Featured, Politics
From all indicators, Nigeria and its citizens have not fared better than they were five years ago. It has been a case of unfulfilled promises to Nigerians
By Anayo Ezugwu
ON Thursday, May 28, President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration published a document to mark its fifth year anniversary. The document contains the administration’s achievements over the past five years. The presidency said the administration has made a salutary impact in almost all the facets of Nigerian life and where the lofty goals are yet to be attained, it is work in progress, and eyes are firmly fixed on the ball, no distraction.
Femi Adesina, special adviser to the president on media and publicity, in the document titled “Buhari administration fifth-anniversary factsheet” maintained that the government swept into office on the wings of change, and that change has been wrought in nearly all phases of national life. According to him, the three umbrella areas on which the government based its interventionist agenda are: security, reviving the economy (with particular emphasis on job creation, especially for youths), and fighting corruption. “In these three areas, where we are today cannot be compared with where we used to be.
“By May 2015, insecurity had badly fractured the fabric of the nation. No one could wager that the country would survive the next month, not to talk of another year. Bombs went off like firecrackers, insurgents ran riot round the country, other forms of crime and criminality held sway. Life was nasty, brutish and short,’’ he said.
But Buhari can’t be judge and jury in his own case. It is the duty of Nigerians to access the performance of the government and the All Progressives Congress, APC. During the 2015 elections, Buhari and his party, according to the Centre for Democracy and Development’s “Buharimeter”, made 222 campaign promises.
The question is, did Buhari fulfill the promises he and his party made to Nigerians during the 2015 presidential election campaign? And are Nigerians and Nigeria better off today than they were five years ago?
It is on record that in 2015, the APC campaigned on a change agenda and presented Buhari as a saviour. Bola Tinubu, national leader of APC, even compared him to some of the world’s greatest transformational leaders.
In 2015, Tinubu said: “Today, we are in a great crisis, we face a lot of challenges. When South Africa was in a great dilemma and was about to disintegrate, they called Nelson Mandela of 74 years old. He used his wisdom to save his country. When America was faced with depression and war, they called a retired General, Dwight Eisenhower, to rescue the country and the country was returned on a path of success.
“When France was faced with war and economic depression, they called a retired General, Charles De Gaulle, to rescue the country. So, what do we need now? Buhari! General Buhari, we are calling you to come and rescue us in Nigeria.”
But is Buhari really the saviour Nigeria is waiting for? In the last five years, the president has showed his true colours that he is not a democrat. Under his watch journalists like Omoyele Sowore, publisher of SaharaReporters, was detained, put on trial, re-arrested and released. Judges have been harassed, arrested, put on trial and some convicted on charges of perceived corruption that mostly ended up as gimmicks of intimidation.
Under his watch, the state security apparatus invaded the National Assembly with armed hooded goons and disrupted parliamentary proceedings. The same instrument has been used to invade court premises to disperse court sessions and frighten off presiding judges. Similarly, in his anti-corruption campaign, there are reservations over partisan lopsidedness in the execution of the campaign.
However, in the last five years, Buhari administration has been accused of nepotism and disrespecting the Federal Character law in his appointments. The military, para-military and key departments/agencies are largely headed by people from a section of the country.
Section 14 (3) of the 1999 Nigerian Constitution clearly stated that: “The composition of the Government of the Federation or any of its agencies and the conduct of its affairs shall be carried out in such a manner as to reflect the federal character of Nigeria and the need to promote national unity, and also to command national loyalty, thereby ensuring that there shall be no predominance of persons from a few State or from a few ethnic or other sectional groups in that Government or in any of its agencies.”
For instance, former President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2016 said: “At no time in our history, except probably during the civil war, has Nigeria been so fractured in the feeling of oneness by the citizenry.”
Bishop Matthew Kukah of Sokoto Diocese concurred with Obasanjo during his sermon at the burial of Michael Nnadi, a seminarian killed by kidnappers. The cleric remarked that Buhari was running the most nepotistic and narcissistic government in known history, and concluded that the president had not only relegated the national interest to the background, but had also introduced nepotism into the military.
The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, said after five years in the saddle of leadership, the score-card of the APC-led Federal Government was abysmally poor. Kola Ologbodiyan, publicity secretary, PDP, described the past years of the Buhari administration as not only wasteful and corrupt, but that it has taken Nigeria backward by 60 years.
“Our party views the last five years of Buhari administration as wasteful and could at best be described as season of the locusts. The Buhari-led All Progressives Congress government has turned our nation into a wasteland, devastated her economy, shattered our national dreams, crushed the hope of citizens and set our country backward,” he said.
But Adesina, said facts speak for themselves. He said May 29, 2020, marks the end of the first year of the second four-year term of the Buhari administration, and the fifth year of the government in office. “The economy, long dependent on a mono product–petroleum, is being retooled, refocused, with diversification as a task that must be accomplished. Agriculture has been given a fillip, manufacturing has got a shot in the arm, and solid minerals are contributing a large chunk to the Gross Domestic Product, GDP,” he said.
According to Adesina, the country is very close to food security, with rice, beans, maize, millet, and all sorts of grain no longer imported, adding that “we now eat what we grow’’.
No doubt that Buhari administration has made huge investment in infrastructural development and agriculture to boost local production of some food items like rice. But is production the same thing as productivity? The question remains why is Nigeria one of the world’s largest producers of some food items and yet can’t export them because of poor quality?
As for infrastructure, does anyone care how Nigeria will repay and service the huge debt the Buhari administration is accumulating to fund projects? And how can the government justify spending billions on the social investment programme, when it is benefitting less than two million of the estimated 100 million extremely poor and vulnerable Nigerians? The truth is that President Buhari’s five years in power represent broken promises, underperformance, and wasteful spending. And with deepening poverty, widespread insecurity, and a moribund economy, Nigeria and Nigerians are worse off today than five years ago.
– Jun. 12, 2020 @ 17:35 GMT |
Tags: Fifth Anniversary: Has Buhari improved Nigeria’s democratic process?
