Buhari: Nigerians speak out on change

…hopes and fears of the future

By OBINNA EZUGWU

May 29, 2017 made it two years since President Muhammadu Buhari took power from his predecessor Dr. Goodluck Jonathan after a bitterly contested election in 2015; an election that very nearly put the country on the edge. Many had feared and even predicted that the country wound have disintegrated had the outcome been different.

Having promised to rescue the country from economic doldrums, fight corruption, end Boko Haram insurgency and set the country on the part of progress, Buhari’s government was welcomed with fanfare. A wind of change blew across the country, anchored on the old general’s ‘spartan’ personality.

However, two years on, many say Buhari has done the exact opposite of what he promised. The economy is in a very bad shape; Nigeria is more divided now than it ever was since the end of the civil war in 1970, while corruption has assumed new dimensions and the menace of Fulani herdsmen has overtaken Boko Haram as number one security threat.

“Things are a lot worse now,” says Comrade Adeniyi Alimi Suleiman, the Executive Director, Centre for Human Rights and Social Justice (CHRSJ), a Lagos based advocacy group. “It is obvious that Buhari has failed. Nigerians are suffering terribly; one paint of garri is now N1000, the price of fuel has skyrocketed. There is too much hunger and suffering.”

Prior to 2015 and beyond, Buhari had very strong base in the South West, second only to the core North, the President’s primary constituency, but Suleiman notes that most of those he knew to be his supporters had become disappointed with him.

“We are still praying for someone who can lead this country, certainly not Buhari. I know many people who were shouting ‘sai Buhari’ then, but are now cursing him. When you check the social media, you see a lot of people raining curses on him,” he said.

Mr. John Bede-Anthonio is a public affairs analyst and former Managing Director, Lagos State Development and Property Corporation (LSDPC). As a member of the APC, he was one of the president’s campaigners in Lagos and the South West, but looking back at what has happened since 2015, he notes that it was a terrible mistake to have played a role in bringing the administration into being.

“He is an old school man,” he says. “When he came in 1983, he was perhaps good, but the ideas he has now are totally outdated. Even though I’m an APC man, even though I campaigned and voted for him, it is obvious that we made a grave mistake.

“We need a modern man as president, someone who is well read, who is knowledgeable, forward thinking and has a vision for his people.”

Nigeria is a multi-lingual, multi-ethnic and multi-religious nation; apart from corruption, the country is consistently bogged down by conflicts emanating from these cultural and religious differences. Quests for true federalism and resource control had led the argument that the country needed restructuring to move forward. Some had argued that structural defect was the country’s major problem, and not corruption. This argument informed the convening of a national conference in 2014, a conference in which far reaching recommendations were made. But this government has turned its back on the report.

While elevating the menace of corruption and promising to fight it to a stand-still, the APC also bought into this idea of restructuring, promising in its manifesto, that, “as a change agent, APC intends to cleanse our closet to halt the dangerous drift of Nigeria to a failed state; with a conscious plan for post-oil-economy in Nigeria. To achieve this laudable programme APC government shall restructure the country, devolve power to the units, with the best practices of federalism and eliminate unintended paralysis of the centre” to the applause of many.

However, two years on, the Buhari administration has shown that it is not interested in restructuring, noting ostensibly that the recommendations of the 2014 national conference put together by the PDP government belonged to the archives. To this end, many have accused him of hypocrisy, labelling his anti corruption effort as  a diversionary tactics, as according to them, the only way to solve the problem of corruption was to tackle it from the source, which is the present structure of the country.

“I don’t believe in Buhari’s anti-corruption war. What he is doing is populist sloganeering, he is trying to build public relations man of the Nigerian ruling class and their international backers,” said Chief Abia Onyike, a chieftain of PDP.

“They are just looking for something to make them credible, to continue their exploitation of the economic resources in Igbo land and the Niger Delta. The political architecture which was created by the military dictatorship in Nigeria from July of 1966, after the bloodiest military coup in Africa, has not been dismantled. Any person who says he is fighting corruption in Nigeria, but is not ready to dismantle the exploitative hegemony that was created by the Hausa/Fulani and Yoruba oligarchy in Nigeria is only a pretender,” he argued.

Mr Bede-Anthonio also dismissed the president’s efforts in this regard, insisting that corruption cannot be fought neither will he (Buhari) be able to solve the country’s challenges without restructuring. He argued that for the fact that he had shunned the idea of pursing the noble cause of returning Nigeria into a workable federation, his actions amounted to hypocrisy.

“There are fundamental issues that have to be tackled if you are serious about fighting corruption. You cannot fight corruption when you are talking about federal character; you cannot fight corruption when you have quota system.

“Federal character and quota system breed corruption. Those are the roots of corruption. When you use quota system to put a very incompetent man in a position, he cannot do his job; he will Just do whatever he feels like because he knows he has a godfather somewhere. Corruption cannot be fought the way he is fighting it.

