At a
lecture he gave at the 15th meeting of the Joint Planning Board and
National Council on Development Planning, titled “Nigeria In Search Of
New Growth Model”, Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the Islamic scholar
turned-banker-turned-traditional ruler, fell a little short of
lampooning President Muhammadu Buhari for the unfortunate economic
situation Nigeria has slid into within just 15 months of him being in
the saddle.
With failure staring him in the face
having worked assiduously for APC even as a PDP-appointed Central Bank
Governor, he urged Buhari not to make the same mistakes former president
Goodluck Jonathan made in order for him not to end up like the former
president. This, in the estimation of Sanusi and his co-travellers, was
because Jonathan ended badly.
But far from it, rather than end badly,
Jonathan actually ended up a hero; a hero, not only of Nigeria, but also
of Africa. He is Nigeria’s priceless gift to Africa, a shiny example to
the world. Little wonder he is still being courted by countries and
institutions in Africa, Europe and America 15 months after his famous
exit from power. They all want to listen to and learn from a man who
took Nigeria to her height of glory and exited the stage when the
ovation was loudest. A feat strange in this part of our world!
Buhari can never attain such feats as
Jonathan, no matter how much the president is managed and branded. This
is because Buhari and Jonathan are obviously not at per with each other.
While Jonathan is a confirmed PhD holder, Nigerians cannot say the same
of our current president whose claimed basic qualification of WASC is
still shrouded in avoidable controversy.
Buhari can never end up like Jonathan
because Jonathan’s standards are too high for him. While Jonathan took
Nigeria’s economy from nowhere and made it Africa’s strongest and
largest, beating South Africa to it to the awe of renowned international
finance and economics experts and organizations including the
international media, Buhari has destroyed that legacy in just 15 months.
Today, South Africa has since regained that position of pride while
Egypt has also just overtaken SA in the rating as Nigeria keeps licking
her wounds way down the ladder.
Sanusi was only playing to the gallery
when he warned Buhari to ensure he does not end up like Jonathan. The
Emir of Kano should have known that there is no basis for comparison
between the two. One conscientiously worked towards the total
eradication of polio in Buhari and Sanusi’s immediate corridors to the
commendation of the UN and other international agencies to the extent
that our country became a positive reference point for countries still
battling that dreaded disease (and the disease was kept at bay for two
solid years despite the insurgency in the north-east that was noised to
be worst under Jonathan) while with Buhari as president, polio has found
its way back in Nigeria and has dragged us years backward health-wise.
Jonathan’s standards are so high for
Buhari to meet that it would be suicidal for him to attempt to go near
them. No man can give what he does not have. Those pushing Buhari to go
beyond his well known limited capacity in order to meet and surpass
Jonathan’s standards are not doing him any favours. While Jonathan
improved our electoral system to an enviable level, giving INEC the
necessary support and enabling environment to conduct free, fair,
credible and acceptable elections, INEC’s reputation has taken a tumble
for the worse as it hardly concludes any election it conducts since
Buhari assumed power to the extent that Nigerians have nicknamed the
once exemplary institution “Inconclusive National Electoral Commission”
(INEC).
While Jonathan would congratulate
non-PDP members even if they were APC members who won elections when he
was president, Buhari has not congratulated PDP members who won one
election or the other under the current dispensation. In fact, attempts
have even been made by the authorities to deliberately subvert the
people’s will just to ensure APC candidates win at all cost in places
like Rivers, Bayelsa and other States. It is not surprising. While one
is known to have a large heart, the other is known to have a hard heart!
It is an exhibition of low reasoning for
anyone to think Buhari can end up like Jonathan. How? What was the
strength of our currency the naira in relation to the dollar and other
foreign currencies? With the situation of things today, and the naira
hitting an all-time high of N409/$, we can all hear the naira, crying,
lamenting and calling for the return of Jonathan. Unfortunately for it,
Jonathan has since moved on while Buhari and his men keep having
nightmares of him to the extent it is absolutely impossible to forget
him or not mention his name for one day.
While Jonathan sat and led from the high
pedestal of rule of law, constitutionalism and democratic tenets,
promptly obeying court orders, not interfering with judicial processes
and legislative functions, Buhari is harassing citizens with security
agents, holding people incommunicado for nearly a year, all against
court orders and flagrantly abridging the rights of citizens. It is so
bad that government is seeking secret trials for those whom they have
accused openly and tried in the media. Such people deserve an open
trial, fair and free from executive manipulations.
Sanusi himself alluded to the fact that
Buhari’s team of advisers is made up of “voodoo economists” who know
next to nothing about economics. How can one compare Buhari’s team of
advisers with that of Jonathan who paraded superstars and well-sought
after team members? Who in Buhari’s government can anyone compare to
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Arunma Otteh, Omobola Johnson, Mike Onolememen,
Stella Oduah, Akinwunmi Adeshina, Barth Nnaji, Olugbenga Ashiru,
Onyebuchi Chukwu, Samsudeen Usman, Olusegun Aganga etc, some of whom
have been snapped up by foremost international organizations due to
their sterling performances?
While Jonathan gave all parts of the
country a sense of belonging by spreading his appointments to the best
and brightest irrespective of ethnic background or religious
affiliation, Buhari has limited his appointments to cronies and family
members most of whom have experiences only in cattle herding before now.
Is there any need for one to be surprised at the different performances
of the two administrations?
It was people like Sanusi who felt happy
and gratified that almost all appointments went to only the
Hausa/Fulani north. Today, see where the northernisation of government has landed Nigeria, yet, he expects Buhari to out-perform Jonathan!
We can also not forget in a hurry how
the Jonathan administration effectively tackled the dreaded Ebola
disease to the extent that the world started requesting for our health
workers to assist them in ending the scourge in their own countries,
too. Even when the international community denied us the Zmap drug
needed to tackle Ebola at the time, Nigeria still overcame the disease
in record time. But the same cannot be said of the Lassa Fever that
ravaged Nigeria earlier this year. As at early April, the fever had
killed 164 people in the whole of West Africa while Nigeria alone
accounted for 85% (138) of the total deaths.
With this staggering figure, one can
only thank God that Buahri was not the president in the Ebola Fever era,
the casualty figure would have been catastrophic.
The inflation rate is so high, in fact,
the highest in the modern history of Nigeria. People are hungry, the
masses are dying, jobs are being lost in droves, foreign investors are
pulling out of our country and some are relocating to neighbouring
countries, the same investors that Jonathan attracted when he made
Nigeria the number one foreign investment destination in Africa. Today,
those same investors are leaving in their numbers; a whopping 272 (not
counting thousands of other informal ones) have closed shop while we
lost 180,000 jobs in the process, yet, someone has the effrontery to
advise Buhari to ensure he does not end up like Jonathan as if Buhari
can ever get to Jonathan’s height!
Jude
Ndukwe is a political analyst who lives and works in Abuja, Nigeria. He
is a member of The Trent’s Elite Columnists. His column is published
every Friday. He tweets from @stjudendukwe.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.
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