Between 1983 and 1985, Peter Onu of Nigeria
was Acting Secretary-General of the OAU. At the
1985 Summit in Addis Ababa, statesmen like
Julius Nyerere, President of Tanzania, lobbied for
his election as substantive Secretary-General.
However, there was a major stumbling block to
Peter Onu’s candidature: his Head of State,
Muhammadu Buhari, was campaigning against
him.
Buhari claimed: “This generation of Nigerians
and indeed future generations have no other
country than Nigeria.” But when the crunch
came, his allegiance to Nigeria disappeared. In
the election of the OAU Secretary-General in
1985, Buhari voted against Nigeria and for Niger
instead. He secured the election of Ide Oumarou,
a Fulani man from Niger; as opposed to an Igbo
man from Nigeria. By so doing, Buhari became
the first and only Head of State in the history of
modern international relations to vote against his
country in favour of his tribe.
Years later, General Buhari marched all the way
from Daura to Ibadan to demand of Oyo State
Governor, Lam Adeshina: “Why are your people
killing my people?” Again, he was not referring
to Nigerians as his
people. Instead, he was an advocate for the
rights of murderous Fulani herdsmen who killed
Yoruba farmers that objected to their cattle
grazing on their land and damaging their crops.
This same Buhari who voted against Nigeria in
1985, and said in 2003: “Muslims should only
vote those who will promote Islam,” is now
shopping for votes nationwide. He should be
rejected outright.
Ignorance running riot
If APC had wanted to be taken seriously, it
would have come up with a better presidential
material than Buhari. There is something
anomalous about a party whose mantra is
change, recycling a 73 year old man as its
candidate for the president of modern Nigeria.
Buhari has little or no understanding of public
policy. That is why APC will always come up
with some excuse or the other not to have him
participate in a debate with Jonathan. Buhari
fought corruption by imposing ridiculous 300-
year sentences on offenders. He fought exam
malpractices by imposing 24-year prison
sentences on school children.
He dealt with indiscipline by flogging people to
queue at bus-stops. He dealt with food
shortages by sending soldiers to break into
private warehouses and shops. He fought trade
imbalances by taking Nigeria back to the stone
age of trade by barter (counter-trade). He
sought to extradite a Nigerian from Britain by
drugging and crating him.
There is so much about Buhari ending the Boko
Haram insurgency as he did the Maitatsine
insurgency in the 1980s. But the General needs
to be advised that Boko Haram is not
Maitatsine. Maitatsine was in two towns: Boko
Haram is in three states with spillover effects
into others. Maitatsine fought with bows and
arrows: Boko Haram fights with sophisticated
weapons. Maitatsine was a local insurgency,
Boko Haram is an international phenomenon.
Anti-corruption hypocrisy: Buhari does not know
what corruption means and how to fight it. He
became Nigeria’s Head of State through the
corruption of a coup d’état and he then tried to
fight corruption with corruption. Imposing
retroactive decrees and killing Nigerians under
them is corruption. Putting an Igbo vice-
president in Kirikiri, while placing the Fulani
president under palatial house arrest, is
corruption.
Detaining people like Michael Ajasin in jail, even
after they were discharged and acquitted by
kangaroo courts, is corruption. Jailing journalists
for telling the truth is corruption. Putting
pressure on a judge in order to jail Fela
Anikulapo-Kuti is corruption. Shepherding 53
suitcases of contraband unchecked through
Customs during a currency change exercise is
corruption. Swearing an affidavit that your
school-leaving certificate is with the military
when it is not, is corruption.
Transforming Nigeria: Buhari’s shameful past is
dwarfed by the achievements of Goodluck
Jonathan. Under Jonathan, Nigeria has emerged
as by far the largest economy in Africa with a
GDP of $503 billion; nearly double the previous
estimates. South Africa now comes a distant
second with $350 billion. With the unbundling of
PHCN after 52 years of gridlock, and with now
the realizable target of 20,000 megawatts of
electricity by 2020, Nigeria’s GDP will soon
double that of South Africa.
CNN Money projects that the fastest growing
economy in the world in 2015 will be China (7.3%
growth rate); followed by Qatar (7.1%); and then
followed by Nigeria (7%). This belies all the
misinformation about the Nigerian economy
dished out by the APC and attests to the astute
management of the economy by the Jonathan
administration. The seemingly ambitious Vision
20 2020, proclaimed under the Abacha regime to
make Nigeria one of the 20 largest economies in
the world by 2020 is now well in sight. Today,
Nigeria is already the 23rd largest economy in
the world. Kudos to Jonathan, we have
overtaken such European countries as Austria
and Belgium.
Life expectancy
In 2010, when Jonathan became acting
president, life expectancy in Nigeria was 47
years. Today, it is 54 years; an improvement of
seven years. Adroit application of SURE-P funds
has reduced the maternal mortality ratio in
Nigeria by 26%. Under Jonathan, Nigeria has
become Guinea Worm-free; a disease previously
affecting 800,000 Nigerians yearly. In the last six
months, there has been no new case of polio in
Nigeria. If this goes on for another two and a
half years, Nigeria will be declared polio-free.
