STILL GROPING IN THE DARK

The Buhari’s administration has not lived up to expectations, contends Onyema Omenuwa

Ordinarily, two years into the life of an administration should not be a convenient stage to assess or pass performance judgment on it. Such an appraisal should wait for when the administration has exhausted its tenure. At two years, preliminary work for some developmental projects started by the administration may just be rounding off and giving way for the projects to go full blast. From this stage, activities are usually accelerated, hence towards the twilight of an administration, the inauguration of projects compares only to a bountiful harvest of crops after a successful farming season.

I am not trying to create an ideal scenario here; rather I am stating the obvious as it obtains in focused and visionary democratic administrations anywhere. Not so in Nigeria anyway, particularly with the present Muhammadu Buhari administration. Past administrations to a large extent, at two years, even in the midst of retrogressive politics that has always held attraction for our political actors, had projects ongoing, just as they had citizen-beneficial policies in place too. An aggregation of all these stood good ground, to ward off the heavy flaks that were never in short supply from opponents. The bottom line essentially is that not a few of such projects and policies of past administrations received positive reviews, as being motivated by altruistic considerations. They did not overtly have any ethnic or religious colouration that would expose them as discriminatory.

For instance, President Goodluck Jonathan’s Almajiri Schools Project in the northern states was hailed as progressive in concept, as it had the ultimate aim of exorcising ignorance from an average Nigerian child from the far north, who from cradle is inclined to swallow every religious dogma hook, line and sinker. Before Jonathan, President Umaru Yar‘Adua was faced with the daunting task of how to placate the Niger Delta populace and ensure that their youths who had taken up arms against the Nigerian State, stopped the unceasing disruption of crude oil exploitation, for sustenance of the economy. Yar‘Adua as president clearly identified with the sore feelings of the Niger Delta people for the devastation and degradation of their environment, hence his proclamation of amnesty for the militants whose activities were otherwise nothing but criminal. And it worked. Till date, that programme is still being hailed as a masterstroke of policy because the amnesty programme started in earnest to address the grievances of the people of the Niger Delta, and in no time violent militant activities considerably died down.

At the risk of sounding monotonous, at two years, these two past administrations and indeed President Olusegun Obasanjo’s, which ushered in the present democratic dispensation in 1999, had midterm results to showcase to the electorate. They came in the form of projects and policies which impacted directly or indirectly on the citizenry. The telecoms revolution in Nigeria, which effectively put a stop to the rich monoplising phone ownership, was birthed, courtesy of an enabling policy of the Obasanjo administration. For sure, these administrations had their shortcomings, and so it wasn’t all praises for them in two years. But the nation was not stagnated and as it is now, hence even their most unrepentant critics would concede that things were moving while the presidents held sway, though they would rather some speed had attended the movements.

The midterm appraisal becomes very important in the life of a democratic administration in Nigeria because of the peculiarity of our politicking. The brand of politicking that sadly subjugates the interest of the citizens under the selfish interest of elective office seekers, whether at federal, state or even local government level. It gets very annoying with selfish incumbents who are interested in reelection. They will be barely two years in office and they have already started politicking for the next election. With this, if such an incumbent did not hit the ground running, his performance canvass would only depict sombre expressions in two years. This normally leaves the electorate hopelessly disappointed because the subsequent two years will, more often than not, be devoted to all manner of intrigues to guarantee reelection. So it does happen that if in two years an administration has not enabled activities that are almost crystalising into tangible achievements, the fulfilment of its electoral promises will turn out a mirage.

That is why the Buhari administration will go down in history as the most calamitous tenure ever witnessed, in democratic governance in Nigeria. Perhaps, the only other period in our national life when the trifurcated scourge of hardship, confusion and stagnation had a vice-grip on the nation as it does now was during Buhari’s, yes the same Buhari, first coming as military dictator in 1983, for about 20 months! So whatever painful experience his administration is unleashing on the populace presently is simply following a pattern, just as his penchant for discrimination.

It sure cannot be forgotten so soon that shortly after his assumption of office on May 29, 2015 as an elected president, Buhari already, by his utterances and actions or what has become irritatingly known as his body language, signposted his administration’s trajectory. He made no bones about it and so any discerning citizen knew what he had in store for different sections of this country. His justification, on July 22, 2015, in faraway United States, of his unmasked inclination to dish out political patronage on the discriminatory basis of percentage of votes he garnered in the election, bore the hallmark of the man Buhari: “… The constituents, for example, that gave me 97 per cent [of the vote] cannot in all honesty be treated on some issues with constituencies that gave me 5 per cent. I think these are political realities.” That was like affixing a seal on his avowed purpose.

Sadly, while the president engrossed himself in vindictive pettiness, at the expense of pragmatic governance, his tenure was fast on its heels. To constitute his cabinet, six months slid by and for those six months of vacuum, the economy floundered as critical sectors remained directionless. It is not as if the country has ever been particularly blessed with leaders who are patriotically wired for revolutionary strides, to launch the country to the proverbial greater heights. But the Buhari-led administration is on autopilot but sadly headed in the reverse direction. Two and a half years gone; there are no projects to inaugurate. No policy of government is of such immense impact that will reinvigorate the economy and stem the tide of inflation and unbridled job losses, caused by the president’s sheer lack of grasp of critical elements that drive a vicissitudinous economy as Nigeria’s. Even the anti-corruption fight, the mantra with which the president prosecuted a successful campaign, has been dealt a bloody nose by the president’s men themselves. They appear to be in a very fierce competition with one another for who will have the upper hand in corrupt conduct or omissions and acts of impunity.

As glaring as all these ignoble happenings are, only the former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Mr. Babachir David Lawal has been sacked by the president. And that was only after a deafening outcry inundated the president from the media, the Senate and civil society groups, against Lawal’s continued stay in office, despite damning evidence of corruption against him. Omenuwa is a lawyer and commentator on national affairs