The Muhammadu Buhari-led administration has clocked five years and, therefore, provides ample opportunity for Nigerians to critically, or otherwise, assess the administration’s successes, shortcomings and suggest areas improvement can be made.
Like it is known, however, government is a continuum and where one stops, the next picks from there. Happily, no one seems to appreciate this fact of governance better than Buhari, whose administration, despite its aversion for the previous PDP-led administrations, decided to continue with the seemingly good policies and programmes of its predecessor.
One of such areas where continuity was prioritised is agriculture and the nation is better for that. But, the essence of governance is to better things and make life easier for people. Thus, the Buhari-led administration introduced the Anchor Borrowers Programme (ABP), spearheaded by the Central Bank of Nigeria, on November 17, 2015, to improve the sector.
The programme has made available more than N200 billion in funding to more than 1.5 million smallholder farmers of 16 different commodities including rice, wheat, maize, cotton, and cassava, who cultivate more than 1.4 million hectares of farmland.
The ABP has substantially raised local production of rice, doubling the production of paddy as well as milled rice between 2015 and 2019. In fact, between 2016 and 2019, more than 10 new rice mills came on stream in Nigeria and existing mills expanded their capacity.
Encouragingly, more than a billion dollars was invested by the private sector in the production of rice, wheat, sugar, poultry, animal feed, fertilisers, etc, since 2015.And to boost production, the government entered into an agreement in 2017 with the Kingdom of Morocco to produce more than a million metric tonnes of fertiliser produced annually. This arrangement led to significant reduction in the price of the commodity and made distribution to farmers easy, saved $150 million, annually, of foreign exchange through the substitution of imported components with locally manufactured ones.
The Buhari-led administration has also worked to make business in the country easier through providing support for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs). The administration has launched a series of funding and capacity development initiatives designed to support the MSMEs and established the new Development Bank of Nigeria (DBN). Since 2017, the DBN has disbursed a total of N100 billion through the bank’s 27 Participating Financial Institutions (PFIs) impacting more than 100,000 MSMEs. Similarly, the Bank of Industry has also disbursed more than N400bn in loans to large, medium, small and micro enterprises since 2016.
Again, the government has established a N5 billion Fund for Artisanal Miners, as part of the Federal Ministry of Mines and Solid Minerals Development’s Programme to boost mining activities in Nigeria and a $20 million fund to support young technology entrepreneurs in Nigeria.
Still, in the area of Ease of Doing Business Reform, the work of the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (inaugurated by President Buhari in August 2016) and the Enabling Business Environment Secretariat (EBES) has resulted in Nigeria moving up 39 places on the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business rankings since 2016. In the last three years, Nigeria has twice been adjudged one of 10 Most Improved Economies in the Rankings.
Monetary, fiscal, trade, immigration, consumer protection reforms are also being carried out by the government, with the launch of a new Tax Identification Number (TIN) Registration System in 2019. For the first time Nigeria has a consolidated, unified database of all taxpayers (individual and corporate), across the states.
This development came about as a result of increased collaboration between FIRS and States’ Inland Revenue Services through improved sharing of information and an integration of databases, among others.
The new TIN Registration system leverages existing taxpayer data available from databases of multiple organisations like the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC), banks through Bank Verification Number (BVN), National Identity Card Management Commission (NIMC) and others.
The TIN system has led to an increase in Nigeria’s “Tax Net” (number of paying and non-paying individuals and companies in the Tax Database) from 13 million as at December 2015 to 35 million at the end of 2018, and to about 45 million in 2019.
The government also improved the quality of the annual budgeting system with the introduction of the Government Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS), in 2018. The new system, significantly, improves the transparency and efficiency of the budgeting system and made it possible for the government to restore the budget to the original January to December cycle.
Rightly, and wrongly too, depending on those involved in the argument, many issues were raised about the debt profile of Nigeria. But, in 2017, to demonstrate that it’s on top of the situation, the government has issued Nigeria’s first ever Diaspora Bond, in the International Capital Market. The Diaspora Bond was US$300 million with a tenor of 5-years. The proceeds were used to part–finance the 2017 Budget.It introduced the Sukuk Bond (1st Tranche – 100 billion Naira in 2017; 2nd Tranche of 100 billion Naira in 2018 and 3rd Tranche of 150 billion Naira has just gone on sale in May 2020). The Sukuk Bond proceeds are used to fund major road projects across the six geopolitical zones of Nigeria and issued Nigeria’s first ever Sovereign Green Bonds.
This administration has also provided fiscal support to states of more than N2trn in bailout packages. This gesture enabled states to meet their salaries and pensions obligations, especially in the face of dwindling oil revenues.
