Buhari Returns to Fight New Battles for Nigeria’s Future

Seek senate support to tackle infrastructure decay

It was only a few weeks into Muhammadu Buhari’s presidency that murmurs of impatience started echoing around Nigeria’s hyperactive twittersphere. “Baba go-slow,” irreverent commentators were calling the first opposition leader to defeat an incumbent president at the polls, in a jibe at the speed with which he was getting the new government off the ground.

It has taken nearly six months for the 73-year old former military ruler to submit his list of ministers for vetting by the senate and assign them posts.

Given the fiscal crisis that Africa’s largest economy is facing as a result of the collapse in oil prices, this apparent lack of urgency has unsettled investors in a year that has been unnerving — if also exhilarating — from the outset.

Back in January Boko Haram terrorists were gaining ground across swaths of the impoverished north-east before later being driven back. The government of Goodluck Jonathan was emerging from the oil boom with little to show for it beyond the accumulation of capital in private hands, exemplified by the booming market in private jets. Against that backdrop in the tense run up to the elections, campaign rhetoric was dividing the federation precariously along regional and religious lines.

The smooth transition that followed — from one president originating in the oil producing and mostly Christian Niger Delta in the south to another from the predominately Muslim north — provided a shot of confidence for the nation of 180m and a fillip for democracy across the continent.

The insurgency persists in the north east in defiance of repeated pledges to quash it. But Mr Buhari’s inscrutable, at times imperious presence has damped some of the other drama.

“We could have gone faster than we have,” acknowledges Kayode Fayemi, the new mining minister, who served as the opposition’s chief policy strategist during the election campaign. He adds that the president has been fastidious in ensuring he makes the right decisions. The appearance of nothing happening, however has been deceptive, he says.

Unencumbered by a cabinet — until this month — Mr Buhari has quietly begun a radical about turn in the direction of state affairs.

The state apparatus has long been tuned to a patronage system that benefited a small elite at the expense of the majority. Mr Buhari, whose reputation for integrity helped to secure his election victory on an anti-corruption platform, has spent his first months in office endeavouring to bend the system to his will.

“People generally take the cue from the president and... as everyone knows he’s strict with himself and certainly doesn’t indulge in excesses of any kind,” says Vice-president Yemi Osinbajo, a professor of law from the commercial capital, Lagos.

Thus, law enforcement agencies accustomed to doubling up as extortion rackets, have been refocusing on their day jobs. Regulations left unenforced in the past are suddenly de rigueur — as South Africa’s telecoms company MTN has found to the tune of $5.2bn, a fine levied this month for its failure to meet a deadline to disconnect unregistered subscribers. The number of ministers has been slashed from 42 to 36, while policies designed to promote greater oversight of government spending — left on the shelf by previous administrations — have been implemented at the flick of a presidential pen.

“The era when you (government agencies) had the money, you just kept it and spent it the way you want, is over,” says Godwin Emefiele, governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

After one of the most wasteful periods in Nigeria’s history, this change in direction was deemed necessary by electoral consensus. Tens of billions of dollars in oil revenues went astray under Mr Jonathan’s watch, depriving the continent’s largest economy of savings to weather the current downturn.

Law and order was breaking down at an accelerating pace: in the oil industry where the distinction between the criminal theft of crude and officially sanctioned trading was becoming blurred; and most markedly in the north-east where Boko Haram terrorists had forced millions to flee their homes.

To make up for some of the short term loss in revenues, says a senior official, the administration is initially focusing on stemming leakages, recovering stolen money and clamping down on corporate malfeasance. For a dynamic economy long fuelled by a blend of licit and illicit flows, the change in tempo has proved something of a shock.

“The war against corruption is very useful but it is not an economic policy,” says Clement Nwankwo, a leading civil rights activist, who worries that uncertainty over the government’s longer term agenda together with some of the more stringent tightening measures are already costing thousands of jobs.

“The business community is getting a sense of déjà vu,” echoes an Asian entrepreneur who recalls Mr Buhari’s first stint as head of state in the 1980s after he came to power at the barrel of a gun.

The prisons have not filled as they did back then with businessmen and politicians suspected of complicity in a bonanza of graft before the 1983 coup. Older, and in civilian garb, Mr Buhari is following due process more carefully.

But then as now, Nigeria remains dependent on oil for hard currency earnings, and the economy, until recently one of Africa’s fastest growing, is beginning to founder. Gross government revenue fell 57 per cent to 435 billion naira ($2.2 billion) in June from a year ago, according to the CBN, which has lowered its 2015 GDP forecast from above five to four per cent.

CBN controls to contain the import bill and shore up foreign reserves have compounded the malaise, starving manufacturers of inputs and spurring both JPMorgan and Barclays to drop Nigeria from their local currency emerging markets bond index.

In a sign that Nigeria’s criminal fraternity is now more wary of flouting the rules, the police busted six men last month who had gone

President Muhammadu Buhari on yesterday in Abuja admitted that the nation’s roads were in precarious state and in dire need of attention by the federal government.

He also made a case for the immediate development of infrastructure such as rail and power.

Buhari spoke during a presidential dinner he hosted in honour of senators at the new Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

“The roads are dead. Those who drive between Lagos and Ibadan will have a lot of stories to tell you. Those who drive from Kaduna to Jebba may have more stories to tell. The same thing is applicable to the East West roads,” the president said.

He urged the Senate to assist his government in concentrating on the problem of infrastructure such as rail, road and power.

He asked Senate Committees to look at the various agreements the nation had entered into in the last six years and see where Nigeria had defaulted in in terms of counterpart funding.

Buhari said that if the nation could get the railway working, lives and fuel would be saved.

The president also touched on the nation’s economy, saying the drop in the price of oil was affecting it negatively.

While thanking the Senate for the speed at which his ministerial nominees were approved, he urged them to treat the nation’s budget with same sense of urgency.

“We are enjoying tremendous goodwill outside this country. Whatever we do, let us have it in mind that people have confidence in this government,” Buhari said.

President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki, thanked the president on behalf of his colleagues and pledged their continuous support for the government.

While admitting that the challenges ahead were enormous, Saraki said he believed that when God gave man a position, he would also equip him with the capacity to carry out the task.

In treating national issues, he promised that the Senate under his watch would not be sentimental.

“Petrol does not know APC or PDP. We will always work hard in the interest of the country in everything we do,” Saraki promised.

Journalists were later excused as the president engaged the lawmakers in an interactive session behind closed-doors.

The dinner was also attended by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo; Senate Bola Tinubu; Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, top government officials and presidential aides.