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•In spite of successes in some areas, certain promises by the outgoing president have been left unfulfilled
By Henry Akubuiro
It would be uncharitable to deny the outgoing Nigerian president of credits in different sectors for some of the brilliant things he has done right during his eight-year presidency. Yet there are some big promises made by his administration, which were greeted with resounding cheers, that have faded into oblivion, like midnight games in the wild.
From lingering security challenges to elusive Chibok and Dapchi girls, petroleum subsidy removal, Second Nigeria Bridge, Sukuk bond-financed, economic roads, high exchange rate, and others.
Boko Haram and lingering insecurity
Part of the reasons Buhari was voted massively into power in 2015 was his promise to end Boko Haram insurgency in months. Given his military background, especially one who had been actively involved in commanding troops engaged in internal and external conflicts, many expected him to bring the terrorists to their knees, but the Boko Haram insurgency hasn’t been totally defeated yet.
Though the Borno State Government has shut down many IDP camps in the state capital, Maiduguri, meaning return to peace in most places in the state worst hit by the Boko Haram insurgency, pockets of attacks have been reported in Borno.
Boko Haram isn’t the only security challenge facing Nigeria, however. Groups, like Islamic State West Africa Province (a splinter group from Boko Haram), Ansaru (working in concert with Al Qaeda) bandits, herdsmen militia, and ‘unknown’ gunmen, have constituted unending nuisance to Nigeria, making permanent peace a wishful thinking.
Last year, the brutal killing of 40 worshippers in a church in Ondo State by gunmen, suspected to be terrorists, set the alarm bell ringing in the South West. One of the most embarrassing attacks was a high-profile raid on a prison facility in Kuje in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, which led to the jailbreak of about 900 inmates, including over 60 dangerous Boko Haram fighters. Also, terrorists attacked a Kaduna-bound train from Abuja, killing eight and abducting 72, with heavy ransom paid to secure them.
From Sokoto to Zamfara, Niger to Benue, bandits and herdsmen militia have continued to have a field day across the country, carrying out deadly attacks, thousands of kidnappings for ransom, arson, lootings and raping. In the northwest alone, an estimated 100 bandit groups operate with military grade weapons.
A recent report by a committee set up by the Zamfara State Government to review the security situation in the state revealed that 4,983 women have been widowed, 25,050 children orphaned, and 190,340 people displaced between 2011 and 2019 because of banditry and terrorism. Also, over N3 billion (US$6.8 million) was paid to bandits as ransom for 3,672 people abducted during this period in the state.
In January this year, many people were killed and displaced in an attack by bandits on villages in Anka and Bukkuyum districts in Zamfara State.
Likewise, gunmen agitating for a separate Biafran state have been on the rampage against government agents and facilities in the South East since 2021. Though the major secessionist group, IPOB, has disassociated itself from recent violent campaigns of gunmen in the region, the gunmen have continued to make life miserable for locals in the region as they enforce sit-at-home on Mondays and other selected days aimed at pressurising the federal government to release Nnamdu Kalu, the IPOB leader.
Though all the eastern states have been affected by agitation-related violence and banditry by splinter groups, Anambra and Imo are the worst hit by gunmen activities in the South East. Reports emerged early this week how gunmen attacked American Embassy staff working with UNICEF and security details attached to them, in Ogbaru, Anambra State, killing four. Media reports said over 400 people have been killed in the South East in the last one year.
Chibok girls
On April 14, 2014, Boko Haram insurgents kidnapped 276 school girls, mostly under 18s, from Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State. Saturday Sun search reveals that, so far, 96 of the students are still missing, nine years after.
On that ill-fated day, Boko Haram fighters had invaded the school, loaded the girls into trucks, but 57 girls managed to escape by jumping out of the moving trucks. The rest, mostly Christians, were moved into the dens of the terrorists, where they were forced into marriage and converted to Islam.
The then leader of the terrorist group, justifying the action, Abubakar Shekau, had claimed it was in reaction to the imprisonment of Boko Haram members by the Federal Government of Nigeria. It was also in keeping with the group’s agenda of discouraging western education and carving out an Islamic caliphate out of Nigeria.
Towards the tail end of the Goodluck Jonathan administration, between 2014 and 2015, Boko Haram had seized many local government areas in the northeastern states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa.
When President Buhari took over power in 2015, he promised to rescue the hostages from Boko Haram. His government’s greatest achievements, rather, was in reclaiming swathes of territories captured by Boko Haram previous years. In 2016, one of the Chibok girls escaped from captivity, and was found in the forest with her baby. She announced that most of the missing girls were still alive. Consequent to that, the Swiss government and the International Committee of the Red Cross, ICRC, led negotiations between the Nigerian government and the Boko Haram sect, which led to the release of 21 schoolgirls in October 2016 and 82 others in May 2017, in exchange for five Boko Haram suspects. Between September last year and now, two Chibok girls have managed to escape. But 96 of the girls have remained unaccounted for.
Leah Sharibu
February 19, 2023, made it five years since Leah Sharibu was abducted in Dapchi by Boko Haram, alongside more than 100 others. Though others were released by the sect, she has remained in captivity. Aid workers and rescued ones have consistently claimed that Leah has been forced to renounce her Christian faith and marry a Boko Haram commander with whom she has had two children.
However, seven months after she was kidnapped, Leah was seen in a video clip recorded in Hausa, 15-year-old then, appealing to the Nigerian president to come to her rescue: “I am Leah Sharibu, the girl that was abducted in GGSS Dapchi. I am calling on the government, particularly, the President, to pity me and get me out of this serious situation.
In reaction to that video, Leah’s mother lamented to Nigerians: “When my daughter was taken away in February 2018, I did not hear from the government; I did not hear from anybody until seven months after. It was then that a video was released of her in a hijab. Boko Haram had released a video to say they had killed one health worker and they said the next person to be killed would be Leah.”
