By Eric Elezuo
The euphoria that heralded the coming of Muhammadu Buhari in 2015 was heart deep. The retired general rode on the goodwill of Nigerians, and the popular consensus that the then president, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan had failed in his five years of presiding over the affairs of Nigeria. But it did not take long before the Nigerian public understood that they have been sold the wrong dish, in fact a dish more substandard than what was previously obtained.
Buhari’s first display of mediocrity was his inability to appoint an executive council to run the country. It took a whopping six months before the first round of ministers were announced. To make matters worse, Mr. President was in and out of the country, shuffling from one hospital to another trying to cure an ailment shrouded in secrecy till date. The president was out of the country for a cumulative 150 days, among which was a 90 days stretch.
When it was obvious that Buhari was completely cured, demystifying the earlier notion of the leader of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB), Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, who claimed that the president had died overseas while a foreign replacement, who he called Jibril from Sudan, was forced on Nigerians, it still unfortunate as nation seem to remain on auto-pilot. The allegation of his supposed death has yet to be proved till date.
Across board, the more vocal voices and dissenting minds have unequivocally agreed that there is not much for the soldier-turned civilian president to leave as a legacy in comparison to his previous three predecessors; Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, AlhajiI Musa Yar’dua and Dr. Goodluck Jonathan. Much as Buhari is of the same stock with Obasanjo, analysts believe that both men are poles apart in terms of achievements and enduring legacies.
Chiding Buhari just after the 2023 Presidential Election in a letter, Obasanjo had said that Buhari’s sole legacy will be tainted unless he made some major adjustments to the outcome of the presidential elections. But as expected, Obasanjo was predictably ignored, putting to jeopardy any strand of legacy that can link to the former maximum ruler.
Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, in an article titled Buhari’s Legacy, and published in the Vanguard of March 15, 2023, observed that:
“You would think exiting on the back of a thoroughly disputed election, for a man who came to power following an uncontested electoral victory and a textbook peaceful transition will be the ultimate dishonour that will define the character of an eight year leadership, but you will be wrong. There is a long list of failures that would precede the elections fiasco, and it might not be entirely uncharitable to assume that the president had one of those rare moments when a past flashes through a life, and you are made to clutch at one redeeming star out of a long line of gloom: support INEC to conduct an election that may get the nation to think his eight years did not exist.
“In those eight years, poverty and corruption and insecurity, the three scourges Buhari said he would fight have fed fat on weak leadership and swamped the nation. He had lowered the bar on good governance so effectively it will be difficult to see how it can be made lower. It would take a generation to retrieve bits and pieces of the nation that have drifted apart owing largely to incompetence and insensitivity in managing pluralism. The transition from him to the next good president(s) may test the nation’s resilience, and its surviving the stresses from recovering lost ground may reveal whether its foundations have been irretrievably damaged by the pure poverty of ideas that was the hallmark of the Buhari administration.”
With just two months for Buhari to exit the seat of power, stakeholders, analysts and the general public are digging deep to unearth what Mr President can be remember for other than policies that have polarised the nation into ethnic and religious divide where ethnic militants and secessionists have risen with vocal voices resonating across the globe. There was, and still is Nnamdi Kanu’s IPOB, Sunday Igboho’s Yoruba Nation among others. These groups are consequences of marginalisation and barefaced ethnic profiling, especially with the people of the Southeast, who were accused and are being punished for not supporting Buhari during the elections.
During the campaigns, Buhari and his co-travellers have pinpointed Economy, Security and corruption are their key areas of concentration, but eight years down the line, poverty, insecurity and corruption have quadruple in every guise, and Nigerians are the worse for it.
It is obvious that Buhari himself understood his inept handling of the nation’s affairs in the concluding eight years, and vowed to make amends with the conduct of the 2023 general elections, and leave a lasting legacy. This was sold to Nigerians that the elections will go down in history as the best conducted and transparent election. Nigerians bought it, and were ready to forgive Buhari for his eight years of lukewarm administration if only he could get the election matter right, and allow them vote candidates of their choice. But that was not to be; the election proved to be the very opposite of what it was intended to be, recording massive rigging, violence, harassment and voter intimidation. The trump card for the election hidden in the Biometric Voter Authentication System (BVAS) and the IReV became a ghost of itself as INEC bypassed both and allotted votes and results as it pleases. Buhari’s intended legacy flopped. And he is no in a hurry to find out why. Rather he kowtowed INEC’s and his party’s stand of ‘go to court’ if you are not pleased.
As it stands today, Nigerians have been suffering a tripod menace since anyone can remember; there is scarcity of petroleum products, especially the petrol motto spirit with motorists and commuters queuing endlessly at filling stations and paying exorbitant prices where the product can be found. The naira redesign polity has inflicted untold hardship to homes and relationships. Many have reported lost their lives in their quest to get naira which the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), mopped up with commensurate release of the new notes. People therefore, have to buy naira to spend naira. At a stage, the Punch reported that a total of 13 people had died protesting against the new policy. Even after an intervention by the Supreme Court to delay the rollout, President Buhari held on to his position. He showed flagrant disrespect for the judiciary.
