Two years after: APC/Buhari’s scorecard

IF students are tested and scored term after term and semester after semester, there is no reason why the APC/Muhammadu Buhari administration should not be scored after six school terms or four academic semesters. APC/Muhammadu Buhari promised to fight corruption. Two years hence, corruption has grown wings under them. Humongous sums of money in foreign and local currencies are being picked up, like ownerless tortoise in the bush. At International airports, Bureau de change offices, and in private apartments, mind-boggling sums of money were supposedly picked up by the EFCC. To date, the identity of the owners is shrouded in secrecy.

The Chief of Army Staff of a government fighting corruption has been unable to satisfactorily explain how he came about choice property in Dubai. As top government official, is he allowed by law to keep a foreign account? All his salary since he enlisted in the Army, if he did not spend a dime out of it, was it enough to buy the property in question?  Assuming but not conceding that the funding did not come from illicit activities leveraged upon in previous official capacities but from business activities he and his wives engaged in: do extant regulations allow that?

The other time, the media was awash with reports linking the Chief of Staff of this administration with a GSM company’s efforts to escape stricture; rather than allow EFCC investigate and charge the culprits to court; the case was swept under the carpet. So also the media carried the news of the Minister of Information “borrowing” money from some of the agencies under his Ministry. We need conclusive evidence that the monies were repaid. Our people have a saying: the elephant does not eat the grass underneath its huge frame.

The Secretary to the Government of the Federation and the Director-General of the National Intelligence Agency have both been suspended on allegations of corruption. It is instructive that when the allegation of corruption first broke against the SGF, it was President Buhari himself that cleared him. Now, the same SGF is under suspension over the same allegation.

It is also instructive to note that a high-powered Federal Government probe panel into the matter headed by Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo (now Acting President?) was supposed to have submitted its report a long time ago. I will not be surprised if they hide under the canopy of the President’s medical vacation abroad to again sweep this very serious matter of probity under the carpet.

It has become the policy of the APC/Buhari administration that their anti-corruption war is directed only at the opposition PDP members and dissidents within their own party. Once a well-known thief defects to the APC, he automatically becomes a saint and the so-called anti-corruption agencies look the other way.

The EFCC boss himself has been twice rejected by the Senate because of a report by the DSS, another agency of this administration, indicting him of corruption and the Senate finding him unfit to hold public office.

We can go on and on! How about the mind-boggling corruption going on in the Internally-Displaced Persons’ camps with the reported diversion of foodstuffs and drugs meant for the inmates? To compound their woes, bombs were “mistakenly” dropped on some of the IDPs not long ago. Till today, no satisfactory explanation has been given and no one has been brought to book.

Again, how about the facts as revealed by respectable international agencies that the military top brass have, under the guise of procuring military hardware for the prosecution of the war against insurgency, laundered billions of dollars in safe havens in the United Kingdom and the United States?

The conclusion of the matter is that a government that came into office promising to fight corruption has become as enmeshed in corruption, if not even more, than the government it replaced in power.

When APC/Buhari came to power, a litre of petrol sold for N87.00. The government and its supporters even boasted that petrol will sell for not more than N5 per litre, citing the example of Venezuela’s populist President Hugo Chavez. Today, a litre of petrol sells for N145. Not only that, an APC that bad-mouthed the PDP/Goodluck Jonathan administration, disputing that there was subsidy, is already, according to reports, secretly subsidizing petroleum products and frittering billions of our hard-earned foreign exchange to the bargain.

When APC/Buhari came into office in May 2015, they boasted there will be parity in the Naira exchange rate to the dollar; that is, one Naira will exchange for one dollar. A few weeks ago, over N500 exchanged for one US dollar. The exchange rate was below 200 Naira when they took over. Not only that, the voodoo economics they practice and the cronyism they introduced into the system completely destroyed the economy and laid the Naira prostrate while making a few favoured supporters multi-billionaires overnight. So alarming was this situation and its disastrous impact on the Naira as well as the economy that the Emir of Kano and one-time governor of the Central Bank, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, had to risk his position and safety by crying out – for which they decided to persecute him with threats of double probe and with-hunt.

