Over the land and even superseded Boko Haram in malevolence. Buhari repeated the same old grouch about his predecessors who earned so much revenue from oil but failed to deliver on infrastructure. “Infrastructure,” long reduced to building some federal roads, a bridge and railway services that ply a few cities, has been his biggest boast. Since the infrastructure of health, education, energy and rural/urban management are still lacking, he and his spokespersons act as if they do not matter.
One would think a man whose regime over-depends on oil prices would at least make some concerted effort to stop oil plunder, but no. Daily, an estimated 108,000 barrels of oil is stolen. His selling point in 2015 was his promise to stop corruption but corruption exploded right under his watch. For instance, his own accountant general was fingered for stealing an obscene amount; the shady sum allocated to fuel subsidy ballooned. Insecurity in Nigeria morphed into a monstrosity; the antics of Boko Haram are now barely distinguishable from the wickedness of the bandits. Due to poor economic mismanagement, most Nigerians went from being merely poor to becoming multi-dimensionally poor. Hardly anything he met when he got into office improved.
An account of our life under this present government shows how much we have regressed than progressed. One of the most spectacular failures is the out-of-school children rate. Due to combined factors of insecurity and rising poverty, the figure rose stratospherically in almost eight years of their administration. In 2015 when they came into power, UNICEF put the number at a whopping 10.5 million. Some days ago, UNICEF announced that the figure had risen to 18.5 million. A more recent update by UNESCO shows that the figure is around 20.2 million, roughly the population of entire countries like Burkina Faso or Mali! This regime claims to have spent billions of naira on school feeding projects but things only worsened. Their social relief programs tend to gulp vast sums of money but hardly anyone, except perhaps their cronies and corrupt associates, is ever better off.
In a matter of months, it would have been a full calendar year since public universities have been shut down in the entire country. Thousands of students have lost years of their lives to the strike, a period they will never be recouped even if lecturers teach overtime. But what does that matter to Buhari who has wilfully socially distanced himself from reality enough to award himself a passing grade? Things have taken a downturn for many people, and the quality of life has significantly declined but the man in charge thinks people are not singing his praises enough. He cannot understand why even his own party members vying for power are ashamed of his failures. On September 28, when electioneering officially starts, they will distance themselves from their own party failures and campaign like an opposition party.
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Most people have given up on Buhari and are already looking forward to the salvation 2023 might bring. Even Buhari too has surrendered. He is merely counting down to the day he will return to his village, the scorching remains of the country safely handed over to someone else to manage. For a man whose anti-Midas touch turns brass to dross, he is pathetically alienated from the carnage he caused. His memory of his administration will undoubtedly be different from the reality that many Nigerians experienced, a dissonance that will be further nurtured by hagiographers who will not let him come to terms with his cluelessness.
Abimbola Adelakun
