Before the 2015 presidential election, Candidate Muhammadu Buhari
essentially advertised himself as a magician. Even though oil prices
were tumbling, Mr. Buhari promised to pay N5,000 a month to unemployed
youth, make the country more secure, fix the perennial electric power
crisis, root out corruption, strengthen the naira against the dollar and
reduce the price per litre of fuel.
Once elected, Mr. Buhari
began a serial retreat from his promises. Nigeria’s hapless youth have
received no cash. Boko Haram may have been weakened in the northeast,
but heavily armed herdsmen have maimed and killed and ramped up
Nigeria’s violence quotient. And – thanks to the administration’s
hectoring tone and strong-arm tactics – the southeast and oil-rich Niger
Delta have become highly volatile. Power outages are as bad as ever,
and arguably worse.
The war against corruption has targeted some
well-known persons, among them Senate President, Bukola Saraki, former
National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki, and the spokesman of the
opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Olisa Metuh. Even so, the war
appears imperiled in several ways.
One is Mr. Buhari’s failure to
devise a fresh, innovative approach to combating corruption. The cases
currently in court are making plodding progress – and are likely to drag
on. Given the sheer number of suspects out there, the lesson is that
the prosecutorial route is not particularly promising.
Besides, as
I suggested shortly after his inauguration, Mr. Buhari is mired in an
ethical bind: As some of the financiers of his campaign are perceived as
plunderers of public funds.
More troubling still is that the
president has paid scant attention to ways of plugging the loopholes
that permit public officials and their cohorts to loot funds. What we
have, then, is a policy of patching a system that demands an overhaul.
Mr.
Buhari’s economic policy, running the gamut from protectionism to an
orientation towards China and Saudi Arabia, sends opaque or confusing
signals. For months, the president had adamantly refused to contemplate
the devaluation of the naira. Yet, there were media speculations last
week that he’d made a volte-face on the matter.
Last week,
President Buhari made a significant renunciation of his campaign pledge
when his administration announced a sharp increase in fuel price – from
N86.50 a litre to N145 per litre. That’s a whopping 67 per cent
increase.
That increase came despite a global trend of falling
fuel prices. It placed an untenable burden on the poorest segment of the
Nigerian population – low earning workers, the unemployed and farmers.
In signing off on it, Mr. Buhari showed himself to be no different from
his indifferent predecessors in office.
Were the president
attentive to the plight of economically devastated Nigerians, he would
have demonstrated restraint on the matter.
Why is it that those
who run Nigeria never contemplate making any real sacrifice, but hasten
to demand that the least fortunate of Nigerians take on more suffering?
President Buhari and his aides drum Nigeria’s dwindling resources. Yet,
the president has not entertained the idea of selling off any of the
jets on the presidential fleet. He has not sent any bills to the
National Assembly to revise the obscene allowances pocketed by
under-performing public officials. Even if a sound case could be made
for poor Nigerians making more sacrifice – a prospect I find forbidding –
it behooves the Buhari administration to look first at ways of inviting
members of the looting class to lead, for once, by example. From local
government councilors through state and national legislators to state
governors and the president, Nigeria’s public officials are in the front
ranks when it comes to salaries, allowances and other perks and
preferment.
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