There’s always a good place in history for any President who wants to succeed. The starting point is to define his goals, his vision and the purposes of his presidency in a way that gives coherence to his administration and to his campaign promises. He cannot achieve these goals, this vision and purposes if they are packaged in a mishmash manner. Neither will tremendous moral strength, pontification nor raw power bring these desires about, because success has a pattern. It will remain elusive if a President fails to walk the talk.                                                       

It,therefore, makes good reading to hear President Muhammadu  Buhari last week lament the level of excruciating poverty in the country. He was reported to have said that the situation makes him uncomfortable. He spoke during the breaking of fast at Ask Villa penultimate Monday, noting that too many Nigerians are currently unable to find something to eat. His exact words as reported by the media:”When I drive round the country, what upsets me very much is the status of our poor people in this country – you see the so-called Almajiris with torn clothes, with plastic bowls. They are looking basically for what to eat”. 

According to the President, the question of education to them is a luxury. He blamed the elite for failing to address the welfare of, and educational needs, of the less privileged in the society. He, therefore, urged the privileged Nigerians to support his administration to ameliorate the situation by providing succour to the people.                                                    

  The President listed the school feeding project, “TraderMoni” and other people-friendly  programmes by his administration to better the lot of the downtrodden. One can only side with the President on his pain, his concern about the extent that poverty has ravaged the vast majority of Nigerians. Unfortunately, as usual with this administration, to throw the blame at the elite for which he(the President) is preeminently one of them, is to live in denial. As the guiding force behind both the development of legislations and making things happen in the country, the President needs reminding that the buck stops with him. He must lead the way. He will be judged by how he’s able or unable to make life better or worse for Nigerians.                                    

If you ask me how Buhari’s Presidency has faired in four years, I will say the President’s knowledge of the way government works is superficial at best. There’s a big difference between campaign promises and governing. Campaigning involves cheap shots, but governing is facing realities of immediate sort. Fast forward to 2014, when  as a presidential candidate, Buhari’s was throwing  blistering accusations at President Goodluck Jonathan. Among other things, he accused the then president of running the country aground.

That under  Jonathan’s watch, poverty had reached unacceptable level and the country risked being a failed state if Jonathan was reelected. The only thing Jonathan was not accused of, was being responsible for  miscarriages that some Nigerian women went through . It was that bad. Many voters fell for it. But, you see, hypocrites lose their footing the very moment they hold other people accountable for the standards they cannot keep. It’s an irony.                                              

  But, as the old saying goes, “Be careful what you wish for, because you may get it.  So, Buhari  was elected President  in March 2015, with so much expectations, among them, to reduce substantially, the level  of poverty and misery index in the country, which is the sum of unemployment, underemployment and inflation rates  within a particular period. Let’s get this fact straightaway : Nobody is saying that President Buhari’s has the magic wand to make Nigeria great overnight or eradicate poverty with the speed of light.                            

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It’s interesting to hear him say how sorrowful he feels seeing most Nigerians ravaged by extreme poverty as if their faces were carved out from stones. A President is garlanded when the conditions of his people are looking up. To a great extent too,  he’s held liable for the misfortunes of the people. The reason is this: To  borrow the words of Donald Regan(One-time Chief of Staff to President Ronald Reagan) who said in his memoir that a “President is present as a matter of luck and courtesy rather than by any rights”. That’s why an elected President must make things happen or prevent certain things from happening.

Again, one is not saying that the Buhari presidency is responsible for the poverty in the country, but he has not been able to initiate concrete programmes of action to stop it from getting to the present, frightening level, to the extent that about 91.6 million Nigerians are reported to be living in poverty, making the World Poverty Clock to place Nigeria as the “poverty capital of the world”.  Also, during her visit to Nigeria last year, the British Prime Minister, Theresa May, painted a grim picture of economic inequality in Nigeria,where people are living below $1.90 a day, making our country, ‘home to the highest number of world’s very poor people’.  Last year, the American-based Brookings  Institution published a chilling report about poverty in Nigeria entitled:”The start of a New Narrative”. The only response of government to that report was to shift the goalpost, blamed it on the previous government.

On the status of almajiris in the North that the President referred to, this is why that scourge may fester for a very long time, notwithstanding the challenge that it poses to the security of the region. Statistics show that there are no fewer than 10 million street beggars in the north as at 2012.

That figure may have doubled now because of the Boko Haram insurgency. The previous government’s commitment through intervention in building special schools for the almajiris  was sabotaged by the political elite in the North. For instance, Governor Abdullahi Ganduje of Kano state dismissed the Jonathan’s initiative as a poorly executed and wrong policy which was at variance with “modern realities”. But it’s good to hear  the position of Governor Aminu Bello Masari of Katsina state on the matter. He acknowledges that the almajiri system is not a reflection of Islamic ideals, that it’s a breeding ground for religious extremism.                           

In the same way, the plan by the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, the Most Rev. Matthew Kukah to train over 10 million almajiris in the North in skill acquisition of their choice, was resisted by the Muslim Rights Concern(MURIC), saying it was a ploy to convert them to Christianity. This was contained in a press statement signed on January 2, 2019, by Prof. Ishaq Akintola, Director and founder of the organisation. He said any policy to rid the north of street urchins must be in the hands of Muslims in the region. He described Kukah’s plan as a “Trojan horse”. That’s who we are, always playing the ostrich.                      

Altogether, poverty level will grow more, and Mr. President may have reason to lament even more if he fails to fix the problems that fuel poverty and unemployment in the country. This has gone beyond party matter. The President’s second term is about to begin. Nigerians will continue to tie him to the problems of poverty, unemployment and general insecurity in the country until they begin to see visible, tangible changes that will impact their lives in a positive way. The time of talking through the hat is over. It’s time to walk the talk.