A Review of Buhari Administration
By Dr. Joel Ademisoye
In my observation and view of the President Buhari administration’s 8 years in office, it was a serious calamity with its voodoo economic and social policies, inappropriate social programs and historic political corruption in the government have been imposed on the country and its citizens, that ultimately wrecked and crippled the country’s economy. Imagine the Accountant General of the Federation, Ahmed Idris, who was charged with corruption, fraud and money laundering by the federal government in the amount of N190 billion ($190 million at the time.).
Many examples of the inappropriate government policies, historic political corruption and looting of government funds under the Buhari administration are available in the public domain, such as the mismanaged oil sector, the insatiable appetite for taking foreign loans or borrowing from foreign countries like the Chinese loan, the Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Godwin Emefiele’s inappropriate monetary policy involving the changing, redesigning and swapping of the old currency for a new one and the governor’s unearthed massive corruption at the CBN- killers of the Nigerian economy.
Emefiele’s destructive tendency and unethical behavior at the CBN are unprecedented and for the history books at the apex bank of the country. Without any doubt, this was the conditions and state of the Nigerian economy at the end of the President Buhari’s tenure in 2023, that ruined the Nigerian economy, imposed hardships and sufferings on the Nigerian people. You might recall that President Tinubu administration was compelled to hold the Bull by the horns in removing the perennial oil subsidy in his maiden speech to Nigerians at the inauguration ceremony in 2023.
Arguably, the oil subsidy in Nigeria, was abused, manipulated and exploited by the many actors in the oil industry such as the oil contractors and importers of the refined oil from the foreign countries, because the 4 major government owned oil refineries were moribund and not rehabilitated and revitalized by the President Buhari administration in its 8 years in office.
With this array of monumental, complex and complicated economic social problems left behind by the President Buhari government, frankly speaking, how do you want the Tinubu administration to hit the ground running in Nigeria?
This is a reality of the Nigerian conditions that many Nigerians failed to recognize, grasp and comprehend , but yet many citizens expected the President Tinubu administration to hit the ground running and solve the perennial underdevelopment problems left behind by the Buhari government.
Today, President Tinubu is consipicously not combating the chronic, widespread political corruption in the Nigerian governments. For example, President Tinubu has developed the culture of tolerance for and accommodating corruption and looters of government treasury like many former and current state governors like the former Governors of the Delta and Kogi States, Ifeanyi Okowa and Yahaya Bello, who is charged with the fraud and misappropriation of the government funds of N80.2 billion by the EFCC.
To further underscore the President Tinubu’s indifference to and accommodating behavior of political corruption in Nigeria, he has appointed the former Director General of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), whose apartment in Lagos was raided and confiscated $43 million in cash, other foreign currencies, but escaped from prosecution and left the country in 2017. Thus, the Oke criminal case is still pending and unsolved. 9 years after Oke escaped from the Nigerian criminal justice, President Tinubu has appointed the former DG of the NIA in the President Jonathan government in 2013, as ambassador for the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Hence, Oke’s alleged case of looting the $43 million and other foreign currencies found in cash in his Ikoyi apartment, Lagos by the EFCC, was swept under the rug, no transparency and accountability for the whereabouts of the $43 million and other foreign currencies. I really have my doubts if President Tinubu, is capable, ready and willing to fight the political and ubiquitous corruption to a standstill in Nigeria. I think that Nigeria truly needs a strong leader of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, with a Zero Tolerance policy to corruption in his country and fought against corruption to a standstill. Dr. Joel Ademisoye
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