In view of recent happenings and developments in the country, it is important that we review how Nigeria and Nigerians have fared in the last four years under the administration of the President Buhari led APC.
1. Promise of Restructuring: The issue of restructuring was a cardinal agenda in the manifesto of the All Progressives Congress (APC). The APC stated thus: “To achieve this laudable programme APC government shall restructure the country, devolve power to the units, with the best practices of federalism and eliminate unintended paralysis of the center.”
Rather than fulfilling this promise to Nigerians, the APC instead setup a Committee headed by the Governor of Kaduna State, Mallam El’Rufai. The Committee submitted its report on the 25th of January 2018, three years after assuming office and the recommendation of that committee is yet to be implemented till date.
2. Fuel Subsidy: During an interview in 2011, the then Presidential Candidate of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), General Muhammadu Buhari has this to say about fuel subsidy…
“WHO is subsidizing who? The Nigerian oil industry was developed with Nigerian capital. Most of the experts are Nigerians, if you go to the fields. It is Nigerian capital; it is Nigerian oil. What I understand that Nigeria should charge Nigerians is the cost of one barrel at the wellhead and then the cost of transportation to the refinery, the cost of refining it and its cost at the pump. If anybody says he is subsidizing anything, he is a fraud. So all these people talking about subsidy, who is subsidizing who?” General Muhammadu Buhari (rtd), 2011
But the story changed when he was elected President in 2015. Instead of living up to his words, President Buhari and his Party, the APC did not only sustained the fuel subsidy he claimed was a fraud, he also increased fuel prize from the N87 under the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) led administration to the current N145 per liter of fuel.
3. Medical Tourism Abroad: The then Candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), while speaking in a town hall meeting in London with the Nigerian community on February 22, 2015 has this to say. “Why should Nigerian President not fly with other Nigerian public! Why do I need to embark on a foreign trip as a president with a huge crowd with public fund? Why do I need to go for foreign medical trip if we cannot make our hospital functional? Why do we need to send our children to school abroad if we cannot develop our university to compete with the foreign ones? Why, and why must our people be servants to the foreigners in the midst of plenty? I can go on and on.
I came here to the UK and I chose to trek just to make sure I send a message back home to some people who wish us dead. This is not my struggle; it is our collective efforts to save Nigeria from those who have failed us for 16 years.”
President Buhari has gone to the United Kingdom more than five times for the treatment of an undisclosed ailment since assuming office in 2015. Apart from treating himself in the London hospital against the promise he made to end medical tourism by improving the quality of healthcare delivery in the country, his son, Yusuf was flown in an air ambulance to the UK for treatment of injuries he sustained in a power bike crash in Abuja. After his treatment, the boy was flown back to the country in a chartered aircraft; a situation which triggered so much public outcry.
4. Wastages and management of public funds: In the same town hall meeting in London with Nigerian Community, General Buhari also spoke eloquently on how to curb wastages if elected into office as President of Nigeria. “One of the major killers of our economy apart from corruption is waste. Our scarce resources are being plundered away very carelessly and unnecessarily wasted. Let me give an instance, presently, there are more than 6 aircraft in the presidential fleet. What do you call that? Billions of naira is budgeted every year for the maintenance of these aircraft not to talk of operational cost and other expenses.
You may want to ask what a Nigerian President is doing with so many aircraft when a Prime Minister of Britain fly around using the same public aircraft like an ordinary Briton. Go and check and compare with that of any developed country in the world, the office of the Nigerian President is a very expensive one in spite of our high level of poverty, lack and joblessness.
Despite all these, you still find a Nigerian Minister spending about N10billion to charter an aircraft for just one year. Now, for me, when we come into office, all these waste will be blocked and properly channeled into our economy.
We intend for instance, to bring back our National carrier, the Nigerian airways. We shall do this by bringing all the aircraft in the presidential fleet into the Nigerian airways and within a year increase the fleet into about 20. What is the difference between me and those who elected us to represent them, absolutely nothing?”
It is important to note here that President Buhari of the APC is still maintaining the 10 Presidential fleets he inherited from the previous administration of the Jonathan led government of the PDP with astronomical increases in the budgets for the maintenance of this aircraft.
Recent studies show that, the Nigerian government has proposed to spend N7.30 billion (7,297,022,065) on the Presidential Air Fleet (PAF) in the 2019 budget proposal, according to details obtained from the Budget Office of the Federation.
The proposed expenditure is about 67 per cent higher than the N4.37 billion appropriations in the 2017 budget, which consisted of N3.97 billion for recurrent and N399.5 million for capital projects.
The proposed expenditure is also a little higher than the N7.26 billion appropriations for PAF in the 2018 budget, with N4.3 billion recurrent expenditures and N2.8 billion capital expenditure.
The proposed amount includes N2.9 billion (2,936,125,212) earmarked for capital expenditure and N4.3 billion (4,360,896,853) proposed for recurrent expenditure.
5. On the collaboration with Nigeria neighbors to fight insurgencies in the country, this is what the then Presidential Candidate of APC said in a town hall meeting in Kano State on February 3, 2015. “I still wonder seeing Chadian and Cameroonian troops coming to Nigeria to fight Boko Haram for us! This is serious! This tells you how insensitive and careless the leadership is.”
But in July 25, 2015, just few months after assuming office, the same President Buhari that kicked against foreign collaboration to fight Boko Haram under the PDP administration was in Yaoundé, the Cameroonian capital to seek cooperation with the government and people of Cameroon on how to fight insurgency in Nigeria.
He was also in Niger Republic on June 3, 2015 and Chad on September 5, 2015 to discuss with Presidents of this countries on the same security collaboration towards eliminating Boko Haram.
6. One of the major campaign promises of the Buhari/APC in 2014/15 was the creation of three million jobs annually.
Instead of creating three million jobs per year which could have culminated in a total of 12 million jobs in four years, the unemployment rate under the Buhari administration has risen from 18.8 per cent in Q3 2017 to 23.1 per cent in the third quarter of 2018 according to a recent report by the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS). According to the Bureau’s Labour Force Statistics – Volume I released on December 19, 2018, the total number of people classified as unemployed- which means they did nothing at all or worked for a few hours (under 20 hours a week) rose from 17.6 million in Q4 2017 to 20.9 million in Q3 2018.
7. Generation, transmission and distribution of at least 20,000 MW of electricity within four years and increasing to 50,000 MW with a view to achieving 24/7 uninterrupted power supply within 10 years.
Instead of fixing the power as promised, the Minster of Power, Works and Housing said the following. “The problem of electricity is slowly being solved, one by one. Anybody will tell you he will do magic; tell him, ‘How?’ He should explain to you. We inherited 800 containers for power equipment left in the port for 10 years. President Buhari gave us approval, and we have recovered 690.”
8. Recently, after the Wednesday weekly Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting, the Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, flanked by the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed told Nigerians that the government is returning toll plazas on our roads.
When the government of former President Goodluck Jonathan of the PDP made a similar move in 2011, Mohammed kicked against it vehemently, referring Jonathan to his inaugural speech. This were his words.
“Perhaps the President needs to read his own inaugural speech again so he can redirect his energy toward making life more abundant for the people, instead of inflicting sufferings of Biblical proportion on them.
“Is the federal government aware of the deplorable state of the roads across the country before contemplating the re-introduction of toll gates? No one should ever be made to pay for services not rendered.
It’s time to #RescueNigeria
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