FINAL HOURS OF THE BUHARI YEARS
The administration posted an aggregate score far below public expectation, reckons
The title of Goodluck Ebele Jonathan’s account of his stewardship as Nigeria’s President kept plodding in my mind as I thought through a heading for this piece. Nigeria’s third President of the Fourth Republic authored *My Transition Hours,* which was published in 2018. It captures the breathtaking frenzy and flurry of activities and developments preceding, and immediately following his contest with the outgoing President, Muhammadu Buhari, at the 2015 presidential poll. The mean-spirited theatrics, confounding shenanigans, spontaneous alliance-switches and cross-carpeting, blatant betrayals, in the aftermath of his loss at the election are encapsulated in the book.
The two terms of four years each totalling eight years during which Buhari superintended over Nigeria, have gradually but assuredly diminished. Years, thinned down to months, months into weeks, weeks into days, the countdown has come down to hours, practically. Effectively, Buhari’s dispensation is in its final hours even if he conveys the timing of his exit, as imperative in “a few days.” Buhari indeed creates the impression that his job has been a pressure cooker which has exceeded boiling point and he cannot wait to return to his ranch in Daura and the annex in Maradi.
The last few days have been actionpacked for Buhari. He has been busy with the commissioning of a harvest of projects initiated and driven by the private sector, and his administration, respectively. The $19 Billion Dangote Refinery and Petrochemical Plant in Lekki, Lagos, headlined the final hours of tape-cutting, Monday May 22, 2023. Aliko Dangote, President of the Dangote Group, is perhaps Nigeria’s most committed, Africacentric and adventurous investor whose hands are in many pies in the nation’s socioeconomic development. His interests among others include manufacturing, construction, commerce and agriculture. The Dangote Refinery may be Africa’s single largest investment in petroleum development in a long time. It is yet another private sector-led initiative to boost the nation’s economy.
Tuesday May 23, 2023, Buhari commissioned eight major infrastructural projects across the country. Seven of them handled by the Federal Ministry of Works and Housing, received louder amplification than the eighth. The Second Niger Bridge, christened after Buhari; the Loko-Owetto bridge linking Nasarawa, Benue and states in the South East and South South, and the Ikom bridge in Cross River State, were all commissioned. New federal secretariats in Anambra, Bayelsa and Zamfara States, and the Kaduna-Kano segment of the AbujaKaduna-Zaria-Kano roads, were similarly commissioned. Buhari opted to commission the brand new “Customs House” located in Abuja on the same day, as information technology allowed for his virtual, simultaneous, real-time opening of the non-Abuja domiciled projects.
This rash of valedictory ceremonials are proceeding parri passu with various events scheduled for the Commander-in-Chief by his primordial constituency, the military, these last days, these final hours. The goal is to reengineer our collective consciousness to actually think that Buhari, has been a rare breed conscientiously committed leader, who should be eternally venerated for heroic exploits in statecraft and national development. We must not allow ourselves to be distracted from the reality that Buhari has presided over a debilitating kakistocracy over the last eight years. Buhari rode into power after three previous unsuccessful attempts in 2015, on the crest of presumed integrity, assumed frugality and touted believability. He earned the sobriquet of *Mai Gaskiya,* the honest one. He was profiled as that desired transformational leader who will turn things around in the fractious polity and discombobulated economy.
Buhari’s suspect capacity, however, was first gleaned from his tentativeness in assembling a team to work with him. Elected in March 2015 and inaugurated in May of the same year, it was not until November that year that Buhari began piecemeal submission of the names of his prospective ministers to the National Assembly for processing. Indeed, in the course of Buhari’s prevarication, the nation’s economy took a southward descent into depression, the first of at least two such negative economic growths under his jurisdiction. Public expectations about the impeccably qualified and ultra-competent Nigerians Buhari assured he will integrate into his administration, waned immediately the “usual suspects” emerged on his *A* list.
Governments before Buhari purposefully headhunted and deployed the Ngozi OkonjoIwealas, Chukwuma Soludos, Magnus Kpakols, Amina Mohammeds, Arunma Otehs, Akinwumi Adesinas, and so on in nationbuilding and economic reconstruction. It is testament to their impeccable competencies, that many of them have moved up to higher responsibilities in global organisations. There were, however, no surprises when Buhari constituted his cabinet with many of the least suitable and competent operators, thus engendering a veritable *kakistocracy,* populated in the main by mediocres. There is perhaps no better validation of this assertion than the manner the country has fumbled and floundered over the past eight years, sometimes tethering on the brink.
A post on the social media by one Sanusi Dantata which has been trending for a few days now, almost summarises the epochal dysfunction of the Buhari government. This is in stark counterpoint to the facade of “landmark and legacy” achievements the regime serenades itself with. Says Sanusi Dantata: “If wishes were horses, I’d wish Muhammadu Buhari would drive from Abuja to Daura on Monday the 29th of May, instead of flying! He’d have the chance to see the infrastructure he has built, the insecurity he has addressed, the economy he has revamped and the youths he has provided opportunities for!” Dantata in this singular sentence effectively puts a pin on the helium balloon of the Buhari dispensation’s penchant for narcissism. Nigeria has never had it so bad.
Buhari’s government put a deliberate knife through our institutions such that standards, processes and best practices have been thrown to the hounds. We have a servile and complicit legislature whose members queue like school children for photo opportunities with the president, in a parliament which rubber-stamps any and every request from the president. The judiciary is wholly subservient in a Buhari era which sanctions the Gestapo-style nighttime invasion of the homes of forthright judges and justices, and intentionally sets up a Chief Justice for compulsory retirement. The Independent National Electoral Commission, (INEC), is anything but independent. It takes orders from extraneous authorities about who to give a ticket, who to disqualify from a contest, where to simulate “inconclusive elections,” and who to gift with “Certificates of Return.”
It is common knowledge that the level of pilferage of public funds under Buhari, has long surpassed whatever was alleged to have taken place in preceding governments constituted by the Peoples’ Democratic Party, (PDP). Buhari legitimised a *sadaka* poverty alleviation strategy, under which money is virtually thrown into the streets for the needy to pick up. Where on earth is the precedent to Buhari’s *tradermoni* example, where government officials go around distributing N10,000 to select traders in marketplaces in the name of economic revamp? Where is the precursor to the *Special Works Programme,* (SPW), powered by the Labour ministry, where names of youths from across the country were compiled and they were each paid N20,000 per month for three months, for doing absolutely nothing, in the name of job creation? The COVID-19 pandemic which spilled well into 2020, precipitated largescale stealing of public funds under the dubious cover of palliatives procured for the generality of the people. Accounts say that Sadiya Umar Farouq’s Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, received funds in excess of N500 Billion for the palliatives, which never reached “the people” and which was not accounted for.
Aviation and Aerospace Minister, Hadi Sirika recently launched 10 firefighting vehicles distributed to various airports in the country, each costing a whopping N1.2 Billion! The same Sirika has just hurriedly concessioned the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, (NAIA), Abuja, and the Mallam Aminu Kano International Airport, (MAKIA), Kano, for periods of 20 and 30 years respectively. According to reports, about $800 Million will accrue to the nation’s coffers from the deal, even as many have queried the secrecy which attended the transaction and why it was left till the final hours of the Buhari era.