Infrastructure, Insecurity, Debts: Here’s how Buhari is leaving Nigeria after 2,920 days in power

Opinions on the performance of President Muhammadu Buhari, who will be leaving office on Monday, May 29, 2023, will be divided among Nigerians who have endured the harsh realities of his policies and those who thrived under his government in the last eight years.

No matter the perception of majority of Nigerians about Buhari’s administration who believe the government failed to make the country better than it met it in 2015, the metrics for measuring good governance are rather a complex task, which entails evaluating various aspects of governance and their impact on society. Many believe that no single metric can comprehensively capture the entirety of good governance. While economists might evaluate the performance of Buhari in the last eight years based on the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), activists would judge based on his respect for the constitution and upheld the rule of law. While the ordinary Nigerians who have had to endure insecurity, food inflation and rising unemployment in the last eight years, may not see anything good in Buhari’s government.

As expected of any politician on self-assessment, in a question and answer session Buhari on Bloomberg in June 2022, he claimed that he would leave Nigeria better than he found it when he began his presidency in 2015.

“We leave Nigeria in a far better place than we found it. Corruption is less hidden, for Nigerians feel empowered to report it without fear, while money is returned; terrorists no longer hold any territory in Nigeria, and their leaders are deceased; and vast infrastructure development sets the country on course for sustainable and equitable growth,” he said.

In a televised broadcast on Sunday, May 28, 2023, Buhari also reiterated that he’s leaving office with Nigeria better than he met it in 2015.

“As I retire home to Daura, Katsina State, I feel fulfilled that we have started the Nigeria Re-Birth by taking the initial critical steps and I am convinced the in-coming administration will quicken the pace of this walk to see a Nigeria that fulfills its destiny to be a great nation. I am confident that I am leaving office with Nigeria better in 2023 than in 2015,” he said.

However, does available data show that Nigeria is more secure, developed, economically viable, and less corrupt than it was in 2015? Here’s what the data says.

Insecurity:

In the years leading up to 2015, Nigeria witnessed a tremendous rise in terrorism as the Boko Haram sect, a terrorist organisation that started in 2009, bombed churches, mosques, and at some point in 2014, held territories in Nigeria the size of Belgium. Buhari rode on the promise of ending insecurity in Nigeria, and as a former general in the Nigerian army, many believed him. While it appears that the activities of Boko Haram might have dwindled in the last eight years, Nigeria witnessed the rise of other terror groups from Bandits in the Northwest to Unknown Gun Men in the Southeast.

According to the Nigeria Security Tracker, NST, a project of the Council on Foreign Relations’ Africa programme, 63,111 Nigerians were killed as a result of insecurity between 2015 to 2023, compared to 34,972 between 2011 and when Buhari assumed power in 2015. This implies that for eight years, 33 Nigerians died per day during Buhari’s tenure compared to 24 deaths per day during Jonathan’s regime.

As against one school abduction in 2014, the Chibok Girls, Nigeria has witnessed over eight school abductions. Many parts of the country became unsafe to live or travel through. Even prisoners were not left behind in the insecurity that ravaged Nigeria. From Kuje Prison attacks to Edo jailbreak, Nigerian correctional centers were attacked more than 20 times in the last eight years.

In the North Central, millions of people have been displaced due to farmer-herder clashes, which residents in Benue State told Neuroom became prevalent from 2015. The once peaceful Southeast also saw a spike in terror activities, where the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and Eastern Security Network (ESN), formed by the incarcerated Nnamdi Kanu, were accused of being responsible for the death of over 1,000 people in the region since the start of 2021.

While ordinary Nigerians were most affected by the insecurity that ravaged Nigeria, the elite, including the presidency was not left unscratched.

On July 5, 2022, an advance team of the presidential convoy was attacked by gunmen near Dutsinma, Katsina, Buhari’s home state, which led to at least two injuries, according to the official statement.

“The attackers opened fire on the convoy from ambush positions but were repelled by the military, police, and DSS personnel accompanying the convoy,” Buhari’s spokesperson, Garba Shehu, said in a statement after the attack.

Respect for the rule of law:

On May 29, 2015, while taking the oath of office before millions of Nigerians and international guests, Buhari swore by the holy Quran to uphold the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, but Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP), a human rights watchdog, accused Buhari in 2022 of ignoring rulings from Nigerian judges on at least 40 occasions. From refusing to release Ibraheem El-Zakzaky, a prominent Shia Muslim leader, and Zeenat Malama, his wife, despite the ruling by Justice Gabriel Kolawole of the Federal High Court in Abuja in December 2016, to his refusal to honor several High Court rulings to free Sambo Dasuki, former National Security Adviser, who was arrested by the Department of State Security (DSS) in December 2015, Buhari exhibited traces of the military leader he was known for during his time as Nigeria’s Head of State in 1985.

Education:

While the budget for education has increased from ₦418 million in 2014 to ₦1.2 trillion in 2023 (US$5.6 billion), an increase of 172% over the past nine years, many argue that the Nigerian education sector has not improved in the last eight years.

According to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, there were 10.5 million out-of-school children in Nigeria in 2014. By 2023, the number had increased to 13.2 million. This means that Nigeria has the largest number of out-of-school children in the world.

Perhaps the university system was the hardest hit by Nigeria’s educational decay. While Nigerian publicly-owned universities went on strike twice between 2011 and 2015 for a cumulative period of seven months, universities were on lockdown for a year and three months during Buhari’s tenure.

