Had Goodluck Jonathan defeated Buhari Muhammadu in the 2015 presidential election, Nigeria might not have come out of recession; he lacked the fiscal discipline to manage the economy, no disrespect to Jonathan, a very good man but goodness on its own never changed anything in history but brutal hardheaded leadership; and he made Nigerians wallow in the dark his entire period in office.
With less money than what Jonathan got, President Buhari Muhammadu did his best to steer the ship of state away from possible depression. The bane of leaders in third world countries is the total collapse of real governance, there is no stability in the pursuit of policies. The level of abandoned projects in Nigeria is befuddling. Every new government starts new projects and throws away all projects by the previous administration. They borrow money to start projects and never see them through to the end. This is not the case in Asia, irrespective of the previous party /government in power; new administrations pursue projects and complete them for the common good.
The Buhari Muhammadu administration towers above Jonathan’s because projects inherited from the Goodluck Jonathan administration aren’t abandoned, they are investigated in the first instance and if established that they are not bogus projects awarded to cronies and if these tasks satisfy the aspiration of communities of people for whom the jobs are directed, these ventures are finished. He needs to be commended even though I am not his supporter any longer.
Under Jonathan, states couldn’t pay salaries and even though it is not the responsibility of the Federal Government to pay salaries, bailout funds were given to states to do so. And now the government is on the tail of governors to recover said cash. Need I say also that even though the economy was rebased under Jonathan, it was just a boondoggle not felt by Nigerians and cash had to be borrowed to pay federal workers.
We never hear of wastages of the ecological funds under Buhari anymore but we once did under Jonathan. These funds are released for critical projects and not for the sake of elections. How was Norway in 2014 able to raise its sovereign wealth fund to $829 billion from a paltry amount set up in 1990, and everyone in Norway theoretically became a millionaire in Norway’s local currency?
Probing people under the guise of fighting corruption is not the answer to Nigeria’s problems but the completion of abandoned projects. These projects are in every corner and bend in Nigeria and completing them would serve the needs of Nigerians more. Here is where the country needs to deploy civil servants to supervise the completion of outstanding jobs instead of employment for quota basis and for its sake.
Legislation should be put in place to prevent politicians from awarding white elephant as a pretext to lining their pockets with public money.
The main challenge of the Buhari administration is his failure to tackle the security challenges all over the place in the country. His media men are interested only in the glare of publicity and do not have the correct strategy in communicating his achievements to the Nigerian people.
Simon Abah,
Abuja
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