That video compelled the Leah Foundation to organise a press conference in Jos, which attracted the attention of the Nigerian government, with President Buhari promising to bring her back. Two weeks later, the president sent three ministers, led by the Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, to Dapchi, where he affirmed Buhari’s promise that Leah would be found and returned.
In 2020, there was another promise by the president, through the Minister of Women Affairs, Paulen Tallen, to the Leah Sharibu Foundation office in Yola, Adamawa State, that the president was still working towards fulfilling his promise of rescuing Leah. Till now, that promise hasn’t been fulfilled.
While 104 of Leah’s colleagues from Government Girls Secondary School, Dapchi, were released on March 21, 2018, five of the students died in captivity. Leah has been left as a scapegoat on account of her Christian faith.
Petroleum subsidy removal
Before becoming Nigeria’s president in 2015, President Buhari was a vocal critic of former president, Goodluck Jonathan. In response to the move by the Jonathan government to deregulate prices and end subsidy payment for petroleum products, he dismissed “subsidy” as a scam used by government officials and their cronies to siphon public funds.
He also urged the government to “stop stealing from Nigerians and allow them to enjoy the relief that has come to consumers of petroleum products globally,” when oil prices failed in March, 2015. while reminding it to fix the refineries, two of which were built during his spell as the petroleum minister in the late 1970s.
To clean the Aegean stable, Buhari, when he won the 2015 election, made himself the petroleum minister, pledging to remove petroleum subsidy, revitalise the moribund refineries and end the importation of refined fuel, which would boost Nigeria’s foreign reserves. Apart from the initial success witnessed in making fuel supply available to Nigerians during his first term, fuel queues have returned in Nigeria in the last two years.
Not only that, fuel prices increased from what he inherited from Jonathan, N85 per litre, to N185 per litre at the moment. No single refinery has been fixed by his government so far, despite spending billions of naira annually for the servicing and maintenance of Nigeria’s refineries.
In 2022, the Federal Executive Council (FEC) approved $1.5 billion (more than N600 billion) for the rehabilitation of the Port Harcourt refinery, but nothing has come out since, as the country continues to import fuel.
Early during his administration, the Buhari government scrapped the Petroleum Support Fund, declaring an end to the era of subsidy payment. The government also assured that the price of petrol would remain at N85 it met. Surprisingly, in 2016, the government increased the price of petrol to N145 per litre, while reiterating its promise to fix the refineries.
Saturday Sun gathered that, though it was silent on it, the Buhari government was still paying the subsidy, earmarking N305 billion for petrol subsidy in the 2019 budget proposal. Before then, successive Nigerian governments, between 2006 and 2018, had spent $24.5 billion on petroleum subsidies. In 2019 and 2020, about N3 trillion (roughly $7 billion) was spent on subsidies.
In November 2021, the Buhari administration, once again, promised to remove petroleum subsidy by the middle of 2022 and replace it with a monthly N5000 transport grant to poor Nigerians to cushion the likely negative impact that would spring up, which many interpreted as another attempt to end subsidy to pay subsidy. In 2022, the annual subsidy expenses rose to N1.8 trillion under President Buhari. Also, a last gasp attempt to end the subsidy in April, 2023, was finally put to rest.
The Second Niger Bridge
Started by the Jonathan administration and taken over by the Buhari administration, the 2nd Niger Bridge on the eastern corridor is yet to be completed and commissioned, though a great deal of work has been done so far to make it a reality.
Last month, the federal government promised that the bridge would be opened on Monday, May 15, 2023. It’s already Saturday, May 20, a week to the elapse of the Buhari administration, yet the bridge is yet to be fully open to motorists.
Power supply
The Buhari administration promised to improve power generation and supply to Nigeria when it set out. To an extent, the government has improved power supply. A contractual agreement with Siemens has seen the federal government bringing in transformers and power equipment to shore up the epileptic power supply affecting Nigerians in the country.
However, Nigeria hasn’t yet met the universal benchmark. Based on international standards of 1,000MW to one million people, Nigeria is expected to at least generate 200,000MW to give the population better access to electricity.
In Africa, north African nations of Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria are the only countries with the most access to electricity, with 100 percent access. As at September, 2022, Nigeria had a generating capacity of about 8,000 megawatts, which was close to what President Buhari promised in 2016, and over 57 access to electricity to its 200 million plus population.
High exchange rate
The dollar exchange rate to naira, which the Buhari administration wowed to crash in 2015, has gone up beyond imagination. On assumption of office, one dollar exchanged for about N200. Today, it’s more than N735 to a dollar, thereby fuelling inflation as a result of high import expenses.
The Benin-Sagamu Expressway, other Sukuk-funded, federal roads
On October 5, 2017, the Minister of Mine, Power, Works and Housing, Babatundec Fashola, was presented a N100 billion Sovereign Sukuk Bond proceeds cheque by then Finance Minister, Mrs Kemi Adeosun, for the execution of 25 key economic road projects across the country. The Sukuk bond has a tenor of seven years.
“The roads will ease commuting, spur economic activities across the country and further close our infrastructural gap,” said the former finance minister then. The North-central and South-south zones accounted for five each of the 25 key economic road projects, while the North-east, North-west and South-east have four road projects each, while three projects were to receive funding from the Sovereign Sukuk proceeds in the South-west zone. With just a week left for the Buhari administration to complete its second tenure, some Nigerians have been crying foul that some major projects in their zones have not been completed yet.
Examples include the Benin-Sagamu Expressway, the Enugu-Onitsha Road and Enugu-Port Harcourt Road. Also, the Lagos-Ibadan Road has not been completed, in spite of the April 30 completion date given by Minister Fashola.