Except of course legacy means leaving behind the positives, Buhari will sure be remembered for leaving behind a legacy of a nation soaked in its own blood; a nation where ethnicity and religion have been weaponised to kill its own citizens; a nation that took a million steps backward for every attempted one step forward. It is loudly rumoured that most of the areas taken by Boko Haram before Buhari came to power are becoming peaceful today, analysts ask why the transfer to the northwest as banditry is making waves unabated.
According to Tukur Abdulkadir, a professor at Kaduna State University, “Insurgents now controlled villages, and again, tens of thousands have fled the violence.
“If they could deal decisively with Boko Haram, people are still perplexed and bewildered as to why it has become so difficult for the Nigerian security agencies and the government of Muhammadu Buhari to tackle the problem of banditry in the northwestern part of Nigeria,” he said.
According to dw,com, which quoted a Lagos-based financial consultant, Shuaibu Idris, “To further exacerbate the situation, more and more young Nigerians are left without a chance after finishing their studies. Creating jobs and boosting the economy was another one of Buhari’s promises back in 2015.
“When President Buhari took over, our inflation rate was somewhere around 12% to 13%. Today we are talking about 21% to 22%. Can we say he has done well? Clearly the answer is no.”
Similarly, he pointed out that exchange rates for the naira as well as the national debt load had gone up significantly, while unemployment figures were also increasing.
What did the Buhari administration do to counter these developments? Conditional cash transfers and loans to farmers were among the policies. But they often turned sour, not helping to create jobs, Shuaibu Idris pointed out.
However, some believe that the president has done his best as is his slogan, owning to quite a number of policies implemented. But it is not farfetched that the implementations have been poor. They argue that there are many projects that have been abandoned for decades in Nigeria that he has either succeeded in completing all his or he is on the verge of completing. Like the prominent Second Niger Bridge. The bridge, a brain child of the Jonathan administration is yet to be completed the humongous amount of money pumped in notwithstanding. It is hoped that the bridge will witnessed full functionality before the May 29, 2023 handing over date.
But speaking on behalf of the government a few weeks back, the Minister of Information and Culture, Mr. Lai Mohammed, said Buhari has done well. He said beyond infrastructure, the Buhari administration is leaving a legacy of a social investment programme that is unprecedented in Africa and had enhanced the quality of life of the beneficiaries.
“Our pace-setting social investment programmes like N-Power, School Feeding, Conditional Cash Transfer and GEEP (Government Enterprise Empowerment programme) have benefitted millions of our citizens, both young and old, and this can neither be trivialised nor denied,” he said.
The minister said the Buhari government has also put Nigeria on the path of self-sufficiency in many staples, including rice.
He said fertiliser blending plants in the country have increased from 10 in 2015 to 142 while the number of rice mills has increased from 10 in 2015 to 80 presently.
The minister said that based on the achievements, Nigeria, which was the number one export destination for rice in 2014, according to Thai authorities, is now ranked 79.
On security, he said the Buhari administration has revamped the sector in the face of unprecedented challenges in the country.
“Today, the Nigerian military is being restored to its glorious past, thanks to Mr. President’s foresight and doggedness in re-equipping the various services,” he said.
“And this has made it possible for the military to tackle insurgency and all other security challenges facing the country.
“As you can now see, this military has been recording successes after successes.”
He added that the current administration has ensured inclusiveness, especially in the areas of infrastructure and social development.
The minister said there is no state in Nigeria that has no road, bridge or housing project irrespective of party affiliation.
He added that while other administrations pampered corrupt people, the Buhari government exposed and put them on trial.
“Whereas the immediate past administration came up with such programmes as Treasury Single Account (TSA) and Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS), they were implemented largely on paper until we came on board and ensured total implementation,” he said.
“The EFCC, the ICPC and other anti-corruption agencies have gone beyond merely arresting and prosecuting alleged corrupt officials to institutionalising the fight against corruption through various programmes.”
Not many bought into the minister’s analyses, as there is nothing to show for any bogus achievement mentioned.
But stakeholders believe that there could be one last area Buhari could write his name in gold and cause Nigerians develop amnesia over his humongous failures. They unanimously agree that the area is the judiciary.
Popular opinions has it that the judiciary must be allowed a free hand to decide cases even as the election petitions are on the front burner.
Consequently, the world watches with keen interest to see if matters of the court will also be mishandled as the INEC conducted-elections, and that may mean that Buhari may go down in history as the Nigeria president without a tangible legacy to his name. But someone said God forbid!
