by Festus Eriye
In another five days Nigeria will close the Muhammadu Buhari chapter with the inauguration on May 29 of Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the country’s 16th president.
This isn’t just a ritual changing of the guard; it’s another opportunity for a prodigiously blessed nation to try again at actualising its true potential.
It was the same eight years ago when the then opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) toppled Goodluck Jonathan’s Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) administration following a campaign anchored on the promise of change.
At that point the ruling party had been in power for 16 years after winning a comprehensive victory to close out the era of military rule. By 1999, Nigerians had become well and truly fed up with a succession of military strongmen who were accountable to no one but their small cliques, and were just as incompetent and corrupt as the politicians they painted black.
If repeatedly shooting their way to power was political banditry of the worst sort, their casual annulment of the June 12, 1993 election won by Chief M. K. O. Abiola, left the nation traumatised. After that grievous mistake, not even the loudest guns or biggest tanks in the armoury could stabilise the polity.
The short-lived Interim National Government (ING) headed by Chief Ernest Shonekan was akin to the military attempting to stop flood waters bursting forth from a breached dam with their palms. It didn’t work.
General Sani Abacha would revert to tried and tested intimidation – unleashing the worst form of totalitarian rule the nation had ever witnessed. It didn’t work either. By then a people used to meekly accepting military rule had lost their fear and discovered resistance. Something changed in the mood of the country.
General Ibrahim Babangida spent close to a decade manipulating a transition to nowhere – acquiring the moniker Maradona in the process. Abacha, who was just a brute not known for his originality, tried more of the same – clamping critics into detention on trumped up coup plotting charges.
He even tried to shed his fatigues for a babanriga as civilian president only to be thwarted by death. Following his mysterious demise, the same junta that had tried every dodge to remain in power couldn’t wait to return the country to democratic rule.
In less than a year, the General Abdulsalami Abubakar regime got the transition done and Chief Olusegun Obasanjo was inaugurated as president. Such was the enthusiasm and expectation that a country repressed by military dictatorship could begin to heal and make progress again. That desire was reflected in a robust 52.3% voter turnout at the 1999 presidential election.
For the next 16 years, Obasanjo’s PDP would govern the country with increasingly reckless abandon. For all the good he did, his tenure would be marred by abuse of power supervising illegal impeachment of governors in several states, unlawfully seizing allocations for local governments in Lagos State and finally trying to procure an unconstitutional third term for himself.
Such was the party’s grip on power at state and federal levels that its one-time national chairman, Chief Vincent Ogbulafor, openly boasted in 2008 that it would govern Nigeria for 60 unbroken years. But in a classic example of famous last words, just seven years later, they found themselves out on their ears in the opposition wilderness.
Up till today many PDP members can’t understand how they lost power to a coalition of strange bedfellows who were only held together by their will to win and by a correct reading of the tenor of the times. It’s no mystery. A party that was elected to do great things at a time when the global economy was favourable, spent its time in power becoming a byword for complacency, insensitivity, incompetence and corruption.
Nigerians expected simple things: regular electricity, good roads, schools, hospitals, a sound economy and security. Instead, the administration served up an unending stream of scandals. Contracts were awarded, funds disbursed and the job left undone.
At the height of the PDP mess, despite spending billions of naira the insurgency in the Northeast threatened to overtake large swathes of the North. As would be revealed later, monies that had been voted for fighting Boko Haram extremists were casually disbursed to party chieftains for political ends.
It was no surprise, therefore, that an antsy populace easily embraced the promise of change offered by the opposition.
Buhari campaigned on a slate that offered to transform the economy, resolve insecurity and deal with pervasive corruption.
As he leaves office the jury is out as to how well he has done on the three core areas for which he sought power. The country was already headed for a recession by the time he became president. Critically, oil prices were headed south – unlike the heyday of PDP rule when a barrel of crude sold for $100 or more.
Just as we were exiting the recession the COVID-19 pandemic hit, with the resultant lockdown further depressing the fragile economy. So, for all the trains that are now running, the bridges and roads that were built, under his watch inflation hit an all-time high and the naira collapsed to record lows against major world currencies.
Inexplicably, the government would approve an ill-thought out naira redesign, triggering a cash scarcity that devastated many small scale businesses – impoverishing many in the process. A policy that was supposed to bring cash into the banking system ironically ended up increasing hoarding and damaging financial inclusion.
But the Buhari administration makes the point that despite all the challenges with the recession, pandemic and low crude prices, it managed to do more with less in the area of infrastructure than the PDP governments that came before it.
To his credit, Boko Haram is no longer headline news like they were in 2015. But that gain has been vitiated by the spread of kidnapping, banditry and mass killings by herders. There are frightening estimates of the numbers of people killed in the last eight years that are floating around. That is certainly not the sort of change voters bargained for when they looked to the former general to address Jonathan’s shortcomings in the area of security.
On corruption, the president’s personal integrity remains unimpeached. However, no one can say that corruption has been eliminated. In the last few years many prominent serving and former office holders had found themselves on trial for graft. But all that he’s done thus far is like scratching the tip of the iceberg.
So has Buhari delivered on his promise of change? Depending on which side of the fence you sit, there’s plenty of evidence to say he’s done so positively or negatively. There are many who even argue that beyond the economy, insecurity and corruption, the country is now more divided than it was eight years.
The debate about his legacy will continue long after he’s retired to Daura. Perhaps with time and perspective he will be judged less harshly than those who came before him.
Many were hopeful in 2015 that things would change for the better. Perhaps in making ‘Renewed Hope’ the slogan of his own campaign, Tinubu acknowledges that there’s plenty still to be done in virtually all areas that his party promised to make a difference in eight years ago.
Despite his central role in midwifing the Buhari administration, he would spend the bulk its time in office as an outsider looking in. The incumbent made it clear from day one at Eagle Square that he wouldn’t be beholden to even those who helped him climb up after memorably declaring in his inaugural speech that he was ‘for everybody and for nobody.’
Despite that, many who opposed his running for president did on account of Buhari’s failings; not because he was in government or exerted overweening influence – but simply for facilitating the rise of the APC government. They were angry because the ‘change’ they envisaged had not materialised.
Now, in Tinubu’s immortal words: emilokan! It’s his chance to turn things around. Forlorn hope must not just transform into ‘renewed hope.’ Nigerians desperately want to go beyond merely hoping against hope; they expect change for the better. With his hands now on the controls, he must stand and deliver.