Let’s Match Buhari’s Fairy Tales With Realities
Nothing amazes me more like President Muhammadu Buhari’s penchant for self-adulation, puritanism, and a very poor attempt to rewrite and stand history on its head. To him, he is the best thing that has ever happened to Nigeria since 1960. Soon, he would pass himself off as the father of modern Nigeria. Whatever that would mean, only time will tell. While the President seems to be ensconced in his fairy tale world of make-belief, the reality is befuddling and captures the deep-rooted insensitivity and detachment of the President from the same people he professes to be serving.
After exit polls in the Ekiti state governorship election called the outcome in favor of the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Biodun Oyebanji, Buhari declared that the victory was an indication that things are getting better.
Hear him: “I loved how the APC governors mobilized and supported you. I think the party is very lucky, and things are getting better.” Rather than investing in the people who voted for him and through whom he took an oath of office to serve, the President’s overriding interests are politics and how to perpetuate himself and the party in power.
For a man who does not fail at every given opportunity, especially while hosting donors, to boost his ego by promising that he would deliver a free and fair election in 2023, the cacophony of voices including the opposition parties, election monitors, and aggrieved voters alleging widespread vote-buying were all lost on him.
At the same time that the President was praising his party and candidate for their exploits in the Ekiti elections, people were still protesting and alleging vote-buying against the ruling party. As it has become his hallmark approach to state issues, the President preferred cherry-picking what appealed to him.
While the President ignored these allegations, the declared winner, Biodun Oyebanji at least acknowledged the allegations of vote-buying but was quick to say that “I did not witness any vote-buying in the polling unit where I voted.”
With barely a few months to another general election holding in February 2023, these allegations cast a huge shadow on the likely outcome or credibility of the polls. Will Buhari keep a straight face and still vouch that he would deliver free and fair polls next year? I have strong doubts.
Listening to the President speak, sometimes you begin to wonder whether he is in the same Nigerian space or operating from Mars. Apart from his delusional answers, for somebody who should be a unifier, the President is openly divisive. While he sees people of his ethnicity as saints, he exhibits outright hostility and voices his hatred for other tribes, especially the Igbo.
To him, Nigerians should learn to tolerate his tribesmen who have constituted themselves into a major nuisance and security threat to the entire country. Nigerians are told to tolerate the idiosyncrasies of his tribesmen who have turned kidnapping, banditry, and insurgency into a new way of life and demonize the genuine self-determination of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) as terrorists.
In a recent interview with Bloomberg, when asked about his legacies, the President said “We leave Nigeria in a far better place than we found it. Corruption is less hidden for Nigerians feel empowered to report it without fear, while money is returned; terrorists no longer hold any territory in Nigeria, and their leaders are deceased, and vast infrastructure development sets the country on course for sustainable and equitable growth.”
The question is: is Nigeria better off under Buhari now after almost eight years on the saddle than when he came in 2015? A recent fact check undertaken by Daily Trust in collaboration with the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) returned a negative verdict. It emphatically stated that using world bank measuring standards, Nigeria has done far worse under Buhari in eight years making Nigeria far worse than how he met it in 2015.
On the economy, the President told Bloomberg how his administration boosted domestic production. According to him, “For years we have been criticized by the likes of the FT, the Economist, and others for supposedly mistaken attempts to de-globalize and re-localize food production and boost manufacturing. Now with the war in Ukraine breaking global food supply chains “Davos Man” is in retreat as the energy crisis makes countries everywhere think again about energy independence and security. We have spent our two terms investing heavily in the national road, rail, and transport infrastructure set to unleash growth, connect communities, and lessen inequality. This is structural transformation.”
But Buhari was quick to add a caveat stating that these achievements “may not show on standard economic metrics now, but the results will be apparent in good time.” If for almost eight years that he has been in the saddle, the economic metrics can not show now how many more years would it take them to manifest? The truth is that because Buhari’s economic policies were rooted in quicksand, they could not stand the test of time and therefore evaporated in thin air.
The stark reality is that Buhari, who plunged the country into its first recession the first in 26 years as soon as he took power, according to the facts check is economical with the truth because “Nigeria’s inflation rate in 2015 was a single digit of 9.01 per cent. A breakdown of inflation figures year on year showed that the inflation rate at the end of 2015 was 9.01 per cent. In 2016, in the thick of the recession, it skyrocketed to 15.68 per cent. In 2017, it further moved up to 16.52 per cent. It however slowed to 12.09 per cent in 2018 and later 11.40 in 2019.
The check went on to show that inflation again rose to 15.75 per cent in December 2020 which is the highest recorded in the past three years. In 2021, the inflation rate rose for the first time in eight months to 15.63 per cent, the reason attributed to the high yuletide spending. Subsequently, the latest Consumer Price Index report by the National Bureau of Statistics indicated that Nigeria’s inflation rose to 15.7 per cent in February from 15.6 per cent in January.
Continuing its upward swing, the check revealed that contrary to claims by the President Inflation rose to its highest level since 2017, rising from 16.82% recorded in April 2022 to 17.71% in May, according to the recently released Consumer Price Index report, by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
On the debt level, as of 2015 before President Buhari took over power, Nigeria’s debt revenue stood at N8.8 trillion, according to the Debt Management Office.
However, recent statistics from the DMO showed that Nigeria’s debt skyrocketed from N8.8 trillion in 2015 to N41 trillion as at June 2022. This represents an increment of over 500 per cent,
The country’s debt rose from N39.56 trillion in December 2021 to N41.60 trillion in the first three months of 2022 alone.
FUEL PRICES
In the same vein, checks show that fuel price at the Buhari government’s inception stood at N87 per litre. As of May 2016, it had moved from N145 per litre representing a 66 per cent increase.
In 2020, it was further reviewed upwards to N162 per litre. The same year, the product sold for between N165 per litre and N220 per litre at the fueling stations. This was further compounded by the unavailability of the product with the major oil marketers saying they could not continue selling fuel at N165 per litre.
EXCHANGE RATE
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