By Olayide Oluwafunmilayo Soaga
Buhari met Nigeria as one of the fastest-growing economies in the world but left it as the poverty capital of the world.
After ruling for eight years, former Nigerian president, Muhammadu Buhari’s tenure has come to an end and power has changed hands yet again. The baton of leadership has been handed to Bola Ahmed Tinubu who would rule Nigeria for the next four years or eight years if re-elected for a second term like his predecessor.
As president, his administration ran the country under an array of problems Bayo Fasunwon, an associate professor of political science, described as inherited. Regardless, it was his responsibility to prevent them from aggravating. Buhari did not only fail in averting these problems but he handed over to his successor a country bludgeoned by insecurity and inflation, leaving it worse than he met it in 2015.
The Journey to Becoming Nigeria’s 15th President
After contesting for Nigeria’s keenly contested seat at the presidential palace in Aso Rock and losing three consecutive times, Muhamadu Buhari was contesting to be Nigeria’s president again. He had won the presidential primary election of the All Progressives Congress a year before.
It was early 2015 and he was contesting against the then-Nigerian president, Goodluck Jonathan who was the flag bearer for the People’s Democratic Party, a party that had ruled Nigeria since the country’s return to democracy in 1999. Boko Haram, a terrorist organisation, had kidnapped over 200 school girls in Borno, a state in Northern Nigeria the year before and had been executing terrorist attacks across the northern region. The dollar-to-naira conversion rate was around 150 naira in the parallel market. Nigerians were demanding a change and Buhari promised them that.
Some worried about his educational background as he had no formal tertiary education, while others worried he would rule as a dictator considering his history as Nigeria’s military head of state from 1983-1985. To others, he was their long-awaited messiah.
“I thought Buhari was different” Tobi Sorunke, a Nigerian now in his late twenties was in the penultimate year of his undergraduate studies at the Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH) when Buhari became president. After seeing his father who was a staunch supporter of Buhari at the time speak highly of him, Tobi was optimistic about a Buhari presidency.
“I was so excited when Buhari became president because I thought we have seen a president who would make Nigeria better, a president that is not corrupt and one that would fight corruption”, he said.
Prior to that period, he had little hope in Nigerian politicians because according to him, they only made promises they ended up not fulfilling. “I thought Buhari was different”, he added.
The year after he was sworn into office, the country slipped into a recession, the country’s first in over two decades, and became the poverty capital of the world. According to Aliyu Ilias, an expert in the field of political economy, Nigeria’s economy was comatose and was heading to a recession before the mantle of leadership was handed to Buhari.
“In addition to this, he used six months to constitute his cabinet of ministers and did not have a viable economic council”, he added.
Asides from the delay in constituting his cabinet of ministers, Fawunsola added that Buhari lacked viable economic advisors who could identify the problems and give good economic advice and he himself remained largely ignorant of the economic situation, lacking knowledge of the Nigerian economic system which heavily relies on importation.
While he tried to make up for the poor performance of the economy, he implemented a series of economic programs and policies that appeared promising but proved abortive in restoring Nigeria’s economic decline. For instance, In 2014, the year before he became president, the country’s GDP was at 574.2 billion dollars, and in 2018, the country’s GDP was around 421.7 billion dollars, the dollar to naira conversion rate in the parallel market was around 360 naira.
“Once you don’t have adequate knowledge about the economic system, you can not implement the right policies. This is where he missed it, thus, making most of his policies counterproductive”
Buhari came into power a weak general who was not only weakened by ill health, but by age and ethnic affiliations. He spent a huge chunk of his first tenure seeking medical help abroad leaving Nigeria in the hands of his vice, Yemi Osinbanjo who lacked a strong presence in national matters and in the process, made the country a battle led by numerous generals. With many people at the helm of affairs, there were policies and counter-policies that were counterproductive to the nation.
