Legacy of ruins 

It may yet be two full months before the sun finally sets on the presidency of Muhammadu Buhari. The work of the administration is all but done, anyway. Unfortunately, a country yearning for inspiration and renewal when it handed the mantle of leadership to the retired army general and his then rampaging All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2015 is now gasping for breath. 

The Nigeria that Buhari will leave behind is not in a good place, at all. As if that is not bad enough, the road to the future that he is pointing at is strewn with thorns, deliberately.

Perhaps, the only person who seems oblivious of how awful the performance of the Buhari government has been in the eight tedious years it prevailed over Nigeria is Buhari himself. He just doesn’t seem to get it.

Last week, against the backdrop of two monumental negatives that poignantly capture the calamitous stretch of his presidency, President Buhari reportedly declared that he intends to rid Nigeria of insecurity before leaving office. In two months. In other words, that which he could not do in seven years and 10 months he now intends to accomplish in two months. It certainly does not seem that the man gearing up to retire to his farms in Daura cares whether anyone is still listening to him, or believes him or even takes him seriously. He just says stuff. 

For reasons only he can explain, if he can, Buhari found it worthwhile to make the empty commitment on insecurity last week, about the same time that the Supreme Court of Nigeria heavily rubbished him and his policy on the alteration of the naira. In a judgment that literally obliterated whatever the policy on the re-design of the naira and withdrawal of old notes was all about, the Supreme Court excoriated the President over the Central Bank of Nigeria policy, which he had publicly endorsed. The court, thereafter, deftly pushed any further discussion on the naira policy to a future time, when Buhari must have left office. Put succinctly, the Supreme Court all but cancelled the essence of the policy on re-designing the naira. With the relevant old currency notes now restored as legal tender, the hoopla about the new notes appears to have ended just as that.

In its ruling in favour of the APC governors that countered the APC Federal Government on the policy to retire the old naira notes, the Supreme Court made critical remarks that disapproved of the attitude of the Buhari government to compliance to the rule of law. Questions that bordered on competence, sensibility and depth in policy development and management by the government were also thrown up by the judgment. To imagine that this is a policy President Buhari backed to the hilt and publicly declared there was no going back on it. Now, everything has gone back. President Buhari lost. Worse still, he made Nigerians and the national economy to post avoidable losses.

The policy on the re-design of the naira, announced by the CBN on October 26, 2022, had seemed, in spite of many unclear edges, as one of the landmark policies that would define the closing chapters of the Buhari presidency. There were many nagging questions and discontent about the policy quite alright, especially its initial tight deadline of January 31, 2023, for the old N200, N500 and N1,000 to cease to exist, but many citizens accepted the policy in good faith, enticed by the undertone of official pitch that the policy aimed to tackle corrupt politicians. The policy had been subtly promoted as a design to curtail the adverse influence of money in politics, with many politicians reported to have stacked raw cash in their homes, waiting to unleash them to undermine the will of the people during the general election. 

Buhari had confirmed this very essence of the policy when he said late in January that the policy was not meant to target innocent citizens, but corrupt persons and terror financiers hoarding illicit money. To many, anything that will checkmate crooked politicians was welcome. 

Even with that understanding, the pervasive pain and chaos that trailed the execution of the CBN policy were beyond what the citizens could live down in peace. Indeed, the execution of the old naira withdrawal policy was cynical, insensitive and outrightly incompetent. The hardship that ensued with the policy reflected no proper planning or consideration for the survival of both individuals and the economy at large. The 2022 policy on the re-design of the naira will go down in history as a very unimaginative and hastily cobbled policy that failed to record any wholesome impact. With the policy debacle, Buhari failed once again to locate a redeeming legacy of his presidency. 

A part of the support that Buhari and the CBN had from Nigerians for the naira re-design policy derived from the President’s publicly expressed desire to conduct a credible election in 2023. Since he said the currency policy aimed to combat corrupt politicians, a number of Nigeria were ready to give him all the necessary support. Indeed, there were many who openly took the stance that, if Buhari succeeded to presiding over the conduct of a credible, free and fair general election, the astounding failure of his presidency would be forgiven him. How Nigerians yearned for a decent, credible election! 

The country, tottering under the weight of a political party that never seemed to find its bearing in any sphere where citizens needed succour, badly wished for an opportunity to decide the type of leadership they desire for a new season. It seemed so encouraging that the President wanted the same thing the people wanted: credible free and fair elections. This was the setting on which political campaigns for the 2023 elections commenced in September 2022 and ran throughout. Very animated, relatively peaceful and full of prospects for a good election that the people yearned for and the President aimed at. Buhari had looked, up till the eve of the presidential election on February 25, 2023, as if he may yet gain a worthwhile legacy as he retires to Daura on May 29, 2023. Well, it never happened.

The rest is already history, however the nightmare ends. The naira re-design policy ended up a resounding failure, buried without decoration by the Supreme Court. The presidential election, the very election that Buhari said he aimed to sign off in glory, has turned out stuffing ashes in the mouth of Buhari himself and millions of Nigerians, and even foreigners who came along. 

John Mahama, former Ghanaian president and a member of the ECOWAS election observation team in Nigeria, expressed a wish before the February 25 election, that the Nigerian election would be a good model for his country, which would hold its own presidential election next year. Mahama, like Thabo Mbeki and the other African statesmen-observers left for home in a pensive mood, with Nigeria obviously weighing down on their mind. As for Buhari, it is, of course, finished. The verdict is all but written: a legacy of ruins.