Yusuf Rabiu went door-to-door urging people in the northern Nigerian city
of Kano to vote for President Muhammadu Buhari in last year’s elections.
Now he’s regretting his decision.
“We expected him to solve our economic problems,” Rabiu, a 36-year-old hat
seller, said at the city’s Kurmi market as a group of friends nodded in
agreement. “I didn’t know voting for him would mean more hunger, more
suffering.”
After ending the 16-year reign of the People’s Democratic Party last year
in what won praise as a peaceful transition of power in Africa, Buhari is
facing a firestorm of criticism. Even some of his ruling party members
have met with their erstwhile opponents about forming a new party to
challenge him if he seeks re-election in 2019, according to two people
familiar with the meetings.
For Buhari, who ruled as a military dictator in the 1980s, 2016 has been a
tough year. He pledged the naira currency would become as strong as the
dollar — it hit record lows after the central bank removed its peg in May
and currently trades at 316 to the greenback. Gasoline prices that were to
be slashed by two-thirds have risen about 67 percent since he took office.
Now Africa’s second-biggest economy is heading toward its first full-year
contraction in a quarter-century, while inflation is at an 11-year high.
Broken Promises
“He made a lot of promises that people bought into, and some of these he
has denied or failed to keep,” Clement Nwankwo, executive director of the
Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre in the capital, Abuja, said in an
interview. “The fundamentals were bad when he took over but not as bad as
they’re today.”
Even Buhari’s wife, Aisha, has lost patience. She told the British
Broadcasting Corp. on Oct. 14 that she wasn’t sure if she would campaign
for his re-election, saying a small clique of people controlled his
government and appointed most of his cabinet.
Upon taking office, Buhari was dealt a very poor hand: a collapse in
prices for crude, the West African nation’s main export, and production
cuts caused by militant attacks in the oil-rich Niger River delta. In the
far northeast, the Islamist militant group Boko Haram terrorised the
population with kidnappings and suicide bombings.
His six-month delay in naming a cabinet created uncertainty about his
administration’s fiscal and monetary policies. Then, as the naira tumbled
on the parallel market, Buhari slapped an import ban on 41 items, damaging
manufacturing and trade.
Brent crude, which compares with Nigerian oil grades, rose 0.6 percent to
$55.68 as of 7:54 a.m. in London, the highest since July 22, 2015.
“They met a bad situation and they made it eminently worse,” Junaid
Mohammed, a former lawmaker from Kano who’d been critical of Buhari’s
predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan, said in an interview.
Keep Faith
Sensing the dwindling support, Buhari urged Nigerians on Dec. 12 “not to
lose faith in the ability of this administration to make a difference in
the lives of our people.” Two days later, while presenting 2017 budget
proposals to lawmakers, Buhari pledged to act to “pull the economy out of
recession as quickly as possible.”
On Sunday, Buhari ordered the attorney-general to investigate allegations
of corruption by some of his top aides, presidential spokesman Garba Shehu
said, without naming them.
Buhari’s decision to choose loyalists from his mainly Muslim northern
region for important security and cabinet positions has stoked resentment
in the mainly Christian southeast, fueling secessionist demands, and
complaints in the southwest ethnic Yoruba heartland that was key to his
presidential victory. Out of 17 top positions in the army, navy, air force
and other security agencies, three are from the south.
Mounting Disquiet
Mounting disquiet in the coalition that propelled him to office erupted in
October when Bola Tinubu, who helped mobilize support for the president’s
campaign in the southwest, published a statement attacking the APC’s
chairman John Oyegun, a Buhari ally. Tinubu was supported by ex-Vice
President Abubakar Atiku, who also backed Buhari in the election.
Time is becoming Buhari’s biggest enemy, according to Manji Cheto, senior
vice president for West Africa at New York-based Teneo Intelligence.
“Effectively, he’s only got next year to turn things around before the
election cycle starts,” she said by phone. “Next year will be a breaking
point for a lot of Nigerians, particularly if we get a spike in gasoline
prices and food inflation keeps rising. In that case, I don’t see how
they’d be able to keep people off the streets.”