At the end of his first tenure, he failed in fulfilling the promises he made and sought reelection to rule Nigeria for another 8 years which he won. Professor Emmanuel Ojo, a professor of political science at the University of Ilorin explained that Buhari won his reelection as a result of Nigeria’s federal character.
“After the first four years, we (Nigerians) knew he did not perform well but we cooperated for him to go for a second term so he could exhaust the eight years of northern rule and power can oscillate to the southern part of the country. Nigerians tolerated him for another four years so that power could move.
In the eight years of Buhari’s administration, Nigeria plunged into a hornet’s nest.
Inflation on Steroids
Asides from plunging the country into a recession twice – in 2016 and 2020, his administration would also be remembered for the high inflation rate that spread like wildfire. In 2014, the inflation rate was at 8.06%. Now, the inflation rate is 22.22%. While these may appear as mere figures, for many Nigerians particularly low and middle-income earners, this persistent increase was a thorn in their flesh.
For 8 years, Nigerians were groaning about the persistent increase in the prices of goods and services.
Nigerian photographer, Adedamola Ajeigbe, 30, was surfing the internet when he came across a news feed about the Nigerian vice president saying he did a great job as the chairman of the economic council, he shook his head.
“You did not do a good job, sir. You did a woeful job”, he said to himself. Recently, Adedamola had to get a new battery for his car after the old one developed faults which cost him 35,000 nairas. According to him, he could get a battery for his car at the price of 5000 Naira before Buhari became president.
The inflation rate is also telling on his photography business and affecting productivity. When he began his photography business in 2017, the camera he intended to use, a Nikon D750 was sold for between 280,000 naira – 300,000 naira. Now, it is being sold for around 580,000 naira.
“After informing clients about the price of photobooks, some of them will not be able to afford it and would opt for a lesser price with reduced quality and after a while, they come back to complain that the quality is deteriorating”, he added.
As he handed over on May 29, his successor will not only be handed the mantle of leadership but a large debt profile which for Buhari, was an easy way out of the economic mess he plunged Nigeria into rather than looking inwards into why the economy was declining, and so, while the inflation rate was increasing persistently, the Buhari administration was equally pulling Nigeria into the murky waters of debt.
Before Buhari became president, Nigeria’s debt stock was around 11 trillion naira. As Tinubu received the baton of leadership on the 29th of May, he also received a debt profile that has been projected to hit 77 trillion Naira next month.
Most of these loans were not channeled to the appropriate quarters, Fawunsola explains. “He did not borrow to improve the poor electricity situation, nor did he borrow to build more industries or improve the educational sector which has been plagued by numerous challenges”
More Than Just Inflation
While the economic sector might have been the worst hit, other sectors have had a similar experience. While contesting to be Nigeria’s president in 2015 and seeking reelection in 2019, Buhari promised Nigerians terrorist attacks would be a thing of the past under his administration albeit, the worst terrorist attacks to ever grace the soil of Nigeria were recorded while he was president.
In March 2022, an Abuja-bound train that had taken off from Kaduna was attacked by terrorists killing about 8 people while 62 others were kidnapped. The last batch of the abductees was released in October 2022. Three months after the train attack, another attack ensued. This time, it targeted a church in Owo, a town in Ondo state. Terrorists opened fire on worshippers and no less than 40 people lost their lives in the attack.
A month after the Owo attack, there was yet another attack orchestrated by terrorists at the Kuje prison, Abuja. The terrorists freed 879 inmates including all 68 Boko Haram imprisoned Boko Haram members.
Muritala Abdullahi, the head of the climate security desk at Humangle who has covered extensively stories on the dynamics of insecurity in Nigeria explains that the performance of the Buhari administration is like a coin with two sides.
“We have growing insecurity on one side. On the other side, we have a growing investment in the security forces. We have seen one of the most significant investments like the purchase of equipment and ammunition for security forces”, he said.
He also explains that attacks in the north-eastern region of the country can be described to have reduced drastically however, attacks in the north-west have increased and in the south-eastern region, there have been increasing attacks by the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), a group proscribed as terrorists by the government.
