Muhammadu Buhari
promised to embrace
democracy as president, but
turned out to be the same
autocrat who failed the
country 30 years ago.
ARGUMENT
Fool Nigeria Once, Shame
on You. Fool Nigeria Twice
…
NOVEMBER 20, 2016 BY AMETO AKPE
I t’s been a tough year for Nigerian President
Muhammadu Buhari. The mood in Africa’s
most populous nation is a far cry from the
euphoria that greeted his historic 2015
election — the first time in Nigeria’s
history that an opposition candidate unseated
an incumbent president in a democratic
election. For weeks and even months after the
vote, Buhari was a media darling, praised at
home and extoled abroad.
Since then, the cheers have turned to jeers —
even from members of the president’s own
party, the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Meanwhile, his administration cowers under
attacks from a disillusioned electorate,
members of the opposition, and even Buhari’s
wife, Aisha, who said she might not vote for
him in 2019, when he is up for re-election.
What’s behind the swift unraveling of Buhari’s
presidency? His inability to formulate a
coherent economic plan as Nigeria tipped into
recession and unwillingness to make crucial
decisions — as basic as appointing a cabinet —
in a timely manner certainly didn’t help. But
the main reason Buhari has lost the support of
his countrymen is that the last year has
revealed the central premise of his candidacy to
be false: The man who claimed in the campaign
to be a “reformed democrat” has proved to be
the same old authoritarian showman who ruled
Nigeria in the early 1980s.
Buhari’s first attempt to run Nigeria ended
after a year and a half in the same manner it
started: a coup d’état. Back then, Buhari
launched a campaign to root out corruption,
dubbed the “war against indiscipline,” which
was accompanied by restrictions on free trade
and free speech, as well as repression of his
political opponents. Soon Nigeria was
embroiled in a political and economic crisis that
paved the way for his ouster.
By 2015, however, many Nigerians were ready
to give him a second chance. Growing economic
hardship and rampant corruption — and the
seeming inability of then-President Goodluck
Jonathan to tackle either — convinced them to
embrace Buhari again despite his checkered
past. To many he seemed like a competent
leader — at least more so than the weak and
feckless Jonathan.
But there is already a strong element of déjà vu
in Buhari’s second stint at the helm. He has
again staked his presidency on an anti-
corruption crusade and again used it as a
vehicle to target political opponents. Now, as
before, Buhari’s legitimacy was built on empty
showmanship, a hyped-up claim of superior
morality and discipline coupled with a healthy
dose of disdain for elitism, all quickly
overshadowed by an economic crisis that he
wasn’t equipped to tackle.
Part of the problem this time is that he
promised much more than he could ever have
hoped to deliver. On the campaign trail, he
pledged to create millions of new jobs and
make Nigeria’s currency, the naira, “equal to
the dollar,” two Donald Trump-worthy
whoppers that were about as likely to
materialize as a border wall paid for by
Mexico.
The fact that the media didn’t hammer Buhari’s
campaign on the ridiculousness of many of his
pledges speaks to the quality of journalism and
punditry in the country. (Nigerian journalists
have a reputation of being easily “bought” with
cash in notorious brown envelopes.)
In any case, the results have been predictable.
Instead of creating jobs, the Nigerian economy
has shed half a million of them since Buhari
took office, swelling the already bloated ranks
of the unemployed to 13.3 percent. The current
dollar exchange rate for the naira is about 455
to 1, compared with 260 to 1 around this time
last year. Food prices have reportedly doubled
across the country, forcing millions of people to
go hungry as a famine looms in the north .
Not all of this is Buhari’s doing, of course. He
inherited an oil-dependent economy only to
watch the price of crude crater. He also
inherited an empty treasury, the result of past
administrations’ unchecked venality and failure
to save when oil prices were high.
But Buhari’s actions, inactions, and posturing
against free enterprise have helped make a bad
situation worse. Despite spending the better
part of the past decade campaigning for
president, Buhari came into office with no idea
who to appoint to his ministerial cabinet. Most
presidential aspirants would have vetted
potential appointees during their campaigns or
at least during the transition. But Buhari didn’t
name a cabinet until about six months into his
presidency, blaming his inability to compose an
economic management team on the fact that
Nigerians were all “compromised.” During that
time, capital projects like the building of major
roads were stuck in limbo ; protracted delays in
approving the national budget also meant that
federal ministries were unable to perform their
basic functions. By the end of August, the
economy had slipped into recession .
Admitting he’s no economist , Buhari’s
economic decisions have been eccentric. Despite
all indicators pointing to the need to devalue
the naira following the loss of oil revenue,
Buhari has declined to do so, insisting on
applying stringent controls on the foreign
exchange market and the importing of
commodities like rice and frozen chicken.
Buhari seems to be betting on his
administration’s ability to boost domestic
production, even though the critical
infrastructure needed to do so, like a stable
power supply and functional roads, is not in
place. The closest Buhari’s administration has
come to articulating an economic plan is
announcing its intention to borrow as much
as $5 billion from foreign countries, including
China and Japan. Meanwhile, disappointed
investors are fleeing (or refusing to come) due
to the unfavorable business climate. More than
250 companies have reportedly shut down in
the past year alone.
Buhari’s much-heralded anti-corruption
crusade has also largely proved to be a
charade. The administration has initiated
several investigations into financial fraud or
misappropriation by former government
officials, but so far there have been no
convictions. The president has refrained from
going after his close associates, individuals like
Bola Tinubu, a powerful figure within the
ruling party who was once described as
“ corruption personified .” Instead, it has been
opposition politicians and members of his
predecessor’s administration that have been the
focus of his anti-corruption efforts.
Last month, he dispensed with due process
altogether and ordered the state security service
to arrest and raid the homes of judges who
hadn’t been charged with a crime. According to
the Buhari administration, the judges were
corrupt. But the judges claim they were being
framed as punishment for granting bail to
critics of Buhari’s government. The incident
caused a popular uproar and was described by
the head of Nigeria’s judiciary as “ deeply
regrettable .”
Buhari’s gradual turn toward authoritarianism
has revealed the emptiness of his central
campaign pitch: Far from embracing the
democratic process, he has sought to
unilaterally impose his will and whims on the
country, even when it means subverting the
rule of law. There was perhaps no starker
illustration of the president’s illiberal streak
than his response to his wife’s suggestion that
she may not support him in the next election:
My wife, he said at a press conference on Oct.
14, “belongs to my kitchen and my living room
and the other room.”
It is safe to say that Buhari’s misogynist
remarks won’t bring his administration down
or even diminish his popularity going forward.
The truth is that many Nigerian men (and
women) hold similar views. But if he wants to
avoid a drubbing in the 2019 election, Buhari
must put forward a realistic plan to fix the
tattered economy while showing voters that he
is indeed a “ reformed democrat ” and not the
same old strongman they remember from the
last time around.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/11/20/fool-nigeria-once-shame-on-you-fool-nigeria-twice-buhari-presidency/