someone who as the Commissioner of Finance in Ogun state presided over a situation where the state required 1.97 billion naira to cover the shortfall between income and expenditure monthly. While Ogun State revenues increased from N60.75bn in 2011 to N67.12bn in 2014, the state domestic debts increased from N30.14bn to N70.19bn within the same corresponding period leading to the state needing bailout.
It is not enough to be mouthing diversification or asking people to just go back to agriculture without providing economic incentives and necessary infrastructure. Even if people go back to agriculture, what we will have is subsistence farming and everyone knows that it can’t grow the economy.
For a country ranked as 169 out of 189 countries in the ease of doing business (imagine we are competing with Yemen and Mauritania), what are we doing about the bureaucracy of starting business? (It costs $4000 over three years to register a drone while it costs $5 in USA) What are we doing about access to credit and soft loans? What are we doing about Foreign Direct Investments? Of course, these issues have pre-existed this administration and won’t be resolved in four years. But like a man building a house, talking about the house is different from laying the blocks for the foundation.
Two positives in the economy which in my opinion are coming a bit late is the removal of fuel subsidy (or as the Vice President called it, increase in price) and the deregulation of the exchange rate. The argument over the fuel subsidy argument has been over flogged so I won’t go into it (though a simple understanding of demand and supply would have helped considering that fuel demand has gone down by 30% since the price increment). But the most painful was the time wasted over the devaluation or not of the naira. It only reinforced the lack of clear monetary policy on the part of the central bank and an erosion into the independence of the CBN by the President through statements that ruled out devaluation (the President still doesn’t believe in the devaluation after the new float of the naira).
Every student of international economics knows about the Impossible Trinity (or the Trilemma) which states that it is impossible to have all three of the following at the same time:
1. A fixed foreign exchange rate
2. Free capital movement (absence of capital controls)
3. An independent monetary policy
Yet we had a CBN that spent months violating this principle resulting in an ever growing inflation rate and a ridiculous difference in official and parallel market value of the naira. Finally the CBN has introduced a floating mechanism for the naira but it remains to be seen how this will work out.
In the power sector, it is important to recognise the effect that the attacks on gas pipelines have had on power supply. But I am yet to see a concrete plan for the increase in power generation and more efficient power distribution and transmission. It is not enough to promise 10,000MW. What are the steps to be taken or being taking to achieve this?
NATION BUILDING
The Vice President was quoted recently as faulting the various calls for the restructuring of the country. This statement is came a few days after the President was quoted as saying that the unity of the country is non-negotiable.
Two very wrong statements. I was disappointed in the Vice President’s statement because he came from the ACN caucus which trumpeted the restructuring of the country before APC won the last election. The president’s statement is also unfortunate considering that his government has not made nation-building a priority.
Is it the wrong “97% vs 5%” statement or a heavy lopsided federal appointments which saw Buhari appoint only 6 southerners out of 30 appointments before August 30, 2015? This government has done far more in reinforcing the perception of bias than dispelling it leaving level of division in the nation close to that preceding the Civil War. Buhari is yet to visit any state in the South East yet he travelled to twelve countries in the first eight months of this administration (in contrast he visited only 4 states within the same timeframe).
The argument of appointing only the merited and trusted is flawed and portends a dangerous path for the country in the future as successive governments would only appoint people from the region of the president. These lopsided appointments have only served as ammunitions in the arsenal of the Biafran agitators and Niger Delta militants.
The government has failed to engage Nigerians across tribal and religious affiliations. Instead what is heard is the non-negotiability of the Nigeria’s unity. I personally believe that Nigeria’s unity is negotiable from a political viewpoint but not from an economic viewpoint. A market of 180 million is hard to negotiate away.
This administration still has three years to effect the change it promised but not at the current pace.