The year 2017 is almost over, which means the next round of national elections in Nigeria is less than two years away. Knowing Nigerian politicians, the governors who are eligible for re-election are already campaigning underground while the ones who are not eligible are lobbying for the next juicy appointment after leaving the governor’s mansion.
How about Mr. President, do you think he deserves a second term in office? Most Nigerians don’t think so.
While most of those in the Goodluck Jonathan camp are still licking their wounds over the 2015 election loss a good number of people who held their noses and voted for Buhari realised that the 2015 presidential election was not about Jonathan or Buhari. It was about the power of the people to kick out a government they don’t like. For those in the Jonathan camp, another opportunity to do that is less than two years away so this is the time to cast off your sack clothes and start preparing to demonstrate your democratic rights.
Let’s have a look at Buhari’s score card more than halfway through his first term in office:
Buhari contested on the platform of stamping out corruption but corruption in Nigeria is on the increase since he got into office. The profligacy of politicians and the tendency for them to treat public funds like personal property is beyond control as it doesn’t appear like Buhari himself has any desire to put a check on it. He may not be corrupt as people understand the word, “corruption” but how accountable is he when it comes to allocating public funds for his personal use? What is the ratio between what he spends on himself and what government provides for the average Nigerian? In civilised countries that is how corruption is measured not necessarily by how many bags of Dollar notes are discovered in your house by EFCC.
Power Supply: After two years in office, any responsible government should have made a noticeable improvement to power supply by now but the situation remains as epileptic as ever, if not worse. All Nigerians hear of are contracts being signed, monies being earmarked and projects being commissioned but no improvement to power supply. There is no point stressing the importance of power supply in this write-up but to point out the fact that this government has failed woefully to make any improvement in that sector.
Education: Anybody contesting for the position of president in Nigeria can run on one single issue, that throughout his or her presidency there will not be a single ASUU strike. However, that is really not an issue that bothers Nigerian politicians as their children are all schooling abroad or have completed their schooling abroad. If a president who is not bothered about university lecturers going on strike because his children are schooling abroad is considered ‘not corrupt’ then the word “corruption” must have lost its real meaning.
This administration’s failure to make any significant progress in finding alternative sources of foreign exchange is dragging the value of the Naira down as oil prices continue to slide. The drag on the value of our currency is causing inflation and unemployment, which in turn causes poverty. The rise of poverty in any society is commensurate to a rise in crime rate in that society.
The four issues above are only four of the many issues that concern Nigerians most and the president has failed on all four of them. There is a plethora of other issues on which the president has failed more than halfway into his first term in office.
To make this debate balanced, if you are aware of any achievement the current president has made since he assumed office more than two years ago please share as it would not be fair to judge him based on his failures alone.
