Nigerians are sad; they are disappointed and if one is to rely on social media commentaries and views, many Nigerians believe that the government of Muhammadu Buhari is manifestly fraudulent, critically dishonest and irredeemably corrupt.
The perception of Nigerians towards their government worsened since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic and beyond just being seen as corrupt and incompetent, many Nigerians on the streets believe that several key officials of the administration are wicked men and women who would exploit every available opportunity- even a humanitarian crisis such as the one currently ravaging the world- to enrich themselves.
Do not imagine that there are no bases for these sentiments or that the frustrations are coming mostly from disenchanted opposition sympathisers and disappointed members of the elite class. Recall that the government announced hours before the lockdown across the three major cities of the country last week that it had mapped out hundreds of billions of naira for distribution to vulnerable families through the ministry of humanitarian affairs and disaster management. The president in his speech on March 29 announced that the government was putting in several measures in place to insulate millions of poverty demobilised families from the scorching effects of the lockdown.
The government also announced that repayment of loans owned intervention agencies like the Bank of Industry and Bank of Agriculture would be put on hold until a more auspicious time. There has also been release of cereals from the national strategic grains reserves to support the food distribution system in addition to a directive to the Customs Service to make available for public consumption, a hundred and fifty trailer loads of rice allegedly confiscated from smugglers over the past few months.
Ordinarily, the government would have expected some commendations from the public for what can be deemed its magnanimity to ordinary Nigerians at a time of global emergency. Although the commitment of the presidency in Nigeria falls short of what we have seen from Ghana, South Africa or even Rwanda where larger sums have been mapped out to support the citizens at a time of unprecedented threats and anxiety, many commentators believe that “at least the government showed some concerns.”
While some have argued that it was thoughtful of the president to have made a commitment to support the poor at a time of great social upheaval, the major criticism for the government is now coming in relation to the obtuse and opaque methodologies employed in the distribution of the palliatives.
From the comical to the most bizarre, the impression many have gotten from the government’s information circulation system leaves one wondering if this government possess the capacity to get one thing right. The minister in charge of the administration of palliatives, Sadiya Farouq announced that her ministry has paid out N20, 000 to millions of families in a matter of days. Shortly after, there were media reports that only one million families were qualified to benefit from the social welfare grant of N20, 000 per family.
The minister’s announcement sparked number of controversies and justifiably so. One, there were pictures of ministry officials standing behind hordes of cash with scores of women queuing up to be paid. The first controversy was: why cash payment? How does a government seeking to drive a cashless economy turn around to move billions of naira around in cash for distribution? What happened to electronic payment channels?
Well, some argued that the poorest of the poor do not often have access to financial services through the traditional banks. Then the critics fired back: shouldn’t this have been a good opportunity to integrate them into the financial system by creating bank accounts for them and paying whatever grants you map out into the accounts? By so doing, it would be easy for the government to keep track of payment, minimise incidence of overpayment and build a reliable database of poor Nigerians. But then, not many people have actually credited the government with a generous measure of creativity.
There were also concerns about the religious and ethnic identities of the major beneficiaries. From the images shared by the press, it does appear that the programme was exclusively for hijab-wearing Muslim women in northern parts of the country. While the officials were still struggling to assure social media savvy Nigerians that the programmes were genuine and the government’s intention wholesome, the leadership of the national assembly picked up the battle with both the speaker of the House of Representatives and the senate president casting aspersion on the sincerity of the programme this past Tuesday. Like the observers on social media and in the streets, the lawmakers made public their reservations about the administration of the palliatives programmes and the guiding metrics of evaluation. The legislators vowed to probe deeper and get to the root of things.
If the usually docile legislature for once sang from the same hymn book with members of the Nigerian social media community, then you can be sure things have gone awry and the government is on the verge of losing all credibility- even in amongst “rubber stamp” parliamentarians.
At any rate, many people have learnt to take whatever the government says with a pinch of salt. From announcing endless “technical and tactical victories” over Boko Haram terrorists to blatantly denying its own campaign promises, the government has shown that it cannot be reasonably trusted by non-partisan Nigerians.
If there is any lesson Nigerians have been able to pick from the adversities of the coronavirus attacks, it is the fact that the country has been in the wrong hands since 2015. From crippling debt profile with dubious application to the depletion of all strategic funds set up by previous governments, the Muhammadu Buhari administration has proven to be a huge burden on Nigeria. What the outbreak of the coronavirus in the country has done is to expose the underbelly of the government. Think about the government’s failure to fix the health system despite promising to do so, a chronic inability to make any attempt at improving the quality of life of the ordinary Nigerian, the explosion of the novel coronavirus has demonstrated that indeed, the Buhari-led federal government is out of its depth.
All over the world, heads of states speak regularly to reassure the people, announce progress made and deliver whatever bad news there is. With Buhari however, things are completely different. After refusing to show himself to the people and then broadcasting a very timid and boring message on the back of so much persuasions and goading from Nigerians and foreigners, Buhari has become symptomatic of all that is wrong with the Nigerian leadership system: arrogance, insensitive, clueless and zero regard for the public.
What we shall take out at the end of this tragedy is that Buhari is not a leader to be relied on. Most curiously, it does also appear that he surrounded himself with his likes: men bereft of ideas, critical thinking and management capacities.
The burning of the accountant general of the federation’s office at Abuja’s central business district earlier today has added another layer to the tomes of conspiracy theories that have dominated the Nigerian media space in the last few weeks.
Why was the accountant general’s office burnt hours after doubts were raised about the distribution of hundreds of billions by the humanitarian affairs ministry? Is anyone trying to destroy public records and frustrate whatever investigations may be called by the legislators and civil society organisations?
Many have argued that there are electronic records to back up the release of funds by the federal government through the accountant general’s office. Critics are however not convinced and the crux of the argument is this: if the government believes that it is Ok to carry huge pallets of cash around for distribution not minding the security and associated risks, what happens if officials rise tomorrow to tell us that “every record was destroyed in the fire?
Does fraud have a better definition?
