Buhari’s first year in office

Last week for the second time within a month or so I received a rather bellicose article my friend Bitrus Gwada, Esq. occasionally circulates among his online network of friends.  This time the article was critical not only of Malam Nasiru el-Rufa’i, Kaduna State’s Executive Governor, but of President Muhammadu Buhari.

The reader may recall that the first piece by Southern Kaduna in Diaspora (SOKAD), USA & Canada, had strongly objected to the governor’s decision to license religious preaching in his state. This time the article by one, John Danfulani, PhD, was his assessment of the first year of the administrations of el-Rufa’i and Buhari. It would be hard, if not impossible, to find a more unflattering assessment of both.

“During PMB’s one year in office,” the Doctor of Philosophy, among other things, said of Buhari’s administration, “the Naira value nosedived, fuel subsidy was removed, power generation drastically dropped, GDP went to its lowest ebb in 25 years, herdsmen turned mindless killers, the budget was padded, and Nigeria was branded a fantastically corrupt nation.”

To which most Nigerians, I suspect, would probably say yes. The problem, however, is that the assessment was a grossly distorted version of reality because, first, it conveniently avoided any reference to the mind-boggling corruption of previous administrations that led to all the ills he listed and, second, he refused to acknowledge that Buhari achieved anything at all during the year.

Worse than turning a blind eye on the incredible venality of the previous administrations as the fundamental cause of the ills he accused Buhari of, Danfulani seemed to accuse the man himself of personally padding the current budget when everyone knew it was indeed his rejection of the padding that was partly responsible to its delay. Similarly Danfulani, who, as a PhD should know better, seemed to have swallowed the ethnic profiling of Fulani herdsmen hook, line and sinker. He also seemed to accuse Buhari of being personally responsible for the alleged transmogrification of his fellow Fulani from the peaceful neighbours of yesterday into the “mindless killers” of today.

And the way he seemed to pin the recent description of Nigeria by the British Prime Minister, Mr. David Cameron, as “fantastically corrupt” on Buhari, you would never imagine the prime minister merely echoed the shock the president had expressed at the level of corruption in the country he discovered when he took over power a year ago.

In his own somewhat sympathetic review of Buhari’s first year in office entitled “Pity the lion with clipped claws,” Mahmud Jega, Trust’s deputy editor-in-chief and Monday back page columnist, started with a quote from Alhaji Mamman Shata’s praise song for Mustafa Danraka in which the late Hausa songster said an orphaned lion cub is not to be pitied because it can always be trusted to fend for itself.  Writing in his inimitable colloquialism, Buhari, Jega said, may be more than an orphaned lion cub but he should still be pitied because “he is a lion whose sharp claws and dagger-like canine teeth have been serially clipped by the 1999 Constitution.”

In other words Buhari, the civilian president of today has not been free to do as he wished as did Buhari, the iron-fisted soldier head of state of the early eighties. For those like Danfulani who obviously do not like Buhari, if not out rightly loath him for what they think he symbolizes, Jega’s review is mere rationalization for what even the president’s most ardent supporters would agree was generally a lackluster first year in office.

Even then no fair-minded person would disagree that, given the terrible legacy the president inherited and the constitutional constraints he faces – as he should – it was a small miracle he was able to achieve anything at all. If nothing else, his bringing an end to the long drawn Boko Haram insurrection was no mean achievement at a time when oil revenue, as the main source of public revenue, has been at its lowest in recent decades, and when troop morale had sunk to an all time low.

And intangible as it may seem, the ongoing exposure beyond past mere conjectures of the impunity with which grand corruption took place in our country is bound to serve as a strong check against the propensity of public officials towards kleptomania. Nothing will discourage this propensity like the determination of the Buhari administration to implement its decision on Treasury Single Account (TSA), gauging from recent revelations about how incredible amounts of public revenue were never paid into the public treasury to start with. Little wonder then that almost every ministry, department and agency of government have made one case or the other for exemption from the decision.

There may be some validity to Jega’s argument that Buhari is to be pitied for coming back to power at the wrong time just like he did the first time. However, within the constraints of the terrible legacy he inherited and his constitutional limitations there was a lot he could have done which he didn’t, at least in good time. He didn’t, for example, have to take as long as he did to appoint his cabinet.

Another thing he was free to have confronted in spite of his constraints was the issue of energy which is central to his commitment to grow and diversify the Nigerian economy.

As we all know, Nigeria had spent billions of dollars for power generation since 1999, all to no avail. Part of the problem is that more of the allocations have been stolen or misapplied than invested wisely and efficiently. Part of the problem, however, is also that the country has focused on only two sources of power generation, namely, hydro with three plants at Kaiji, Jebba, and Shiroro, and, even more so, on gas with plants at Afam, Ajaokuta, Delta, Egbin, Geregu, Okpai, Omoku, Olorunsogo, Omotosho, Olorunsogo and Sapele.

The neglect of a third source, namely, solar, has been inexplicable, especially since it is renewable and clean.

As the chairman by law of National Agency for Science Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI) established in 1992, the president is in a position to free the agency, whose mandate includes making the country self-sufficient in energy, from the red tape of its presumed parent ministry of Science and Technology.

The Chinese are said to have offered financial support to NASENI for the manufacture of solar cells locally from our abundant supply of silicon as the main raw material, and for the manufacture of transformers and a high voltage testing facility. The little time and attention the president has given NASENI as its chairman has served as a big obstacle to the proper functioning of the agency. It has also led to its inability to avail itself of the Chinese offer in question and such similar ones from abroad.

It would, of course, be quite a while before solar energy can contribute as much to the country’s energy requirement as hydro and gas sources do. However, because it is the ultimate renewable agency, the sooner the president gave it the attention it deserved the better the prospect of the country’s energy supply.

One year has now come and gone since Buhari’s historic return to power. As he himself acknowledged in his speech celebrating the occasion, he has a lot more to do than he already has, if he is to fulfill his promise of changing the country for good. With only three more years to go before the next general election the man, I am sure, knows more than anyone else that time has now become of essence. 

CORRECTION

In my column of May 18 on “Nwankwo’s wrong prescription,” I reproduced part of an online dialogue – more like altercation – the controversial Mr. Femi Fani-Kayode, President Goodluck’ campaign spokesman, said he had with Alhaji Muktari Shinkafi over recent clashes between Fulani herdsmen and farmers across the country. Shinkafi, Fani-Kayode said, was his childhood friend.

As a reader whose reaction I inadvertently deleted from my mails pointed out, I got the surname of Fani-Kayode’s sparring partner wrong when I said it was Shagari.

The mistake was inexplicable as I had Femi’s article right under my eyes at the time of writing the column in question. Somehow my mind’s eye kept reading Shagari when it was actually Shinkafi.

My apologies to both Shagari and Shinkafi for mixing up their surnames.