As FG scores administration high on execution of impact projects
With less than 7 days to the end of President Buhari’s 8 years administration, Nigerians are less secure, poorer and more in debt than he meet them when he assumed office in 2015.
The Consumer Price Index reported by the National Bureau of Statistics in March 2023 indicated that Nigeria’s inflation rate accelerated to a new 17-year high of 22.04 per cent.
According to the World Bank, Nigeria has one of the highest inflation rates globally and the seventh highest in sub-Saharan Africa in 2022.
The unprecedented and forceful seizure of cash by the Central Bank of Nigeria policy under Godwin Emefiele put Nigerians to penury and a lot of hardships. Businesses collapsed and many people lost their daily living.
There is a massive road infrastructural gap and there is also a massive gap in terms of healthcare, provision of electricity and even in the removal of subsidy causing Nigeria workers and the citizens became poorer than they were before 2015, when Buhari assumed office.
According to data obtained from the Nigeria Security Tracker, NST, a project of the Council on Foreign Relations’ Africa programme, the deaths reported from terrorism, banditry, Herders and farmers’ clashes, communal crises, cult clashes, and extra-judicial killings among others rose astronomically to 63,111, under Buhari’s watch.
The 63,111 death toll is conservative because only reported cases from multiple sources were included. And many cases are under-reported or not reported at all.
Thus, the NST statistics should be viewed as indicative rather than definitive.
According to NST, when President Buhari assumed office on May 29, 2015, the cumulative number of people killed in Nigeria was 34,972. Since then, the death figure has risen to 98,083 as of May 16, 2023.
Futhermore, the Revenue Mobilisation and Fiscal Allocation Commission (RMAFC) recently disclosed that President Muhammadu Buhari, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, state governors and their deputies earned N651m as hardship allowance in the last eight years.
According to the RMAFC document obtained from the website of the RMAFC, Buhari is entitled to N1.76m annually as hardship allowance.
From the calculation done by the RMAFC, Buhari would have earned N14.08m as hardship allowance within a period of eight years of his presidency.
The vice president is entitled to N1.52m annually as hardship allowance which simply implies that in eight years, Osinbajo would have been paid N12.16m.
The RMAFC document also disclosed that a state governor is entitled to N1.11m annually as hardship allowance while a deputy state governor gets the sum of N1.06m each year.
Within eight years from 2015 to 2023, the hardship allowance of the 36 state governors is estimated at N319.68m. Their deputies earned N305.28m cumulatively.
The RMAFC document also states that the hardship allowance which is 50 per cent of the annual basic salary is also enjoyed by judges in the country.
Recall that Buhari, in his inaugural address in 2015, said, “Nigerians will not regret that they have entrusted national responsibility to us. We must not succumb to hopelessness and defeatism. We can fix our problems,” is leaving behind an inheritance fraught with many posers. Many analysts believe Buhari’s is a more divided, unsettled and impoverished Nigeria.
Buhari, who had premised his campaign on security, economy and anti-corruption, is believed to have failed on the promises eight years after. He didn’t resolve Nigeria’s age-long socio-economic challenges yet under his watch, the nation witnessed record-breaking retrogression on several Human Development Indices, HDI while leaving the nation’s economy from 9% inflation to 22%
The country’s GDP that stood at $493. 3 billion when he took over office in 2015, declined to $440.8 billion in 2021. Growth rate in 2022 stood at 3.10 per cent, from the 3.40 per cent recorded in 2021.
On Foreign Direct Investment, FDI, at the time Buhari came to power, Nigeria had attracted $98 billion in the previous administration, but got $89.4 billion in Buhari’s eight-year reign, according to data from Nairametrics.
Within the period under review, foreign reserves rose from $29.59 billion in 2015 to $35.31 billion as of April 20, 2023.
The administration before Buhari had 6.07 per cent growth in four years, but the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics, NBS, said the economy grew by an average of 1.40 per cent under this Buhari’s administration.
When the President Buhari took over from Jonathan, Nigeria’s had single-digit inflation, which stood at nine percent. But as of December 2022, the NBS put the rate at 21.34 per cent.
Inflation, which led to daily increases in the prices of goods and services, resulted in the Naira losing more than half its value.
As of April 2023, the country’s Consumer Price Index, CPI, for food stood at 640.0, compared to 176.3 points it was in May 2015.
Specifically, the index gauges the average fluctuation in prices of major food items.
On power generation, as of 2015, Nigeria was generating 4,949 megawatts, but it had dropped to 2,409.50 megawatts.
According to the Association of Power Generation Companies, the national grid collapsed 98 times under Buhari’s watch.
It observed that total power generation capacity loss in the energy sector rose to N1.76tn, between 2015 and 2022.
Upon assumption of office, Buhari inherited a debt profile of approximately $10.32 billion in 2015, but he is leaving behind total debts of about N77 trillion.
The administration of ex-President Obasanjo government inherited $28 billion as foreign debt in 1999. When it left in 2007, it was $2.11 billion after successfully securing a write-off by the London and Paris Club debts
The Yar’adua government added $1.39 billion to what they inherited while the Jonathan government incurred an additional $3.8 billion.
However, President Muhammadu Buhari has scored his administration high on the implementation of high-impact projects nationwide aimed at satisfying the desires of the people, saying his administration is on track to deliver on its mandates before the end of its tenure in May 2023.
The President made this known in Abuja at the 3rd Year Ministerial Performance Review Retreat with the theme: “Enhancing Security, Fight Corruption Transform the Economy”, organised to evaluate the level of progress made in the implementation of the Nine Priority Areas of the Administration.
On national security, he noted that government had invested substantially in arms, weapons and other critical military hardware, as well as continuous training for the Armed Forces.
“The Nigerian Air Force has acquired 38 brand-new aircraft and is expecting another batch of 36 new ones, while the Nigerian Navy has been equipped with new platforms, sophisticated riverine, Rigid-Hull Inflatable, Seaward Defence, Whaler & Fast Attack Boats, as well as Helicopters and Capital Ships. To boost the number of our Police personnel, 20,000 policemen have been recruited, trained, fully integrated and deployed in 2020 and 2021. This exercise has strengthened our community policing strategy which is enshrined in the Police Act, 2020″, he said.
Commenting on the fight against corruption, he assured that government remained unwavering and would continue to prosecute high-profile cases. He added that government had established platforms to promote collaboration among anti-corruption and prosecuting Agencies of Government to ensure transparency in the processes, and speedy completion of cases.
Regarding Social Investment programmes and other socio-economic programmes and policies, he noted that as of June 2022, government had enrolled 75% of the 1 million beneficiaries of Batch C under the N-POWER Programme, while 9,990,862 pupils are being fed through the School Feeding Programme, which employs 128,531 cooks in local communities.
