What shall Buhari’s legacy be?

Sometime last week, I was in a conversation with a group of older friends, people who grew up during some of Nigeria’s most glorious days. The gist mainly was around the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.)’s legacy when he hands over in about 21 months.

For many people, 21 months looks like a very long time, an eternity pregnant with possibilities. But that is not necessarily so with politics and governance, especially in a country like Nigeria, where politics and government patronage are the most thriving means of livelihood. This column raised the same point in a piece title: “No, President Buhari, you do not have three years,” published on March 31, 2016.

Addressing members of the National Executive Council of the All Progressives Congress a week earlier, Buhari had said: “I know you are being harassed since the election that they haven’t seen anything on the ground. Well, if you have any explanation that could be accepted, it is that you have three more years to go…”

I had written in response as follows: “…from my understanding of Nigerian politics, Buhari does not have more than the next one and a half, maximum two years, to prove himself and show Nigerians why he or his party deserves re-election in 2019. The President will do well to know that by the end of 2017, most politicians in the country, no matter what office they hold, will think of nothing but the prospects that 2019 holds for them. In some cases, people are not even waiting that long and I wonder why the President has not noticed!” It would turn out that there was a consensus that a lot more could have been achieved at the end of his first term! The regime has been on for six straight years now, and it should begin to consider the specific footprint it desires to register.

So, back to last week’s discussion with these respected men. One of them offered that President Buhari would be eternally remembered for his strides in infrastructural development. He mentioned the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, the railway projects linking several parts of the country, and the Second Niger Bridge as tenure-defining projects.

That made much sense, but I asked him if he remembered the administration that delivered the Third Mainland Bridge. He said it was the Ibrahim Babangida military regime. Next, I asked if the Third Mainland Bridge (arguably the most critical road infrastructure in Lagos today) is the landmark people define Babangida with? The answer was evident to all of us. Anytime Nigerians remember Babangida, two things they see as having inflicted pain on them and possibly starting the country’s descent into the dunghill quickly come to mind. These are the Structural Adjustment Programme, which was introduced in 1986, and the satanic cancellation of the June 12, 1993 presidential election. Babangida is still unable to provide a concrete explanation to date.

The development of infrastructure is critical to every economy, so it is a trite expectation from the government. Alongside that, however, the functions and sustenance of such structures depend on many other factors- one of which is the quality of human capital. The people of a country must not just understand the cost and importance of these structures to the extent that they accept ownership. That is in addition to the projects throwing up as many employment opportunities as possible.

The Yoruba say that the child you did not train is the one that would sell off the houses that you have built. Therefore, it is counterproductive to build gigantic structures while your citizens are unhappy, hungry, and unsure about the future. That is why authorities are battling vandals, with transportation minister, Chibuike Amaechi, proposing the death penalty for anyone caught vandalising railway tracks. How effective would that go in restraining loads of untrained, untutored young men and women who have lost hope! And speaking about training, statistics say that something between 10 million and 13.5 million children of school age is out of school, that is one problem. Another very worrisome one is the question of what those in school are learning or not learning. What exactly is the country’s educational goal, how is the country tailoring her curriculum towards her needs and the urgency that a competitive world imposes on all countries? Do we even realise that the world isn’t waiting for any country?

More importantly, the development of infrastructure, which the President’s spokespersons also like to flaunt, cannot be the legacy of a man who doggedly pursued this office for 16 years, eventually attained it at the age of 72, promised to redeem the people from the plague of bad governance and myriad attendant ills. Having been a beneficiary of the best that the country could ever offer, Buhari owes Nigeria the duty of leaving it better than how he met it. Sadly, that does not even seem to be a prospect now.

An apparent signal that things are worse than they were in 2015 is the current location of the honcho himself. As I write, President Buhari is in London, being attended to by doctors that he has known for four decades, Femi Adesina told us the other day. Now, that is a sad one. To say that the President chose to seek medical attention in a country said to snatch at least 12 Nigeria trained doctors weekly as of 2018 is a sad irony.

It gets worse when you remember that Nigerian doctors are on their second industrial action in four months. The fact that the President, who pledged to expand Nigeria’s economy and increase the source of revenue, has repeatedly contributed to the N1.5trn annual expenditure on medical tourism belies his commitment to transformation. The expectation would be that a President should be on a nationalistic crusade rather than demarketing the health industry in his country by patronising an already developed system instead of inspiring a sustainable revolution at home.

On security, which is one of the three areas he raised the hopes of Nigerians, the country is worse for it. From the Boko Haram insurgency in the North-East and pockets of skirmishes in the North-Central and North-West in 2015, the entire country has become a fertile field for assorted crimes; each of the six zones is having something peculiar to deal with. Terrorism, banditry, and abductions have become such an industry that some elected government officials even explain them away. Last week, a report from the National Security Summit set up by the House of Representatives suggested that as much as $2.4m may have been paid as ransom in the last nine months. That is not to speak about the permanent loss of lives and blood spilling with the President’s home state of Katsina and Kaduna, where he resides being epicentres.

Then there is the question of whether the country would even remain one! Agitations for the state of Biafra have grown with the government’s repeated attempts at suppression achieving only meagre if any successes at all. What has happened is that the Biafra agitation has inspired similar sentiments in the South-West with the Buhari regime now having to battle separatist agenda, terrorism, insurgency, ethnic rivalries alongside violent crimes. It is not the best moment in the country’s history, and the President and those who love him should indeed be worried.

Truth is Buhari has little or no time to make things better as he needs to make them for the sake of himself and the generations after him. As he rounds off his second term, he should be concerned about justice and fairness being precursors to Nigeria and Nigerians’ peace, unity, security, and development. Without this, it would be impossible to garner the factors required for the economy to thrive if Nigeria survives the strains and stress that assail its psyche.

Niran Adedokun can be reached via Twitter: @niranadedokun