Corruption:

One of the key campaign promises of Buhari in 2015 was to end corruption in Nigeria. Branded as “Mr. Integrity” by his supporters, Buhari was seen as having disdain for corrupt practices and politicians.

Despite the considerable efforts against corruption witnessed during Buhari’s first three years in office, Nigeria’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI) has not seen a major improvement. As of 2022, the country still ranks as the 150th most corrupt nation in the world. In 2014, with an index score of 27/100, Nigeria was ranked 136th out of 175 countries. In 2022, the country dropped three points to 24/100.

From Diezani Alison-Madueke, former Petroleum Resources minister, whose lingering corruption case in court is generating little attention, Rotimi Amaechi, Buhari’s super Transportation Minister indicted by the Rivers State government in 2015 for a number of corruption charges, and Adams Oshiomhole, the former Governor of Edo State indicted by the Econmic and Financial Crime Commisssion (EFCC) in 2017 for a number of corruption charges, including money laundering and fraud, many Nigerians believe that Buhari’s stance against corruption is questionable at best.

In May 2023, Bloomberg reported that Oluwaseyi Tinubu, the son of President-elect, Bola Tinubu, in 2017, acquired a $10.8 million London mansion which the Nigerian government was trying to seize from Diezani K. Alison-Madueke, Nigeria’s former Petroleum Minister over an alleged $1.6 billion fraud. The report raised questions about Tinubu’s possible involvement in corruption but Buhari in his farewell speech, said that “Tinubu is the best candidate among all the contestants and Nigerians have chosen well.”

Economy:

What are Buhari’s economic deliverables in the last eight years compared to what he inherited and what he promised? This is a question many Nigerians have repeatedly asked.

The All Progress Congress (APC) campaigned on promises such as achieving an exchange rate of ₦1 to $1 and providing ₦5000 to every Nigerian youth. These were some of the campaign promises that helped the APC defeat the then-ruling party, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP).

In the first few years of Buhari’s administration, the nation experienced a recession, similar to what occurred during his rule in 1985. As insecurity and farmers-herders clashes intensified, food prices soared, and with the closure of the border, millions of Nigerians fell below the poverty line, struggling to survive on less than $2 per day. When measuring the economy of a nation, GDP, inflation, poverty rate, and unemployment rate are some of the major metrics commonly used to assess economic performance.

When comparing 2014 to 2022, Nigeria appears to have witnessed what many would call stagnation or outright regression. In 2014, the inflation rate in Nigeria stood at 8.7%, but it rose to 15.6% by the end of 2022. According to data available from the website of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Nigeria’s inflation rate was at 22.22% as of April 2023. While the National Bureau of Statistics has not updated unemployment rates since 2020, available data shows that unemployment increased from 8.2% in 2014 to 33.3% in 2020. According to surveys by SBM Intelligence, at the end of June 2020, a 50kg bag of rice, which sold for ₦10,000 in 2014, averaged ₦26,000 in 2020.

Nigerians appear to be poorer than they were in 2015, data tends to show.

In the Forex market, as the prices of food doubled and tripled, the value of the Naira against the dollar depreciated. The Naira has depreciated by over 80% against the US Dollar from 2014 to 2022. In 2014, $1 was equivalent to ₦197 Naira. As of May 25, 2023, $1 is equivalent to ₦461 (unofficial price trades at $1 to ₦750.)

Infrastructure:

Buhari perhaps, wants Nigeria to evaluate him based on infrastructure, from roads to railways, power, and bridges, air, and seaport, and attempts to diversify the Nigerian economy. The Buhari administration has constructed and rehabilitated a number of roads across the country. Some of the notable projects include the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, the Abuja-Kano Expressway, and the Second Niger Bridge.

On roads, between 2017 and 2023, more than ₦600 billion worth of Sukuk Bonds were raised for more than 40 critical road projects across all six geopolitical zones. By 2021, a total of 941 km of Sukuk road projects, in five geo-political zones, connecting 10 states were handed over to the benefiting communities.

Railways also received renewed attention from Buhari’s government. Some of the railways built and completed during Buhari’s tenure include; 156km Lagos-Ibadan Standard Gauge Rail completed and commissioned, within a Nigerian-record-time of 4 years (2017 to 2021), 8.72km extension to Lagos-Ibadan Rail Line, to Lagos Port Complex, completed in 2021, Abuja-Kaduna 186km Standard Gauge Rail Line (2016), a 327km Itakpe-Warri Standard Gauge Rail which was completed and commissioned in 2020, 33 years after construction began.

However, while Buhari said on Saturday, May 27, 2023, that Nigeria’s stock of infrastructure to GDP doubled from about 20% to over 40%, in the last eight, Nigerians, the majority of who are living in poverty, might struggle to see how his administration has bettered their lives.

While the defense of many Nigerians, especially Buhari’s supporters, is that his administration invested heavily in infrastructure, which is expected to contribute to the country’s economy in the future, the incoming administration of Bola Tinubu, when he is sworn in on Monday, May 29, 2023, will inherit a backlog of debts, insecurity, a weak economy, and a deeply divided nation.

However, the question of whether Muhammadu Buhari underperformed or not perhaps falls on the individual opinions of Nigerians and will remain largely unanswered.