The Buhari administration. Six years down the lane

Last week, precisely on May 29, 2021, the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari clocked six years. Of course, six years is enough period to assess the administration’s achievements, and there are many, irrespective of how someone sees the situation.

Agreed, the country appears to be facing its worst moments, with the state of security, especially, unsatisfactory, economy at a low ebb and, politically, many feel marginalised.

Of course, these negative trends are happening against the backdrop of the many promises made by the President during the electioneering, especially in 2015.

Of course, some people are not satisfied with how the President is running the country, insisting that Africa’s most populous black nation is moving towards becoming a failed state. Some accuse the current administration of mismanaging the country’s plurality, thereby allowing ethnic and religious fault lines to fester.

However, the government is quick to showcase its achievements on infrastructure, especially in the areas of road and railways sectors, while promising to complete the second bridge across the River Niger in the eastern part of the country.

From infrastructure, to finance, education, healthcare, sports, anti-corruption, human development, housing, oil and gas, foreign relations, and many others, the Buhari administration said it is recording giant strides, enough to make Nigerians proud.

In 2020, the president approved the establishment of InfraCo Plc, a world class infrastructure development vehicle, wholly focused on Nigeria, with combined debt and equity take-off capital of N15 trillion, and managed by an independent infrastructure fund manager. He also approved the establishment of the Presidential Infrastructure Development Fund (PIDF), with more than $1bn in funding so far.

The Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA) has seen total additional inflows from the Government of around US$2 billion under the Buhari-led administration – since the original US$1 billion which the Fund was started with in 2012.

Under this government, 156km Lagos-Ibadan Standard Gauge Rail is nearing completion and 327km Itakpe-Warri Standard Gauge Rail completed and commissioned 33 years after its construction began. The Abuja Light Rail has been completed in 2018, the ground-breaking event for construction of Kano-Maradi Standard Gauge Rail was held and programme for the revamping of Port-Harcourt-Maiduguri Narrow Gauge Rail was initiated. Similarly, financing negotiations are ongoing for Ibadan-Kano Standard Gauge Rail project.

The government established the Presidential Infrastructure Development Fund (PIDF) and invested over a billion dollars in three flagship projects. They are Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, Second Niger Bridge, Abuja-Kaduna-Zaria-Kano Expressway.

To address the issue of roads, Executive Order 7 was initiated to mobilise private investment into the development of key roads and bridges like Bodo-Bonny in Rivers and Apapa-Oshodi-Oworonshoki-Ojota in Lagos.

More than N360 billion worth of Sukuk Bonds were raised since 2017 for dozens of critical road projects across all six geopolitical zones.

On the issue of power, the government has planned to take clean and reliable energy (Solar and Gas) to Federal Universities and Teaching Hospitals across the country. In fact, the programme has been completed in four universities, namely, BUK (Kano), FUNAI (Ebonyi), ATBU (Bauchi) and FUPRE (Delta).

This clean and reliable power system was also taken to markets across the country, such as the Sabon-Gari Market in Kano, Ariaria Market in Aba, and Sura Shopping Complex in Lagos, while the Solar Power Naija was launched in April 2021 to deliver 5 million off-grid solar connections to Nigerian households.

The programme is expected to generate an additional N7bn increase in tax revenues per annum and $10 million in annual import substitution. In May 2021, the Rural Electrification Agency announced the planned deployment of solar-powered grids to 200 Primary Health Centres (PHC) and 104 Unity Schools nationwide.

In the area of housing, the Family Homes Fund Limited (FHFL), incorporated by the Federal Government of Nigeria in September 2016, is the implementing agency for the Buhari-led administration’s National Social Housing scheme.

More than two thousand (2,000) hectares of land with titled documents have been given by 24 States for the Buhari administration’s Social Housing programme, with the capacity to accommodate about 65,000 new homes.
The Buhari-led administration has declared this decade the “Decade of Gas” and undertook the ground-breaking ceremony for the 614km Ajaokuta-Kaduna-Kano Gas Project.

Nigeria and Morocco have in 2021 signed an agreement to develop a US$1.4 billion multipurpose industrial platform (Ammonia and Di-Ammonium Phosphate production plants) that will utilise Nigerian gas and Moroccan phosphate to produce 750,000 tonnes of ammonia and one million tonnes of phosphate fertilisers annually by 2025. It will be located in Ikot-Abasi, Akwa-Ibom State.

The government commissioned, in December 2020, the new NPDC Integrated Gas Handling Facility in Edo State, the largest onshore LPG plant in the country, with a processing capacity of 100 million standard cubic feet of gas daily, producing 330 tonnes of LPG, 345 tonnes of propane and 2,600 barrels of condensate, daily.

