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Resting this column for a whole month wasn’t something I planned to do. Unforeseen circumstances came in the way. When you lose someone you love, someone bigger than you, somebody you look up to, in good and trying times, a mentor whose advice you take and it profits you, then you realize how cruel death can be. In just one month, I lost three loved ones, including an in-law. Their death struck me in the most unimaginable spot. For weeks, I struggled to seek escape through denial that it didn’t happen. I couldn’t focus on reality. Fear squeezed me into a corner, and left me bewildered and too pained to process fully the import of the unnerving tragedies.
But, time heals. And I’m happy to be back. For me, this period of absence opened an essential window into seeing the extent of pain, anger and frustration eating deep into most of our people like acid and the thinking that guides it. Undeniably, except during the civil war, our country is currently going through her greatest moment of political peril. Every part of our national life is hurting, bleeding from all parts. Shaken by the speed with which insecurity has conscripted us, the government is looking helpless and clearly overwhelmed by the challenges of an immediate sort confronting us.
Most Nigerians are living each day as it comes, not sure of what comes next, or where their next meal will come from.
Think about it : A situation where over 90 million people, representing 43 percent of our population are living below poverty line of less than $1.90 per day, it’s, therefore, no surprise that Nigeria has become a veritable candidate for insecurity of the highest order for years now. Overlapping all the turmoil is the lack of sincerity of purpose in tackling the security and socioeconomic challenges. It’s a Catch-22 situation that paints a horrifying picture of paradox . Perhaps never before has the line between speculation and reality become thinner than now. As many notable Nigerians have said, the greatest fear in the land is that of disintegration. We pray it doesn’t happen.
In all of this, my view of this government is well known. When an elected government repeatedly lives in denial, when it believes its own spin that all is well, and doesn’t take the people along in its decisions, confidence is eroded. That’s hypocrisy par excellence. It’s this same false sense of over-confidence that almost made Olusegun Obasanjo to run aground in the twilight of his presidency. The governing All Progressives Party(APC) and its leadership have discovered that it’s easier to win elections than to govern the country. In six years since it came to power, the governing party has suddenly found itself caught between calamity and Change. Success has a pattern. It is anchored on taking the people along. Don’t push them too hard. To a large extent, the current discontent in the country is the result of APC not managing the goodwill that brought it to power in 2015. For the President, it’s not unkind to say that he has not responded, as he should, to the challenges of the time and the yearnings that brought him to office.
The President should not allow Nigeria collapse under his watch. But, every passing day, our country is approaching that tipping point. The fault lines that divide us are widening every day. Yet, some party members are boosting that APC will rule Nigeria for sixty years. It was exactly the same braggadocio that undid erstwhile national Chairman of PDP, Prince Vincent Ogbulafor. It marked the beginning of the descent of the party. The truth is that in six years of APC administration, our economy has grown progressively worse than President Buhari met it. Insecurity has worsened. What hasn’t gone from bad to worse?
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Recent figures from Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) showed that about 40 percent of portfolio investors have exited the country. Unemployment rate is now about 35 percent, national debt stands at N36trn, and forecast is that it could get up to 42trn by end of the year. Meanwhile, government is planning to restructure N10trn overdrafts from short-term debt to long-term, 30-year facility. This could push our debt burden to unborn Nigerians. The economy has not surpassed 1.5 percent annual growth, contrary to government’s claims. And, experts say we need an average of 6 percent growth to make any meaningful and sustainable growth.
When an administration gets into a borrowing binge as this government is doing, the inevitable is that the country sinks deeper into a debt trap. When it prints money through Ways & Means(as the CBN is doing to save the government from itself), the result is a backlash of inflationary pressures. As you already know, inflation rate is close to 17 percent. Again, when the budget makes provision for deficit financing of about N5trn (as contained in the 2021 Appropriation Act), you risk a debt overhang. Currently, our debt profile is N36trn. The consequences are foreboding enough. Even if we find someone to lend us money, the question is :Can we pay back in due time? Again, this is a Catch-22 situation, a dilemma of sorts. At the moment, our debt service to revenue ratio is close to 60 percent.
These dire circumstances are worsening by the day, pushing the country rapidly into anarchy. History advises elected Presidents not to push their citizens too far, because they are like “dangerous animals”. When you push the people too far, they may balk and turn the pressure on you. A good sense of timing is crucial for any President to succeed in his policies. This is where Buhari needs tutorials on how to govern, because, while his appointees and cronies may succeed by his own approval and other sleight of hand, a President succeeds or fails as a result of his own decisions or inactions. In other words, a President is not judged like other men, even though he’s human.
My considered view is that President Buhari is yet to master the knowledge about how government and governance work in a democracy. I say this with profound respect, because, the art of government and governing are two different things, even though some people use the terms interchangeably. They are not the same. To say this is not to suggest, as several critics have said, that Buhari is ill suited to be President. Rather, he needs to project himself and, indeed, present himself as a consensual leader and consummate administrator who could create expectations and fulfill them, or at least, be seen to meet many of them.
It’s this inadequacy that some of his aides are exploiting to their advantage, and to the detriment of the President and the people who have given him their mandate to serve them. In all, the President should understand the anger and bitterness in the land as a task of leadership more difficult than any he had ever faced before. It’s tempting, but wrong, to suggest that it’s simply a task beyond his ability.
Mr. President needs to look into his soul, away from his forest of advisers and come to the inevitable conclusion that Nigeria is bigger than him, and responsibility is laid upon him to keep Nigeria as one nation, irrespective of our political affiliations. The bottom line is: There’s a job to be done. The presidency is a job to be done, not a prize to be won. That’s why majority of the electorate voted for Buhari. They want him to do exactly that, and stop the blame game. Every misstep follows a rude awakening. When a president fails to realize this, he’s in trouble. The sad thing is that he drags the country and citizens into that hole. I hope Nigeria is not proving too hard for Buhari and APC to govern.
