I doubt if President Muhammadu Buhari is a happy man at the moment. I wager the grandpa would be grinding his teeth in his moment of solitude. And he should because things aren’t just working; certainly not the way he had envisaged when he was passionately campaigning to lead Africa’s most populous, and by far the most complex, nation.
At this moment and in these times, I guess the old man would be wondering why things are the way they are. Everything Buhari had ever wished to do for the good of the people had crashed to debris. He promised to give the naira fresh wings so it could fly in the same space with the US dollar. That plan failed.
He promised to fight the incubus of corruption that has locked down the country since Independence. Here, he failed. In his seven years, it has been a feast of corruption, a bazaar of wanton looting. The Buhari government is nothing short of a gathering of locusts and caterpillars, a nest of pillagers, plunderers and economic vampires.
Under Buhari, a man who likes to wear a fake badge of integrity, oil theft has risen to a historic high. After Mexico, notorious for many vices, from drugs to financial crimes, Nigeria holds an inglorious world record: country with highest rate of oil theft. The thievery in the oil sector is historical. It predates the Buhari years. Indeed, crude oil is nectar for the crooks. Whether in the advanced West, South America, Asia and Africa, where there’s oil, there’s a concomitant garrison of economic vampires.
But under Buhari, the economic leeches have come to the party, full time. Experts say a good 80 percent of Nigeria’s crude is stolen. Some say about 95 per cent of oil produced does not get to the terminal. Meaning, between the point of production and the terminals, some persons help themselves; divert the oil and sell ahead, usually at cheap rate, of Nigeria’s official crude volume. Whodunit? Nobody owns up to this evil. Yet, it thrives and keeps thriving. Nigeria currently does not meet her OPEC quota because a good fraction of what was produced has been diverted, sold and the money stashed away in private accounts in Nigeria and offshore.
President Buhari was, and still is, fully aware of Nigeria’s crude oil theft. Just months in office in July 2015, he issued a directive banning 113 vessels from lifting crude oil within Nigeria’s territorial waters. By September of the same year, he issued a counter order unbanning the vessels. What happened? Banning the vessels was based on intelligence that some vessels operate in Nigerian waters just to steal crude oil. There has been reported cases of discrepancies between the volume of crude oil lifted by the vessels from various Nigerian terminals and the volume actually discharged offshore to buyers. Those versed in the oily business would tell you that stolen crude sells faster than those channeled through the legitimate vessels and routes. Reason: the crooks sell them off for cheap and return to steal more.
One had thought that with the high level of integrity mouthed by the image launderers of Buhari and given his experience as both a former and extant Minister of Petroleum Resources, he would be on a vantage prop to tame the bogey of oil theft. Not so, the President appears overwhelmed. The cancer has spread wider and deeper. Till date, the big illegal oil bunkerers are living large and smiling to the bank while depriving the nation of good cash to finance her budget. Leadership is needed to rein in the crooks or at least, stem the tide. Buhari is not that leadership, pitiably. But enough of the crude shock.
Let’s talk anti-corruption. Under Buhari, the anti-graft agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), was caught in the vicious vortex of graft and greed. The thief-catcher became the suspected thief. The muddle deepened so much it was hard to separate the wolves from the sheep. A certain Ibrahim Magu, a police officer nominated by Buhari to head the EFCC, but indicted by the Senate as ‘unfit to hold any office’, was nonetheless retained by Buhari. Difficult to understand why the man who claims to be fighting corruption and a bastion of integrity, would tolerate a man investigated and tagged as ‘unfit’ by the Senate, let alone allowing such a man to lead an agency that ought to be fighting corruption. But that is the miracle of Buhari. The magic of a man who has shown neither capacity nor competence and is oblivious of the reality that he leads a nation of over 200 million people in the 21st century.
Yet, we should count Buhari lucky. He’s lucky to lead a country where ethno-religious configuration defines a majority of the people. Any wonder that even with his fatuous failure and open show of incompetence, there are still people who rise to his defence. Is it not a crying shame that despite his atrocious mutilation of the economy, some persons are still woofing ‘Sai Buhari.’
Take a look at some of the economic indices. By 2015 when he replaced an inept Goodluck Jonathan, inflation was at a heady 9 percent. Nigerians thought that was unacceptable and rather too high for a nation that counts herself as the Giant of Africa. But, like Americans would say, you ain’t seen nothing yet. By 2021, six years after, the Buhari magic has doubled the inflation figure to 18.12 percent. By February, 2022, it uncharacteristically dropped to 15.7 percent. Unemployment in 2015 was standing at 8.19 percent. By 2021, it had jumped to 33.28 percent. The magic continues. Debt stock by 2015 was N12.6 trillion. That’s rather too small for a Buhari that does not indulge in small ambition. So, by 2021, Mr. Buhari had raised the nation’s debt profile to N32.92 trillion. That’s more befitting for a giant. And the miracle in all of this is that Nigeria is still borrowing. Buhari has borrowed Nigeria into a slippery hole. Coming out is near-impossible. What to do? Borrow more and burrow deeper.
President Buhari is a man of big dreams. When he inherited an exchange rate of N197 to a dollar in 2015, he obviously considered it too little and demeaning to the naira and the nation at large. Pronto, he revved the nation’s economic engine and by 2021, exchange rate has more than doubled to a ‘respectable’ N410 to a dollar. This, still, is infra dig. Ever since, in the most hallowed principle of Buharinomics, the exchange rate is now standing at a ‘respectable’ rate of N570 to a dollar. In Buharinomics, big is better.
The implication is that a baby handed over to Buhari in 2015 is now almost dead in barely seven years. The Nigerian economy is that baby. While under Buhari’s watch, the baby has suffered multiple sclerosis, has bled profusely and is now anaemic. The symptoms are writ large: high cost of everything – from bread to butter; food to fuel.
Lesson: In politics, all that glitters is not gold. Buhari glittered in promises, but in practice, he’s a rusty, crusted clay.