By: Waheed Ogunjobi
President of the most populous African nation, Muhammadu Buhari may be facing the manifestation of the old dictum ‘’uneasy lies the head that wears the crown’’ owing to the current challenges confronting the nation , the bucks of which mostly stops at his table . There is no gainsaying the fact that Nigeria, is facing a hard time . The man at the arrow-head, President Muhammadu Buhari no doubt has an herculean tasks in his hands and his administration is dogged by several seemingly insurmountable challenges that has continued to tax the leadership capabilities of Buhari and his team .
Nigeria’s Presidency is a juicy post that anyone would wish to have , but taking over the mantle of leadership at a time there is global economic recession occasioned by fall in oil prices is a major challenge that the Presidency has continued to grapple with . As it stands today, the Nigerian government which operates a monolithic economy has found it extremely difficult to meet its financial obligations . As a result ,many states have found it difficult to pay salaries , pension and meet up with other obligations. This reality dawned when the Federal Government paid a huge sum to states as bail-out funds in order for states to pay backlog of salaries. The federal government through the Central Bank of Nigeria paid over N300 billion bail- out fund to states in August, 2015. Less than a year after , many states are still grappling with the payment of staff salaries with labour leaders in many states spoiling for war . President Mohamadu Buhari himself while speaking at the recent APC NEC meeting said ‘’ the fall of oil prices after Nigeria has made itself a mono economy is a disaster. I wonder why people could not believe that in Nigeria, about 27 out of 36 states have difficulty in paying basic salaries of their workers.”
A major off-shoot of the economic hardship that seems to have gripped the nation in the gulag is the hard times that is now the order of the day. Due to the snowball effect of the dwindling oil price which skyrocketed into the acute shortage of petroleum products, Nigerians are currently facing a hard time ,to say the least . This is compounded by the soaring cost of commodities , especially food prices, thus making it increasingly difficult for most people to feed themselves and their families. This soaring cost of commodities which is also not unconnected with the scarcity of foreign exchange is seriously taking its toll on the people , and became compounded with the acute fuel shortage which has further tasked the financial capabilities of the people . The Buhari tutored All Progressives Party led government has however gotten its own part of the bitter pill reflecting negatively on the party’s image . Thus ,due to continuous hardship being faced by majority of the nation’s citizenry, Nigerians seem to have changed the slogan of change that was on the lips of virtually every one during the period of ushering the present administration into power . Reminiscence of the biblical slogan ‘’ Hosana today , crucify him tomorrow’’, Nigerians now are telling anyone that care to listen that the hardship currently being experienced is a product of what the APC led administration promised to offer and they are indeed getting a good dose of it . And in an attempt to safe its face , the federal government had been busy trying to correct the negative impression by attributing the current hardship to sabotage and lack of clear direction by past government .
One serious headache the president has to grapple with is that of conducting credible elections in the country . Again, there is no gainsaying the fact that the election that brought him to power was credible . The moral burden thus lies on his shoulder to sustain the tradition without compromising standard in any way . But, since his ascension to office and the subsequent appointment of the current Chairman of the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) , Ibrahim Magu the nation has had a somewhat embarrassing show in electoral contest . The election in Kogi state was inconclusive following the sudden death of the flag bearer Governor Abubakar Audu and the processes that follow leave much to be desired . Similar situation was witnesses in Bayelsa . The worst of it was the recent bye- election to the Rivers State House of Assembly which witnessed a harvest of death , including that a corpse member . The President himself made this remark on this development “I am afraid I did not succeed in the election in Kogi, Bayelsa, Rivers. I think that more Nigerians are killed or killed themselves in Rivers than in any particular state. At this stage of our political development, to remain brutal is shameful and as a government, I promise we will do something by the next general election,” Buhari said.
Although, the insurgency war is gradually being won, yet the issue of the Chibok girl remains a pain in the neck for the Presidency . Two years after, the Chibok girl issue still remain a misery . President Muhammadu Buhari has said that his administration is worried by the continued stay of the Chibok school girls in the hands of their captors and is working tirelessly to get them released. The President stated this in Paris while responding to questions from members of the Nigerian community in France under the auspices of Nigerians in Diaspora Organization (NIDO).President Buhari noted that the unfortunate incident had attracted global attention and sympathy within and outside Nigeria and government could not fold its alms over the issue. His words : “The issue of Chibok girls has occupied our minds and because of the international attention it drew and the sympathy throughout the country and the world, the government is (looking into possibility of) negotiating with some of the Boko Haram leadership.’’
