Nigeria plunged in autocracy and unsophisticated vagueness By Buhari

Publisher's Analysis  | Anthony Obi Ogbo 

Governmental It is one thing is to rustle power, but sustaining the challenges require more competencies. Nigerians are still debating the 100-day season of their new regime with critics bashing the presidency for leading a very sluggish start. While supporters of President Muhammadu Buhari are yet to substantially defend his proposals, it could rightly be argued that first 100 Days have never guaranteed the success of an entire tenure, neither have early process complications necessitated failure in governance. However,   every voyage starts with one step – thanks to Franklin D. Roosevelt, a United States President who in 1933, used his first three months in office to lay the foundations of his executive mandate. Ever since this year, the First 100 Days have been seen as a unique moment in predicting proposal efficacy and tenure effectiveness.

President Buhari’s case is strange, because his regime is still confused about governance, and at the worst, waterlogged by the demands of a transformation process it professed.  Supported by his ruling party cohorts, President Buhari has been terribly astounded by his own campaign proposals – grappling with how and where to start, and denying the very promises he made to the masses just a few months ago.

A hundred days or not, the troubling issue is that President Buhari’s accomplishments so far has been a horrendous nightmare. In an authoritarian manner, constitutional measures are swiftly dwindling into unrestrained anarchy. As it was noted in this column a few weeks ago, in the world’s political history, Nigeria stands to become the only country where an elected President ferociously assumed the position of the Vice President, Chief Prosecutor, Prison Director, Chief Judge, Petroleum Chief – then sits down on the constitution with unrestrained supremacy, cold-shouldering the other sectors of the government.From the very start of his executive directives, President Buhari has gone gaga with the most significant issues in the country’s politics – security, economy, and corruption. Regrettably, an assessment of his handle of these issues so far indicates that the country is once again back to dictatorship. For instance, on security, he had quickly replaced the service chiefs; moved Nigeria's defense command unit to Maiduguri, claiming the idea was to ease up a counter strategy against the terror group. But critics differ, accusing Buhari of conferring greater political power opportunities to his Northern allies, and restructuring the military system to protect that structure. To further frustrate a global support of a fight against the Boko Haram, the Buhari regime was scandalously exposed for secretly granting an entry visa to a fleeing ‘ISIS Emir’, and a Lebanese fugitive, Ahmad al-Assir who was later arrested. He was trying to escape to Nigeria through Cairo with fake Palestinian travel document in a scenario that questions the Buhari’s credibility in fighting terror. While a possible collaboration between Assir and the Buhar’s regime was being investigated, Buhari’s advocacy for a Boko Haram amnesty created additional doubts over his request for assistance from the United States in fighting terror, leaving the regime all confused and helpless in meeting its security proposals to defend the country. In less than a hundred days,  Buhari has thrown the country’s economy into harm’s way, singlehandedly presiding changes that signals a fiscal doom. He had enforced a mass worker retrenchment, sending close to 100, 000 out of jobs. He had banned the recruitment of federal public sector workers, raised interest rates, and halted capital projects at all governmental levels. Without any official protocol, President Buhari had dictatorially suspended the upgrade projects at the Calabar/Onne seaports, ordered a slash in federal allocation to states, and canceled the second Niger bridge project, attributing his action to one single phrase, “War against corruption.” Foreign investors and major global financial institutions have openly expressed concerns about the direction of the Nigerian economy. Last week, JPMorgan Chase & Co. disqualified Nigeria from its local-currency emerging-market bond indexes, after restrictions on foreign-exchange transactions prompted investor concerns about a shortage of liquidity. But, the defiant president remained untouched about his belt-tightening policy, and in fact announced a proposal to shut down some embassies and foreign mission abroad. Another action that could put additional thousands of federal employees out of their jobs by last quarter of the year.Just like his handle of the economy and matters of security, the regime’s vows to tackle corruption remain another shocking blow. In sheer irony, Buhari personally has been caught up reconciling issues of fraud directly involving his interests. For instance, the immediate former governor of the oil rich Rivers State, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi is facing accusations of funding Buhari’s Campaign with stolen state funds amounting to more than 70 billion Naira. Amaechi allegedly fraudulently sold state-owned   power plants and made mistrustful transfer of $105 million (N21, 000,000,000) from the Power Asset Sale Proceeds Account to accounts owned by private companies. Consequently, the General was alleged to have personally pleaded with the former President and one of the targets of his proposed probe, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo who vowed to release a dossier of documents linking him (Buhari), his wife, daughter, and key allies in his administration to major fraud related to various affairs of the government. To appease the aged former leader, President Buhari quickly retracted  his threats, announcing publicly that he would not extend his corruption probe beyond the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan. Today, Buhari’s drive to curb fraud has yielded nothing besides indiscriminate arrests of selected individuals whom he had targeted for retributive reasons.While President Buhari, a former dictator, flip-flops with official duties in a representative system unfamiliar to his individual capacity, his appointed media activists have been busy showcasing him with falsehood and deception. To substitute for a total lack of responses for his regime catastrophe, the APC media combatants have polluted the social media with fake stories about the Buhari’s accomplishments. Yet, the regime’s major damage remains Buhari’s total disconnection with both his subordinates in the government, party colleagues, and the masses. In his signature tyrannical fashion, Buhari has remained the only arm of the system, whereas his supporters chokingly struggle in the social media to defend  the vagueness of his stewardship. Shamelessly, the Sai-Buhari profile-glorification jingle has totally expired in obscurity, leaving his media handlers redundant and clueless about their a woeful in defending mediocrity.