Two years on, Buhari is in office, but not in power
Two years after President Mohammadu Buhari assumed office on 29 May 2015, Nigerians have been assessing the mid-term performance of his administration. And rightly so!The “mid-term” has entered the political lexicon because it is the appropriate time, in the middle of a period of office, for citizens to judge a government’s performance and communicate their feelings before general elections come round again. Most governments take mid-term assessments seriously because they often present an opportunity to change course, if necessary, before it is too late. When President Obama’s party lost congress to the Republicans in the mid-term elections of 2010, he conceded that the electorate had given his party a “shellacking” – a severe beating – and said he needed “to do a better job”. That’s how responsive politics works.
But the Buhari government has been quite blasé about people’s response to its mid-term performance. The president’s chief spin-doctor, Femi Adesina, said it was “unfair” to assess the administration’s performance in the middle of a four-year term, and dismissed the widespread negative response to the government’s mid-term performance with an arrogant putdown: “people can express their opinions”.Yet, this did not stop the government from trumpeting what it regards as its mid-term achievements!
I watched Acting President Yemi Osinbajo’s eloquent Democracy Day speech. I also read the dense and data-laden document, published by the presidency, titled “Buhari Administration Mid-Term Factsheet”. Both the speech and the “factsheet” listed countless “achievements” of the Buhari administration over the past two years. You would think that the government has been delivering real change for ordinary Nigerians. Except that most Nigerians don’t see the Buhari government’s mid-term performance that way!
Last week, in a Twitter poll, purportedly conducted by the APC, but later denied by the party, 54% of the 14,532 voters rated the Buhari administration’s performance as “poor”. The same week, on 29 May, BusinessDay published the results of another survey, conducted by the respected NOI Polls. According to the NOI Polls, only 47% of Nigerians scored the government well on security, 45% on corruption, 23% on infrastructure, 19% on education, 14% on the economy, 13% on job creation and 9% on poverty alleviation. Surely, these are grim results. If half way through a government’s period of office, only 14% of the people can see an improvement in the economy, 13% in job creation and 9% in poverty alleviation, it is obvious that the government is failing, and needs a fundamental change of course.
George Orwell saidin Politics and the English language, that political language is often designed “to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind”.This is largely true of the government’s “Mid-Term Factsheet” listing several achievements. For instance, when the Buhari government announces that 1,0051,000 primary school pupils are benefitting from its Home-grown School Feeding Programme (HGSFP) or that 3,162,451 people have been registered for its Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP), the truth is that these are mere numbers that do not reflect actual delivery or impact on the ground.
Yet, beyond the basic failure of delivery, there is the more troubling problem of the acute weakness of the Buhari government. Political parties seek power in order to bring about change, but over the past two years, the Buhari government has given the impression of being in office, but not in power. There are three areas where the haemorrhaging of power has undermined the performance of the government. I call them the 3Ps, namely party, parliament and policy. Let’s take party first.
Parties are normally less important in a presidential system of government than in a parliamentary one. For instance, once an American president is elected, his party goes into the background, leaving the president to get on with the job. But in Nigeria, where parties are shaped by the cult of personalities and ethnic power bases, the performance of the government is inextricably linked to the state of the ruling party.
Unfortunately, President Buhari lost control of his party within two months of his administration.The APC was in disarray over the elections of the National Assembly leadership. The breakdown of party discipline in the National Assembly has continued to hinder the performance of the Buhari government. But party indiscipline has weakened the Buhari administration in another way. Every government needs to rejig and refresh itself. But although President Buhari‘s cabinet is long due for a reshuffle, he is simply too weak, leaving aside his illness, to carry out any, because of oligarchic politics and rivalries within his party. Who will he sack and who will he bring into the cabinet, without throwing the party into further crisis? So, we have a president who is in office, but not in power because he has lost control of his divided party.
Then, take the second “P”: parliament. As we know, although the APC controls both chambers of the National Assembly, this hasn’t helped the Buhari government. The first six months of a presidency are a precious opportunity to enact critical laws. But two years into a four-year term, the Buhari government has brought in very few laws. The recent resort to presidential or executive orders is, of course, an admission of failure because effective governments sign laws, not just executive orders. But, as noted above, lack of party discipline has denied the president any influence over the National Assembly. A recent story in BusinessDay says the Senate has passed “3 out of 11 economic recovery bills in two years”. One of the new laws, the Petroleum Industry Governance Bill, has gestated for years. Even when the National Assembly enacts critical laws, such as the “Anti-Corruption Bill”, it waters it down as to be ineffective. Surely, the government’s inability to enact reforms through legislation is further evidence it is in office, but not in power.
That brings us to the final “P”, policy. Truth be told, the Buhari administration lacks the boldness and radicalism that define a transformational government. The government has failed abysmally to carry out radical reforms. It complains about many things, but does little to change them. “Our justice system has been quite slow”, says the acting president. But where is the much-needed judicial reform? The public sector is bloated and inefficient, but where are the far-reaching changes to the institutions of governance? “Corruption has fought back with tremendous resources”, the acting president also said. Really? Is the state so weak and so powerless that the government can’t secure a single successful prosecution since assuming office two years ago?
In other areas of policy, we have seen short-term solutions instead of radical reforms. For instance, the government thinks it can tackle the Niger Delta problem through side-payments, such as the so-called Amnesty Programme. But only political restructuring can holistically and comprehensively address the problem of ethnic tensions in Nigeria. Furthermore, the Buhari administration is gung-ho about tackling poverty through a social intervention programme, which it describes as “the largest and most ambitious in the history of Nigeria”. Leaving aside the failure of the programme so far, it’s a mistake to think that poverty can be tackled through government hand-outs instead of a robust, private sector-led economic growth. Yet, where are the privatisation and liberalisation that would reduce the state’s role in the economy and increase that of the private sector?
It insults the intelligence of Nigerians when the Buhari government says it spent the past two years “clearing the mess we inherited”, and “putting the building blocks together for the future”. Governments are elected to grow a strong economy and improve the lives of the people, not to give excuses for failure. Unfortunately, over the past two years, the government has given the impression of being in office, but not in power. The Buhari administration may despise the people’s negative assessment of its mid-term performance, but it must see it as a wake-up call to change course and deliver real change for Nigeria and its people!
Olu Fasan