On the economy, restructuring the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC ) is another major task the Buhari administration is faced with and determined to achieve a considerable progress. For instance , the NNPC through the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources Ibe Kachikwu was recently split into seven units in what was described as unbundling . No other issues has exposed the government of the day to public sentiments than the recent energy crisis occasioned by the shortage in the supply of Premium Motor Spirit which paralysed the economy of the nation for most parts of the first quarter of the year .“We have tried to make sure that NNPC is reorganized, so that we know how much of our crude is taken, how much it is sold and to which account the money is going
Power sector challenge in the country has been somewhat intractable before the inception of this administration. The irony of it all was that the power situation in the country improved shortly after the result of election that brought in President Muhammadu Buhari was announced in April, 2015. Suddenly , the power generation continued to nosedived until it reached a somewhat embarrassing level in recent times . Nigeria made a bad record recently as the nationwide power crisis being experienced in the country worsened .
It was widely reported that Nigeria’s power generation collapsed to zero megawatt around 1:00pm on Thursday 31st of March , 2016 and the situation lasted for about three hours.
According to data from the country’s system operator, the Transmission Company of Nigeria, TCN, showed that no power generation company produced a single megawatt of electricity throughout that period.
Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, said the sudden downing of the three turbines at the Jebba Hydro power station was responsible for the situation, adding that the power in the country was inadequate and that the faulty turbines had been fixed.
Another major worries for President Mohammadu Buhari is the issue of Internally displaced person . The Federal Government has continued to struggle to remove the remnants of the terrorist Boko Haram insurgents from the North eastern part of the country and the safety of the over two million displaced persons remains uppermost in the agenda of the Buhari’s government . The displaced persons, uprooted by the Boko Haram, are found in refugees camps that dot the three most affected states of the North east region, and other parts of the country, including Abuja, the nation’s capital.
President Buhari has expressed worry about the challenges of daily existence facing these Nigerians and the need for everything to be done to ensure that they are taken care of both in the IDP camps. The Federal Government has said the assessment and validation exercise recently completed in the North-East region of the country has put the extent of damages at $9 billion while over $6 billion could be needed for immediate and near-stabilisation and recovery of the region. Apparently for wants of what to do with the millions of IDPs , President Muhammadu Buhari recently directed the Minister of Agriculture , Chief Audu Ogbe to immediately fashion out plans to help the IDP resettle into farming .
The issue of Fulani herdsmen killing in different parts of the country is another major hard nuts President Muhammadu Buhari need to crack . According to Paul Ede who coordinated the coalition of civil society groups that visited the National Assembly recently to protest the latest killings in Agatu Local government area of Benue State, 400 persons lost their lives in the orgy of violence . In a similar vein, no less than 50 people were killed in a community in Enugu state recently by the rampaging Fulani herdsmen . There have been series of calls from different quarters to address the problem of the Fulani herdsmen invasion once and for all . There have also been public sentiments on the onslaught of the rampaging herdsmen accusing the president of treating the matter with kid gloves , due to the fact that the atrocities are been perpetrated by his kinsmen. The cries of the people is almost reaching the roof top, especially now that the invasion by these unscrupulous elements appear to have also reached its crescendo . There have been different proposition towards addressing the problem, including setting up a national grazing reserve , a bill to that effect, which is purportedly before the national assembly . In an apparent reaction to public outcry , the federal government through the Minister of Information and culture, Alhaji Lai Muhammed had said it is working silently to end the menace . By and large , this is another major headache for the Buhari-led administration.
The irony of it all however is the fact that one clear year after the ascension of the APC led administration , it is yet to get its policies on track especially owing to the controversies that had trailed the preparation, scrutiny and signing of the 2016 Budget . The National assembly and the Presidency had been embroiled in an endless controversy over the budget latest of which is the alleged distortion of the budget by the legislature, which made the President to withhold his assent . Even , if the budget controversy is finally resolved and implementation begins, there is no clear indication that Nigerians will begin to feel positive effects of governance before the end of the year . Indications have however emerged that things will take positive turns in no time as soon as some of the policies of government begins to manifest, But, it is expected that the President and his team will continue to put up the required efforts to put up palliative measures in order to get the country out of her present precarious situations and as such ameliorate the sufferings of Nigerians.