In the field of agriculture, the Anchor Borrowers Program (ABP) of the Central Bank of Nigeria, launched by President Muhammadu Buhari on November 17, 2015, has made more than N300 billion to more than 3.1 million smallholder farmers of 21 different commodities (including Rice, Wheat, Maize, Cotton, Cassava, Poultry, Soy Beans, Groundnut, Fish), cultivating over 3.8 million hectares of farmland.

The government launched a government-to-government partnership with the Moroccan Government in December 2016, known as the Presidential Fertilizer Initiative (PFI), producing 12million 50kg bags of NPK 20:10:10 equivalent in 2020, bringing total production since inception to over 30 million 50kg bags equivalent.

Social investment and poverty alleviation
In 2016, President Buhari launched the National Social Investment Programme, currently the largest of such programmes in Africa and the world. Currently, the National Social Register of poor and vulnerable Nigerians (NSR) has 32.6 million persons from more than 7 million poor and vulnerable households, identified across 708 local government areas, 8,723 wards and 86,610 communities across the 36 States of the country and the FCT.

On education and health, since assuming office, the Buhari-led administration has committed more than N1.7 trillion of capital intervention to Nigeria’s tertiary institutions, through various means, including TETFund – with the universities taking the lion share of the total amount.

The Federal Government has disbursed more than N170 billion in UBE Matching Grants to States and the FCT since 2015, N8 billion in Special Education Grant to States and private providers of Special Education, and N34bn from the Teachers Professional Development Fund to States and the FCT.

In 2020, Buhari approved the establishment of the N75bn National Youth Investment Fund (NYIF) and Creative Industry Financing Initiative (CIFI), championed by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in collaboration with the Bankers’ Committee, to provide single-digit financing to young Nigerians in the fields of Fashion, Film, Music and Information Technology.
In 20197, the Federal Government added Creative Industries to the list of qualifying sectors for ‘Pioneer Status’ Incentives – which grants relief from Corporate Income Tax for a specified period of time.

Support to states
The Buhari-led administration has extended more than N2 trillion as bailout packages to State Governments to enable them meet their salaries and pensions obligations, especially in the face of dwindling oil revenues in the first three years of the administration.

The Nigerian Maritime University was established in Okerenkoko, Delta State. The University was granted approval in January 2018 by the National Universities Commission (NUC) to commence undergraduate degree programmes effective 2017/18 session, and commenced academic activities on April 12, 2018.

Work has also resumed on the 337km East-West Road project, originally awarded in 2006. The Buhari-led administration expects to complete the project by Q1 2022.

The Ogoni Clean-Up has commenced with the administration setting aside of US$170 million seed funding for the Ogoni Clean Up, in an Escrow Account established for that purpose. The Escrow Agreement Signing Ceremony took place in April 2018.

The Clean-Up commenced in January 2019, with the handover of the first batch of 21 sites to the selected remediation firms, after a painstaking procurement process. As of March 2021, 16 of the first 21 sites had been certified cleaned.

Soon after his assumption of office, on August 7, 2015, the President issued a directive to all Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to close their accounts with Deposit Money Banks (DMBs) and transfer their balances to the Central Bank of Nigeria on or before 15th September 2015.

Though the TSA system was launched in 2012, it failed to gain traction until President Buhari’s executive order in August 2015. The TSA system has now been implemented in more than 90 percent of all Federal MDAs.

This decision to fully operationalise the Treasury Single Account (TSA) system—a public accounting system that enables the Government to manage its finances (revenues and payments) using a single/unified account, or series of linked accounts domiciled at the Central Bank of Nigeria — has resulted in the consolidation of more than 17,000 bank accounts previously spread across DMBs in the country, and in savings of an average of N4bn monthly in banking charges.

Similsrly, in spite of great opposition, the Buhari-led administration has expanded IPPIS the coverage to the Armed Forces, as well as Federal Universities and other academic institutions.

However, despite the visible achiements recorded by the Buhari-led administration, some people feel that an objective assessment of the administration’s performance cannot be accrued through self-praise, but by reflecting deeply on the pulse of the street, and evaluating whether government policies and interventions are realistically lifting Nigerians out of poverty or pulling more back into it?

Growing rates of poverty in the country signal a failure in achieving the promises made and will continue to build distrust. A 2016 Pew Research Centre poll on Nigeria revealed that most Nigerians do not consider the political and economic system to be fair. Four years after, there is no evidence that the opinion of citizens have changed.

A core marker of success for President’s administration will, therefore, be the ability to regain the trust of citizens. This will entail a clear roadmap, an inclusive approach and a robust communication strategy to secure a collective buy-in for the county’s short, medium and long-term development aspirations.