Buhari’s achievements are enough for APC to campaign with – Umohinyang

Convener of the Coalition for Good Governance and Justice, Emmanuel Umohinyang (Esq), assesses the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration in over seven years, following insinuations that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) may not have much to campaign with ahead of the 2023 elections. He also talks about the mass movement in support of the Labour Party presidential candidate, Peter Obi, among other sundry issues, in this interview with Linus Aleke and Deborah Onyofufeke.

Within the next few months, President Muhammadu Buhari will be preparing to hand over to a new administration. Do you think he has performed based on the promises his party made to Nigerians?

Well, I think if you are going to assess any man who has held the position of leadership, you must not only assess him based on what he has said, you must also take into consideration some variables to give a perfect assessment. If you must be fair to that person, as the case may be. You must also look at the challenges that the administration has faced, and how has the administration been able to deal with those challenges. So, if I want to assess Muhammadu Buhari’s administration, I think I will score him 75 per cent and which is an A. In my estimation, you have to take into cognisance the price of crude oil at the inception of this administration. What are other challenges this government had to battle with? Apart from the issue of COVID-19 that shut down the system for about two years, you could also be looking at a president who inherited an empty armoury, from the former president, Goodluck Jonathan. So, in terms of security, it took a whole lot of time for him to be able to get some of the hardware and some of the software to equip the military to meet up with the emerging challenges. We also had the case of Boko Haram in the North-East that he inherited from Jonathan. And then you had the case of banditry that came under its administration and the issue of kidnapping in the south.

Are you saying the President did not inherit anything that could have helped him to deal with this menace?

The answer is no. The armoury wasn’t there and this President had to start buying arms, and weapons, for the military to equip them. It had to begin to deal with the issue of finance, taking care of their welfare, and meeting the need of the armed forces. And I think in that area, you can give this President a pass mark, in the sense that he has been able to decimate Boko Haram. And he has also been able to tackle the issue of banditry as we speak. The situation is different from three, or four months ago.

Why is it so?

People have said, why did we buy Tucano and we cannot use it, and I tell those people that when the Tucano aircraft was bought, there was an agreement signed with the American government that this will be used to tackle the menace of Boko Haram in the North-East. And then this banditry was basically in the North-West and North-Central. So, the government needed to first and foremost, get back to their suppliers to let them know, some of the challenges they had to contend with and secure the concern of the American government to deploy this aircraft to the northwest. And I think that has been done now and you can see the progress report. As regards insecurity, we cannot say the situation we have today is the same as what we had three, or four months ago. So, in that area, I think the President has done excellently well. Infrastructure-wise, he has done excellently well, even his worst critics have to admit that yes, on infrastructure, you can give him a 10 over 10.

On the issue of corruption, has he done well?

The answer is yes. He has tried but people have said there has been widespread corruption. And I tell them, a government that will draw his own Accountant General and put him in the dock for corruption charges should be commended. The previous administration before that of Muhammadu Buhari would have treated it as a family affair. We have seen chieftains of the party being docked, and one of them was Femi Fani-Kayode. When he moved from PDP to APC, the report was that oh, the charge against him was going to be dropped, but even in APC, the government arraigned him for forgery at the Federal High Court in Lagos. So, the government will not tolerate the issue of corruption. Anywhere it is found, as soon as proof is brought before the President, it is guaranteed that he’s going to act on it, and on that note, I think this government has done very well in those three areas he promised. For instance, average Nigerians have not given President Muhammadu Buhari a pass mark because they feel that whatever he has achieved, the economy has not fared well including the state of security under his watch.

But there had been backlashes that the President Buhari-led administration may not have left enough positive achievements for the APC to campaign with, how can they dissuade this insinuation during electioneering?