To make things work faster and better, the Buhari-led administration has, since 2017, issued a number of landmark Executive Orders. They are Executive Order (001) on Improving Efficiency in the Business Environment, Executive Order (002) on Promoting Local Procurement by Government Agencies, Executive Order (005) on planning and execution of projects, promotion of Nigerian content in contracts and science, engineering and technology, Executive Order (008) on the Voluntary Offshore Assets Regularization Scheme (VOARS), Executive Order (007) on Road Infrastructure Development and Refurbishment Investment Tax Credit Scheme, and Executive Order (010) Implementing Financial Autonomy of State Legislature and State Judiciary.
Of course, the president’s passion to improve the state of the nation’s infrastructure is known by all. Thus, his administration has demonstrated a single-minded commitment to upgrading and developing Nigeria’s transport, power and health infrastructure.
The three major rail projects inherited from previous administrations have been completed and commissioned. They are Abuja Metro Rail and the Abuja-Kaduna Rail, and the 327km Itakpe-Ajaokuta-Warri Rail. A fourth project, the Lagos-Ibadan rail project, would be completed in 2020.
The government has disbursed funds for the Second Niger Bridge, Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, and the Abuja-Kaduna-Zaria-Kano Expressway, while the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA), in March 2018, invested US$11m to establish a world-class Cancer Treatment Centre at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) which commenced its operations in 2019.
Works on the new Abuja and Port Harcourt international airports terminals have been completed while works on the Lagos and Kano international airport terminals would be completed soon. Works on these airports were inherited from the previous administration.
In the area of power, the administration introduced, among other schemes, what is known as the Federal Government’s Energising Economies Programme, which is a public-private partnership led by the Rural Electrification Agency (REA), to deliver stable power supply to markets and economic clusters across the country.
The initial phase is ongoing in Ariaria Market in Aba, Abia State (32,000 shops), Sura Shopping Complex in Lagos (1,000 shops), Shomolu Printing Community in Lagos (4,000 shops) and the Sabon Gari Market in Kano (12,000 shops).
This administration introduced one of the most ambitious Social Investment Programmes (SIP) in Africa. No doubt, the SIP is the largest and most ambitious social safety net programme in the history of Nigeria, with 12 million direct beneficiaries at the initial stage.
In the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP) arm of the SIP, ₦36.9bn was disbursed in interest-free loans, ranging from N50,000 to N350,000, to more than 2.3 million market women, traders, artisans, farmers across 36 states of the country and FCT – Abuja.
In the Home Grown School Feeding Programme (HGSFP) arm, 9.9 million primary 1 – 3 pupils in 54,952 public primary schools in 35 states benefit. More than 107,000 cooks are engaged to deliver meals.
The NHGSFP reduces hunger and malnutrition, and improves education outcomes (boosts school enrolment); farmers and produce ‘aggregators’ also benefit from improved access to school feeding markets and communities and, by extension, improved incomes.
There is also the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT), with more than three million poor and vulnerable households registered on the National Social Register, and more than one million of these families are currently benefiting from the CCT Scheme, which pays N5,000 to each household monthly.
Education-wise, the government has disbursed more than N170bn in UBE matching grants to states and the FCT since 2015, N8bn 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.
On healthcare, a minimum of $2.5m was disbursed to each state and the FCT, under the Saving One Million Lives (SOML) initiative, to improve health outcomes. This government, in compliance to the National Health Act, included the 1% minimum portion of the Consolidated Revenue Fund – amounting to N55bn – in the 2018 budget to fund the Basic Health Care Provision Fund (BHCPF). The Fund is designed to deliver a guaranteed set health services to all Nigerians, through the national network of primary health care centres.
The Anti-corruption campaign is dear to Buhari, whose political success was built around his personal integrity. Consequently, this administration plugged areas of financial leakages and introduced Whistleblowing Policy in 2016. This programme has led to recoveries of several billions of Naira in recoveries from tax evaders and public officials.
On its part, the EFCC recovered 794 billion Naira between 2015 and 2019, in addition to hundreds of properties and other assets it has confiscated while the ICPC, through its activities, has recovered billions of naira, especially from inflated personnel budgets.
Similarly, the Presidential Initiative on Continuous Audit (PICA) initiated to strengthen control over government finances through a continuous internal audit process across all Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), particularly in respect of payroll, the discovery of more than 54,000 fraudulent payroll entries, saving N200 billion per annum.
And, on August 7, 2015, President Buhari 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 September 15, 2015 under a system known as the Treasury Single Account (TSA).
