Buhari, The Clock Is Ticking

AS a new year approaches, hopes of a brighter future raised by the inauguration six months ago of President Muhammadu Buhari have gone down a notch. A report by Bloomberg that the value of quoted equities on the Nigerian Stock Exchange fell by 22 per cent between April and November coincided with yet another foreign shuttle by the President amid petrol and power shortages.

 At home and abroad, the message to Buhari is strident: settle down and deliver on your promise of change. For Nigerians and the administration, time is a luxury. A presidential term is only four years and Buhari has spent a bewildering six months simply cobbling together a cabinet, during which time he has made about 15 foreign trips.

 Between June and now, a third round of petrol shortages is just winding down after marketers collected the latest ransom of N407 billion as subsidy, while the naira has crashed to N250 to US$1 at the parallel market, down from N185 to US$1 in April. Power supply, described as epileptic for three decades until a flawed privatisation two years ago, has become even patchier in many parts of the country. Though the Transmission Company of Nigeria reported average generation at just 4,000 megawatts in October, problems such as sabotage of gas supply pipelines, breakdown of obsolete equipment and sheer incompetence have denied businesses and homes of power and sustained Nigeria as Africa’s largest importer of standby generators.

Industrial capacity utilisation, according to the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria, that stood at 59.5 per cent in June, has dipped a few percentage points, leading to further job losses in an economy grappling with a 24.1 per cent jobless rate. The National Bureau of Statistics says 1.5 million jobs were lost in the five months to November.

The government appears to be running primarily on the personality of the President, not on clearly set- out policy or an overall plan. Though important, this is not sufficient. Modern governance is built around institutions and processes, not on the integrity of a single person. It is more worrying that even after the cabinet was finally inaugurated, there has been no discernable sense of urgency or a new policy direction to concretise the administration’s promise of change.

 Like their principal, ministers appear tentative. Buhari must therefore regain the momentum generated by his dramatic victory in the March presidential election that won national and international acclaim and encouraged foreign investors and governments to lean favourably once more towards Africa’s largest economy. Whereas the NSE’s All Share Index surged 12.5 per cent two days after the result was announced, the flight by portfolio investors has since resumed with about N47 billion leaving in November.

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