When APC/Buhari came into office, a bag of rice was N8,000 but it climbed to N22,000, which is way beyond the national minimum wage of N18,000 per month. The alarming price of rice is symptomatic of the skyrocketing prices of other goods, services, and foodstuffs. Respectable international agencies have said these prices will not come down soon because of the pig-headed policies of the APC/Buhari administration.

As prices are going up, so also is inflation climbing up. The Central Bank summersaults now and again. No one knows what policies they are pursuing and who is in charge. The APC/Buhari administration has neither recognizable economic team nor head. President Buhari himself is shrouded in secrecy and we don’t know what to call Yemi Osinbajo – whether vice-president or acting president or coordinator. He is lame duck and has no powers. Under his nose, nepotism of the worst order is perpetrated by Presidency cabals in favour of the North against the rest of us. Osinbajo cuts a pitiable and sorry sight as he makes pretence at governance.

When APC/Buhari took over, this economy was the largest in Africa, overtaking even South Africa; it was also one of the fastest growing in the world. Today, however, it has moved from recession to depression. They have shifted the goal-posts several times of when the economy will get out of recession; instead, it has sunk deeper into the miry clay. Mercifully, efforts by presidential spin doctors to draw the wool over our eyes have been debunked by no less an agency than that of the federal government itself – the National Bureau for Statistics. Seriously sick economy under the watchful eyes of an equally seriously sick and absentee-President – that is what we have! So sad!

In one very important way, the APC/Buhari administration shot itself in the foot by its needless and unnecessary truculence and muscle-flexing in the Niger Delta area, the country’s cash cow. It not only disturbed but also disrupted peace in the region, leading to unrest that shut in millions of barrels of crude and the destruction of oil facilities by resurgent militants, leading to a drastic reduction in the revenue accruing to the nation’s coffers. This in effect led to drastic reduction in the funds going to the states and local governments, compounding their inability to pay salaries, pensions, subventions as well as provide much-needed infrastructure.

The unemployment and poverty rates in the country today are alarming. Never before had it been this bad. Companies are relocating from the country; others are closing shop while churches and events centres are taking over what used to be factories and warehouses. Those in employment are losing their jobs in torrents while young school leavers have little or no hope at all of securing jobs. The few jobs they claim to have created were done in their closets and given only to their cronies. Crime has thus become a thriving business – 419 and internet fraud, kidnapping, ritual murders, assassinations, bank robbery, rape – name them. Suicide and homicides have become commonplace. We are at the threshold, if we have not already arrived, of Thomas Hobbes’s state of nature where “life was brutish, nasty, and short”.

We can go on and on! They made at least 171 campaign promises but have failed to fully fulfil just one. They promised to defeat Boko Haram in six months; two years after, Boko Haram is alive and well. The journalists they took to Sambisa in PR stunt returned to tell us the military admitted to them the war was far from over. The war against insurgency has become the “Amnesty” yanfu-yanfu of a section of the North into which billions of dollars are being sunk. How, then, will they want it to end in a hurry?

Seven other “achievements” of the APC/Buhari administration and I close: One is their disdain for the rule of law and lack of respect for the fundamental human rights of citizens. Since 1999, we have not had a government so lawless. Two is their desperation to kill the opposition and foist a one-party state on us. Three is their shameless favouritism of a section and religion over the others. Four is the ascendancy of the Fulani herdsmen as the fourth most bestial terrorist groups in the world. Five, the rate at which this government goes a-borrowing, there is no way future generations of Nigerians will not go a-sorrowing. Six: Power supply has gone from bad to worse. Finally, at no time in the history of this country has a government been this directionless, clueless, rudderless, leaderless, divisive, fundamentalist, sectional, incompetent, and incapable of governance.

Last word: Top government officials told us they were just now teaching the so-called Chibok girls how to speak good English! Touted Form Five students about to write Physics WAEC exams? In what language did they study for five years and were going to write the exam three years’ ago – Hausa or Fulfude? Methinks the true story of the Chibok girls is yet to be told.