In rating the performance of the incumbent president and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, His Excellency Muhammadu Buhari, many pundits shoot themselves in the foot. They fall into the trap into which many have fallen- hastiness. Islam teaches us that hastiness is from Shaytaan.
It all started with the fake but widely circulated list of promises Buhari was purported to have made while canvassing the support of everyone. It was titled Buhari’s Manifesto: My Pact with the People—The Master Plan. It detailed some 89 or more promises on issues like Security and Conflict Resolution, Foreign Policy, Economy, Agriculture, Oil and Gas Industry, Education, Youth, Sports and Culture, Women Empowerment and the Environment. The document is not traceable to Buhari or his associates. Islam advocates fact checking in all endeavours.
It was the 32nd president of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), who took over from Herbert Hoover during the Great Depression. He met a country in a huge economic mess, tried his best to clean it up and succeeded largely. He updated the citizens of his progress every Sunday when he knew most Americans would be at home. Starting from March 4 1934, Roosevelt spearheaded a lot of new legislation and issued many executive orders resulting in the New Deal—a variety of programs designed to produce the famous three R’s (Relief, Recovery and Reform). Many of the significant actions he took were within the first 100 days of his office.
Trust Nigerians; we all know how to copy but few know how to paste. It has almost assumed a sacrosanct status among political and business leaders today. Everyone keeps harping about the first 100 days in office. It does not occur to them that the situation might not be the same. Some start well but finish weak and poorly. Others start slowly and finish strong and well. There is no harm in starting strong and finishing strong, though. In fact, it is better to do so.
I do not know whether to place President Buhari in the strong start or slow start category but we have the fact of what he has done so far to examine. In doing so, we will not be hasty to judge him now; we will allow the rain to stop before we conclude it has not rained as much as it did the previous day.
To see where the change has occurred requires us to look at where we were just before the former president handed over. We must remember the president’s transition team got the handover notes from the outgoing president’s team only four days to inauguration. That meant they barely had time to assess the level of rot in the government they were taking over properly. However, the team went ahead to conduct their own investigations as much as possible. The former president seemed not to like that and famously told the then President-elect not to run a parallel government as he was still in charge until May 29 2015. In other words, there was a deliberate effort to frustrate a smooth transition.
Power generation was at less than 2500MW in those dark days. There was a three-week fuel scarcity, workers were on strike in many states and the government had not even paid the salaries of its workers in many MDA’s. At a point during this period, fuel sold in some states for as high as 500 naira per litre on the black market, a world record in a major oil producing country!
A combination of no power and no fuel ensured that the misery, which the lives of average Nigerians had become, was total. You used your own generator if there was no power before. When there is no fuel for the generator, you endure the darkness, heat and stench from your foul-smelling fridge and freezer. You endured wearing wrinkled shirts to work. You endured paying double the normal transport fare and fighting a mini war to get a seat in the few buses and taxis available. Continue reading on Leadership’s website…