Before Buhari, Nigeria Had Good Luck -By Ezinwanne Onwuka

Undoubtedly, Woke Soyinka was right when he described Nigeria as a crumbling edifice on the edge of collapse. Africa’s most populous black nation is moving towards becoming a failed State. All thanks to bad administration!

The failure of the Buhari-led APC government in steering the economy and securing Nigerians is dishonorable. The extent of the looting of the public treasury, nepotism, uneven response to insecurity events in different parts of the country, open disregard for the rule of law etc. have, in one way or the other, eroded competence in Buhari’s leadership.

Before the presidential elections of March 2015, former Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan’s international reputation was not a strong one. Jonathan was initially something of an accidental president who, despite his relative inexperience, ascended to lead his country when his predecessor, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, passed away in office in 2010.

Buhari

In 2011, Jonathan surprised many observers in and out of Nigeria by securing the ruling party’s support for the presidential election and ultimately emerging victorious.

Mr. Jonathan, who had endeared himself to majority of ordinary Nigerians with his “I had no shoes” speech, promised a break from the old ways of doing things. His campaign slogan which was tagged “A Breath of Fresh Air” promised a break from the old and mostly retrogressive way the country had been governed in the past.
Among the candidates for the 2011 presidential election, Jonathan appealed to the masses – this was a person they saw as one of them; someone who had experienced their pains and hardship promising to alleviate those pains. Nothing could be more reassuring.

However, his tenure was characterized by soaring insecurity and instability in Northern Nigeria as Boko Haram gained strength and territory. If anything tore the Jonathan government apart, none did as the Boko Haram insurgency. The government struggled for years for a response while the bloodthirsty group ran amok, killing, maiming and displacing Nigerians in mostly northern states in its bid to form an Islamic caliphate within Nigeria. Though his administration fell largely short of expectations, Mr. Jonathan performed impressively while in office.

But as the votes were counted in March 2015, Jonathan conceded defeat to Muhammadu Buhari, famously asserting that “nobody’s ambition is worth the blood of any Nigerian.” It was an unprecedented and courageous act in Nigerian politics, and it caught many Nigerians and Nigeria-watchers by surprise. He may have wielded power ineffectually or corruptly, but in refusing to cling to it illegitimately, Goodluck Jonathan altered the course of Nigerian history.

Goodluck Jonathan

Six years into Buhari’s presidency, public trust in the Nigerian government appears to be in decline. Hunger, extreme poverty, insecurity, nauseating propaganda, poor performance in health, education, socio-cultural infrastructural decay are the gigantic hallmarks of this APC regime manned by incurable and deceitful bunch of egocentric political charlatans.

One notable achievement of the APC regime that is evident is their expertise in mismanaging diversity by allowing disappearing old ethnic and religious fault lines to reopen in greater fissures with drums of bitterness, separation and disintegration. The dangerous level of insecurity and destruction of the fragile unity between the Northern and Southern geo-political divide reveals how bad a manager and leader Buhari is.

The poverty rate in the country is alarming and has never been this high. One cannot help but wonder whether the Buhari government policies and interventions are realistically lifting Nigerians out of poverty or pulling us more back into it? Growing rates of poverty in the country signal a failure on the part of the APC-led government in achieving the promises made and will continue to build distrust.

Need we remind the APC of what the exchange rate was before their “super exciting policies” brought the Naira to its knees? Or, perhaps, the prices of commodities before their arrival on the scene. In a nation that the leadership is quick to reel off its achievements at every slightest opportunity, and, yet, her citizens wallow in abject poverty which make them turn at the same leadership they voted into power with dirty insults, certainly should raise a lot of questions.

During the Jonathan years, there was a conscious and pragmatic effort to reduce bureaucratic red tapes hindering the smooth running of the day-to-day affairs of the nation. We know what it is like today to want to do business in Nigeria. Conversely, in the Buhari years, the more they say they are addressing it, the worse it gets.

The opposition party, PDP was not trying to paint the ruling party black when it lamented that, “the Buhari-led All Progressives Congress government has turned our nation into a wasteland, devastated her economy, shattered our national dreams, crushed the hope of citizens and set our country backward. Under President Buhari, May 29 has become a day of grieving for Nigerians; a day for commemoration of failed promises, reversal of gains achieved by past leaders and retrogression in our body polity as a nation.” The statement was factual.

It is on this note that I would like to remark that those still praising Buhari are liars and hypocrites.

Ezinwanne Onwuka, Cross River State.
ezinwanne.dominion@gmail.com