Buhari and the savaging of the poor

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.