Though launched by ex-president Jonathan in 2012, the TSA failed to be implemented until President Buhari’s executive order was issued to that effect in August 2015. As of May 2018, the TSA system has been implemented in 92 percent of all MDAs.
The TSA allows managers of government’s finances, including but not limited to the ministry of finance and the office of the accountant-general of the federation, to have, at any point in time, a comprehensive overview of cash flows across the entire government system.
The government also introduced justice reforms. Specifically, it established the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption (PACAC). PACAC was established by President Buhari in August 2015 to, among other things, promote the reform agenda of the government on the anti-corruption effort, and advise the present administration in the prosecution of the war against corruption and the implementation of required reforms in Nigeria’s criminal justice system.
PACAC has empowered judges and prosecutors to operate effectively in carrying out their responsibilities through workshops on the new Administration of Criminal Justice Act, 2015, and helped anti-corruption agencies devise clearer strategies for obtaining forfeiture of assets suspected to have been acquired fraudulently.
The law enforcement agencies have significantly scaled up their activities across the country, through initiation of the Operation Whirl Stroke in the North-central, Operation Ex-Swift Response in border areas, several new Forward Operating Bases, Quick Response Wings, Commando Training Schools and others. It also sent forces to areas facing security problems.
The administration has rolled out the most significant response to Nigeria’s multifaceted security challenges since 1999 and increased investments in the security sector.
In April 2020, a first batch of 17 military vehicles (VT-4 main battle tanks, ST-1 wheeled tank destroyers, self-propelled howitzers etc) arrived from China, while the Nigerian Air Force has acquired 22 brand new aircraft since President Buhari assumed office in 2015, and is expecting another 16 (including the 12 Super Tucano currently on order from the United States Government, and due for delivery starting 2021).
Buhari approved the recruitment of 10,000 new police officers annually to beef internal security and approved new salary packages for the military and police.
In the area of diplomacy and international resources, this administration has reestablished Nigeria’s position and influence in the regional and global arena. Fragile/broken relations with the United States, United Kingdom, South Africa, and with neighbouring countries (Chad, Niger and Cameroon) have been mended and strengthened.
Of course, Nigeria’s bilateral relations now wax stronger. For example, Buhari’s April 2016 official visit to China has unlocked billions of dollars in infrastructure funding, primarily for road and rail projects.
And from Germany, came the support for the Presidential Power Initiative (PPI), a six-year programme to modernise Nigeria’s electricity grid, under a Government-to-Government framework.
So also came the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL) and Petkus Technologie of Germany, aimed at significantly reducing the incidence/impact of post-harvest losses in Nigeria’s Agriculture Value Chain.And from the United States (USA) came the renewed cooperation in security and anti-corruption. The US Government has approved the sale of 12 Super Tucano Aircraft to Nigeria, as well as repatriation of recovered looted monies and assets stashed in the US.
Nigerian and U.S. militaries collaborated to host, in April 2018 at Abuja, the 2018 African Land Forces Summit, the largest gathering of African Army chiefs, to discuss cooperation aimed at improving security on the continent.
And, in 2018, Nigeria commenced the implementation of Automatic Exchange of Tax Information (AETI) protocol with the United Kingdom. This Protocol will provide the Nigerian Government with data on bank accounts, property and trusts held in the UK by Nigerian nationals, and will support the Voluntary Assets and Income Declaration Scheme (VAIDS) by allowing Nigerian tax authorities to check the accuracy of declarations received regarding overseas assets and income.
The UK funded £13m education programme that will provide training for teachers, school equipment, and security for schools, for 100,000 children living in parts of the North-east affected by Boko Haram insurgency.
Nigeria has signed and ratified an Extradition Treaty with the United Arab Emirates that allows extradition of Nigerians who flee to the UAE after committing crimes in Nigeria.
While the Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA) has seen inflows of around US$2bn under the Buhari-led administration, the first inflows since the original US$1bn which the Fund kicked-off in 2012.
Unfortunately, amidst efforts to take Nigeria to the Next Level by this administration came the novel coronavirus, a disease that has killed many people and distorted many economies. The government took proactive measures and issued directives on healthcare, border security, fiscal and monetary policies in response to the pandemic.
The president has set up an Economic Sustainability Committee chaired by Vice President Osinbajo, to develop a comprehensive economic plan to respond to the disruptions and dislocations caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The President has also set up a Presidential Task Force on COVID-19, chaired by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha, with Dr Sani Aliyu as the National Coordinator. The PTF is coordinating Nigeria’s multi-sectoral inter-governmental approach to COVID-19. And, so far, so good as Nigeria can be said to be on top of the COVID-19 pandemic situation.