Bill Gates, the richest man in the world, hailed
Nigeria’s fight against polio as one of the great
world achievements of 2014. He said: “The
infrastructure Nigeria has built to fight polio
actually made it easier for them to swiftly
contain Ebola. The fact that Nigeria is now
Ebola-free is a great example of how doing the
work to fight things like fighting polio also leaves
countries better prepared to deal with outbreaks
of other diseases.”
Investors’ haven: In the last three years, the
United Nations Conference on Trade and
Development (UNCTAD) has ranked Nigeria as
the number one country for foreign investments
in Africa. We also receive more home-
remittances than any other African country; a
vote of confidence in our economy by Nigerians
living abroad. They remitted $23 billion in 2013,
a figure far more than the $18 billion received by
Egypt; the country with the second highest home
remittance in Africa. It is a testament to
Goodluck Jonathan’s adroit management of the
Nigerian economy that the richest African is now
a Nigerian.
In 2010, when Jonathan came to power, Aliko
Dangote was the 463rd richest man in the world,
with a total fortune of $2.1 billion. Today, he is
the 23rd richest man in the world, with a total
fortune of $25 billion. Dangote’s billions are
“made in Nigeria.” Indeed, under Jonathan,
Nigeria now has the fourth highest rate of
returns on investments in the world, according to
UNCTAD.
Crisis of unemployment
The big challenge has to do with jobs. Every
year, another 1.8 million people are offloaded
into the job market. However, while the APC
says Buhari will create 720,000 jobs a year if
elected, Jonathan created 1.6 million jobs in
2013. He has established such innovative
programmes as Nagropreneurs and YOUWIN that
support young farmers and entrepreneurs with
grants, training and mentorship. He has also
instituted internship schemes to enhance the
capacity of university graduates to secure gainful
employment.
The unemployment problem is compounded by
the more than doubling of the education budget
under Jonathan. Every Nigerian child now has
the opportunity to go to school. Indeed, there
has been a 10 million increase in school
enrolment in Nigeria under this government.
There has also been a 75% increase in O’ Level
credit pass in Maths and English. Jonathan
established 125 Almajiri schools in 13 northern
states. He also established 14 new federal
universities. There is now a federal university in
every state. Indeed, the kidnapping of the Chibok
schoolgirls derives from the disenchantment of
the Boko Haram that many Northern girls are
now going to school.
Dealing with corruption: According to
Transparency International, Nigeria has not
become more corrupt under Goodluck Jonathan.
Out of 178 countries ranked in 2010, Nigeria was
the 134th most corrupt country. In 2014, Nigeria
was ranked 136th. Unlike Buhari, Jonathan
understands that corruption has to be attacked
institutionally, from the roots. Therefore, he
proposed the abrogation of the petroleum
subsidy; one of the biggest avenues for
corruption in government. However, Nigerians
refused. Jonathan has sanitized the corruption in
fertilizer distribution. The Minister of Agriculture,
Akinwumi Adesina, lamented that between 1980
and 2010, Nigeria lost 776 billion naira to
corrupt fertilizer racketeering.
Fertiliser racketeering
That effectively came to an end under Jonathan.
Through the innovative e-wallet system, farmers
are given cell-phones through which they now
have direct and easy access to government-
provided fertilizer, chemicals and seedlings.
Jonathan has also sanitised the banking system
by removing dinosaur managing directors,
recovering indigent loans and using AMCON to
mop up bad loans. By instituting e-payment
systems, he sanitized the civil service by
removing 50,000 ghost-workers in one fell
swoop. He has equally got rid of ghost voters
from the electoral register; over 1 million ghost
voters were removed from the Zamfara INEC
register alone. Under Jonathan, we have had free
and fair elections one after the other; in Edo,
Anambra, Ondo, Ekiti and Osun.
Agriculture has been transformed under this
administration. Thanks to Jonathan, agriculture
now accounts for 22% of Nigeria’s GDP, more
than oil and gas which only account for 15.9%.
Under Jonathan, Nigeria has recorded a more
than 50% reduction in food imports. Prior to his
presidency, we had a food import bill of 1.4
trillion naira. But now, it is less than N700
billion. With the innovation of dry season rice-
farming, Nigeria has reached 60% self-sufficiency
in rice production. According to the Food and
Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations
(FAO), Nigeria is now the largest producer of
cassava in the world. The Jonathan government
built six strategically-located perishable cargo
airports in Ilorin, Jalingo, Jos, Lagos, Makurdi
andYola; in close proximity to Nigeria’s food
baskets.
It is remarkable that Northern farmers were able
to donate five million tubers of yam in order to
raise 5 billion naira for Buhari’s presidential
election campaign. If Jonathan’s transformation
agenda in agriculture was not working as
planned, they would not have been able to do
this.
