Buhari’s 35 achievements: A critique

Last Friday, August 21, 2020, marked exactly one year since the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), inaugurated his 43-member cabinet. In celebration of the day, the presidency listed 35 projects it claimed to have achieved in the last 12 months. Sincerely, these so-called accomplishments should have been compressed into not more than 20 as many of the things listed cannot by any stretch of imagination qualify for achievements. Moreover, the checklist to be used in coming up with these nebulous realisations should have been the “Next Level” Agenda of the President and his party, the All Progressives Congress.

I will rather not bore the readers with repeating the so-called achievements on this page. Rather, I will limit myself to those ones I disagree with.

On the restoration of the budget implementation cycle to the January-to-December Calendar, with the signing of the 2020 Appropriation Bill in December 2019, while this is commendable, the President failed to sign a constitution amendment bill that would have made this a statutory practice in 2018. What happens if there is no love lost between the National Assembly and the Executive as happened during the eighth National Assembly under Bukola Saraki as Senate President and Yakubu Dogara as the Speaker of House of Representatives? It is better to have this new normal stipulated in the constitution rather than leave it to the discretion of the federal lawmakers.

Approval of N10bn Intervention Fund for the upgrade of the Akanu Ibiam International Airport, Enugu. To my own mind, release of money for a project does not call for celebration. Jubilation should come after the successful completion of the project. Many projects have been funded in the past with the work shoddily done or uncompleted.

Ordering a forensic audit of the Niger Delta Development Commission is not an achievement. In spite of the forensic audit, the recent public hearings on the interventionist agency by the Senate and House of Representatives committees of the National Assembly have revealed that the audit is not following due process and what should have been done in six months is lingering and embroiled in protracted controversies.

Performing the ground-breaking for the University of Transportation in Daura is an investment by the CCECC in Nigeria. On a similar note, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo performed the ground-breaking for a new Wagon Assembly Plant in Kajola, Ogun State, which will produce rolling stock for Nigeria’s new Rail Lines, and create jobs for thousands of Nigerians. My take on these groundbreakings is that they are not really an achievement until they are completed. Celebrating groundbreaking is like a student who is euphoric with matriculation when the main achievement lies with the convocation.

On the issue of commencement of the community policing initiative and approval of N13.3bn take-off grant, it bears noting that community policing is not the brainchild of this regime but an inherited policy. It was piloted in Enugu State in 2003 under former President Olusegun Obasanjo and launched by ex-Inspector General of Police, Tafa Balogun. In any event, the impact of this has yet to be felt in the area of crime fighting.

The commencement of the construction of the Ajaokuta–Kaduna-Kano  gas pipeline as well as the launch of Presidential Artisanal Gold Mining Scheme cannot be classified as achievements but projects being initiated the impact of which cannot be currently gauged until they are completed and put to good use.

The same way the establishment of the National Humanitarian Coordination Committee and the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 are not, stricto sensu, achievements. It is the performance of these committees that will show if they are really achievements.  Even the release of a N10bn grant to the Lagos State Government and a N5bn grant to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control to support the coronavirus response is not an accomplishment.

The Department of Petroleum Resources’ commencement of the bidding round for 57 marginal fields is also not an achievement of any kind. The bidding has yet to be finalised. In time past, similar biddings were shrouded in secrecy and non-transparent. Companies and people without the technical know-how were also favoured in time past. I do hope this present effort by the DPR will not be enmeshed in similar controversies.

A National Special Public Works programme under which 774,000 young Nigerians are being recruited for three months’ menial jobs isn’t an achievement in the true sense of the word. These volunteers among whom are university graduates are to be paid N20,000 for three months from October – December 2020. What’s the value of such remuneration considering the devaluation of the naira and the low purchasing power of the currency? Even artisans who carry out labour work earn an average of N3,000 per day. This is patently under-employment.

The claim that the first of the dozen A-29 Super Tucano light attack, combat and reconnaissance aircraft ordered by Nigeria from the US has successfully completed its inaugural flight at the production facility is not an achievement.  As reported, the full fleet is scheduled for delivery in 2021. Until Nigeria takes delivery of the fleet and they are used in helping to curb insecurity, this cannot be classified as a success story. By the way, the fleet was supposed to have been delivered in full this year.

More than five million young Nigerians applying for the 400,000 places to be filled for the next batch of the N-Power programme is not an achievement.  It is an indictment that young tertiary education graduates are scrambling for a N30,000 per month two-year voluntary job. If job opportunities were to be abundant, will our future leaders be jostling for this kind of under-employment?

Presidential assent to a landmark bill amending the Companies and Allied Matters Act which was listed as an achievement is at present generating a lot of controversies especially from the churches and Non-Governmental Organisations. The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project in an August 22, 2020 open letter to the President has requested him to urgently rescind his assent to the CAMA 2020, and to send the legislation back to the National Assembly to address its fundamental flaws, including deleting the repressive provisions of the Act, particularly Sections 839, 842, 843, 844 and 850 contained in Part F of the Act. On its part, the Christian Association of Nigeria said, “…the satanic section of the controversial and ungodly law is Section 839 (1) & (2) which empowers the Commission to suspend trustees of an association (in this case, the church) and appoint the interim managers to manage the affairs of the association for some given reasons.”

In truth, the ministers and indeed the government could possibly have achieved better if not for the COVID-19 pandemic which has impacted negatively on the economy. Be that as it may, it doesn’t still look good to start listing pedestrian and routine activities as achievements.

I congratulate all the ministers on their one year in office and charge them to work harder to achieve better results in their second year. All hands must be on deck to remove Nigeria from the unenviable position of being the number one country in the world with extreme poverty. The increased unemployment rate from about 23 per cent in 2018 to 27.1 per cent in 2020, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, must also be tackled with renewed vigour through diversification of the economy and policies that will attract foreign direct investment as well as private sector participation in commerce and industry. It is also hoped that the challenge of insecurity and corruption plaguing the nation will be contained so that the country will be more livable than it is at present.