Before Buhari got into power, the Boko Haram terrorist group was the predominant terrorist group. Subsequently, Nigerians have seen the rise of other groups including Ansaru, Islamic State of West Africa (ISWA) which has been said to be an offshoot of Boko Haram, Fulani Herdsmen who carry out violent attacks on pastoral communities, Bandits, and IPOB.
The economy and the increasing rate of insecurity are not the only areas the Buhari administration has failed. Another area worthy of discourse is education. During his 8 years in office, his administration did not make significant progress in the educational sector nor did he fulfill his promise to revitalize the educational sector.
Nigerian universities suffered greatly from this. The Academic Staff Union of Universities, a pressure group consisting of lecturers from government-owned universities in the country embarked on the association’s longest industrial action since the country’s return to democracy under the Buhari administration.
In 2020, the association went on strike for 9 months crippling academic activities on campus, and in 2022, history repeated itself again. The union went on strike for another 8 months.
What Needed to Have Been Done
Although many of the problems encountered during his administration were passed down just as he had passed them to Tinubu, there were remedies Buhari could have adopted in order to nip them in the bud.
A policy analyst at Stears, Joachim MacEbong, described Buhari as a president who was neither a fiscal disciplinarian out to reduce waste nor an economic visionary but as a president whose administration was wasteful, leading to ballooning debt and deficit and narrowing the fiscal space to nothing.
According to Bayo Fasunwon, Buhari would have curbed all of the problems he drove Nigeria under if he had listened more to the people. “When many voices were telling him things were going wrong, he did not care to listen. If he had listened more to the people, more to experts, he would have performed better than he did”
He also opined that Buhari ought to have sacked members of his administration who were unproductive. As regards security, he should have been proactive, ignoring his ethnic affiliation as a Northern Fulani man.
Instead of doing this, he was on many occasions unperturbed by developments and events that were affecting the country he presided over and Nigerians rarely heard from him. When matters of utmost importance arose, Buari would address the country whenever he thought was convenient. An example is the 2020 EndSARS protest. While addressing the country two days after the Lekki massacre, he made no effort to sympathize with families who had lost loved ones in the massacre but went ahead to inform Nigerians about measures and was directed at initiatives his administration put in place to remove 100 million Nigerians out of poverty.
According to the political science professor, Buhari’s military background is a liability. “Any democrat with a military background is likely to be a dictator in democratic garb. It is like putting on the toga of democracy but operating like a fascist”, he told African Arguments.
The professor also added that another problem with Buhari is his lack of tertiary education. “He does not have tertiary education. People like that are easily intimidated when being advised by people who are knowledgeable”
A Silver Lining to Every Dark Cloud
While his administration would be remembered for all the bad things, the professor of political science told African Arguments that there were some remarkable feats performed by the administration.
“The only area where his administration fared well was in terms of infrastructure. We can see roads being constructed nationwide, new airports being built and new universities approved”, he said.
Will History Repeat Itself?
Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the flagbearer for the All Progressives Congress (APC) who won Nigeria’s keenly contested presidential election in February this year was governor of Lagos state, Nigeria’s economic capital between 1999 and 2007 and has been alleged to have a good track record as governor whose reforms were achieved against a backdrop of severe governance challenges.
“From what we have seen in Nigeria, rising expectations lead to rising frustration. Nigerians have very high expectations of Tinubu because of his background as a former Lagos governor. Nigerians are waiting for wonders but whether he will be able to deliver those wonders is another thing entirely”, Professor Ojo said.
While Buhari made a lot of mistakes which caused many Nigerians eight years of agony, Tinubu is left to learn from the mistakes of his predecessors and ensure history does not repeat itself.
According to Bayo Fasunwon, in order for Tinubu to avert the malady of the Buhari administration he has to put technocrats and knowledgeable people in top positions and have an understanding of the country’s economy and how best to revive it.