“For me, if we want to make any progress in this country, we must return to true federalism. The current system that places too much power with the central government cannot stand, it will not survive for long.

“The Niger Delta boys are there fighting, Biafra people are there. Very soon, Oduduwa people will start their own and once they start you know that it is done. But if we practice true federalism, in terms of everybody controlling what they produce, Nigeria will make progress. The problem is when some people who are not producing anything believe that they must be the rulers, and they are not knowledgeable. That’s why we are where we are – no leadership. Nigeria has a lot of potential, but there is no leadership.”

Prior to his election, Buhari had assured Nigerians that he would follow the tenets of democracy, act in accordance with the rule of law and strengthen democratic institutions. But half way into his administration, with several court orders disobeyed, it has become obvious, some say, that he had deceived Nigerians and remained a military dictator in civilian clothes.

“Buhari laid much emphasis on basic tenets of democracy which are rule of law, true federalism and constitutionalism during his campaign, but what we see is the exact opposite,” says Bar. Oladotun Hassan, president, Yoruba Council of Youths Worldwide (YCYW).

“Ibraheem El- Zakzaky, Nnamdi Kanu and Sambo Dasuki are all evidences of injustice, anarchy and flagrant disobedience of the rule of law by the administration.”

He recalled that the administration came in with much euphoria and high expectations, but two years after, those have given way to depression and anxiety.

“The administration berthed on high euphoria, endless assurances of good governance predicated on genuine laws and standard practice, while harping on war against corruption as a model for rebuilding the Nigerian nation. But those have turned out to be deceits, and the government has been characterised by failures,” he said.

On security, which was one of the major promises made by the APC government, Hassan says the security situation has gotten rather worse with Fulani Herdsmen killing people with impunity.

“Insecurity has risen beyond imagination, You still have Boko Haram, now Fulani Herdsmen are worse, then their is ethnic tensions here and there.”

Nigeria’s economy has not fared any good. The country slid into recession last year, inflation has been in double digits and the value of naira had fallen drastically against the dollar. Some of these, the administration had blamed on the past PDP government which it said squandered the nation’s resources. But Onyike places the blame squarely on Buhari.

“Blaming PDP is exactly what they spent more than one year doing. I don’t believe in the APC blame game, the point is, why is it that the economy started going down immediately they assumed leadership of the country in May 29, 2015? That is the fundamental question. Was the economy that bad as at May 28 of 2015?” he queried.

“You can see that the exchange rate of the naira has drastically gone down. It was between N160 and N180 to dollar for the most part of Jonathan’s administration, so who made it to go down to N480 and N500?

The president’s decision to dump the 2014 confab report has been identified as one of the reasons why agitations, especially in the Niger Delta and the South East have become more intense, and there are already concerns about Nigeria not being able to survive for too long if the government continues its hard-line opposition to restructuring.

“Nigeria cannot develop with the current arrangement,” opined Prof G. G Darah, a front line Niger Delta activist.

Darah who spoke on the occasion of the Golden Jubilee celebration of Rivers State, regretted that the Buhari administration had dumped the 2014 conference report, noting that while the conference recommend 52 percent resource control, the Niger Delta had decided to raise the stake to 100 percent resource ownership.

“Make no mistake, the people of Niger Delta are spearheading this struggle,” he said. “It is the position of the Avengers, PANDEF and others agitating groups. This slavery must end.”

However, the president has his supporters who insist that he has done well in spite of the difficulties.

Hon. Hycinth Ngwu is the spokesperson for the APC in Enugu State. He stated that Nigeria was almost dead in the hands of PDP but Buhari and the APC is helping to salvage it.

“For mature minds, the APC has done well. Nigeria was almost dead in the hands of PDP, the party is salvaging it.”

Similarly, Bar. Wale Ogunade, Lagos based lawyer and activist argues that the president only promised to fight corruption and has been doing so successfully.

“When Buhari was coming in, the only thing he told us was that he would change Nigeria by fighting corruption,” he said. “That was his key point, others were campaign issues that were brought in by his lieutenants, but unfortunately Buhari is not God. Ill-health has affected him.

“When he was still strong, we knew how he really dealt with corruption. And for me, if that’s the only thing he achieved, I’m OK.”

Few days ago, Buhari, for the second time this year, travelled to London for medical reasons. There have been controversies surrounding his health. Two weeks ago, the Chief of Army Staff, Tukur Buratai raised the alarm over certain army officers hobnobbing with politicians with a view to carrying out a coup, possibly to prevent transfer to the Vice President, Prof Yemi Osinbajo on the event that the President is not able to continue.

Ogunade warned that such could lead to crisis worse than the civil war.

“If anything happens now, this is not Nigeria of 1960 when some young military officers came in, killed some section of the political class and some people were looking. No doubt, it led to the Biafra war, but this may be bigger than that.”