There are a lot of things that the government has achieved. And the unfortunate aspect of the government is that the media wing of the government has not been doing so well, and you heard the frustration he expressed in Imo State when he said he doesn’t know why those who are in a position to speak for the government are quiet about it. When you said that an average Nigerian, I don’t think we have taken any poll in that regard. Why we’ll hold on in that regard, I think that an average Nigerian will rather score this President well, at least one. We have made it expressly clear that in terms of infrastructure the government has done well. If we point out the issue of the Second Niger Bridge, under Jonathan’s administration for six years, all Jonathan could achieve was a drawing on paper for six years. It was all about talk, no action. It was this President that was the first to put blocks on that site. Today, the Second Niger Bridge is a reality. Let us look at the Lagos Ibadan expressway, these are landmark projects that you know that right from the days of ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo, it has been on the pipeline. At one point, there was a court case that slowed it down and it was the present Minister for Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, who had to call parties to resolve it for the project to continue. In the North, look at the Abuja-Kaduna rail line. Yes, people will say no, it started from the PDP administration, but the issue about race is not who started it, it is about who brought it to a conclusion. This government would have said, oh, it wasn’t a project that we initiated let us abandon it. It took President Buhari, practically his first four years to ensure that projects that were uncompleted by the previous administration were taken to a conclusion because the money that was spent is not PDP’s money, it is Nigeria’s money. The government has done so well, and all that the candidate of that party needs to do is to look into the achievement of the government and use it to sell its manifesto to Nigerians. You need to take the issue one after the other and tell Nigerians in terms of electricity, this is where we are today. And what is the situation now? What is the generation capacity when Buhari came in? What is the situation now? What is the distribution capacity? What is the situation now?

The DisCos (Distribution Companies) that are supposed to distribute, these companies, were given the name by the PDP administration, and most of them have no idea about the issue of electricity, it was a case of sharing national assets with their friends. And some of the problems we have now, some people are asking, why can’t we revoke their contracts? Go and look at the clauses that gave rise to this contract, it comes with severe consequences. So, what the government is doing just to see what they can do in terms of resources to help them boost distribution capacity. It is a case where government boosts the generation, but DisCos cannot take to this route. Why? Because of the chain of transmission, that narrow chain of transmission. Yes, somebody will say what of education? ASUU is on strike. The ASUU crisis emanated from the 2009 agreement signed by the PDP-led administration under the leadership of President Goodluck Jonathan. It was not e APC administration that entered into this agreement with ASUU.

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But the former President, Goodluck Jonathan, said he resolved the ASUU strike under his watch in one night, why did not come up again?

I was surprised and amazed to hear that. If you had resolved the ASUU strike, in one night as you said, we will not be here. So, sitting down to promise them you were going to give them a certain amount of money which you never did, cannot be said for the issue to have been resolved. The problem was never resolved. And that’s why the Buhari administration is on it. One thing the Buhari administration will not do is continue with the mistake of the past, by promising ASUU we will do this when the government itself knows that it cannot do it. And so he is not willing to lie to the academic union. So, what the government is doing is to bring those strategic thinkers to see how they can mediate and ensure that this strike issue is put to rest permanently so that our brothers and sisters can go back to the classroom and continue with their studies. I think the administration has done so well that a candidate for the APC should not doubt taking all those things that the government has done and putting them out for the people to see. It’s all about going to the Niger Delta, to say I have built this road, I have done this hospital because they say seeing is believing. Show the people what you have done, the Buhari administration has a lot to show Nigerians when the campaign starts.

So in your view, APC has something to campaign with?

Yes, they have done well. Now, let me go a little bit away from this because l don’t want you to tag me as a spokesperson for the APC.
There has been one trend in Nigeria lately, especially among the youth. The Obi-Datti movement seems to be threatening the other major political party. What is your take on this movement?

Honestly, I think the Obi-Datti movement is just a media frenzy, which I know with time it will fizzle out. As a student of history, we know that we have had such a thing in the past does it translate to an electoral victory or an electoral vote? The Obi movement is just a child of circumstance cultivated from the frustration of several years past. Now, what has happened is that a group of young guys have shown up and think that they have found a messiah in Peter Obi, which is not true. The problem we have in our country is that people fail to look at history. All you need to do is Peter Obi was once a governor for eight years in the state of Anambra. Why not reverse your memory back and look at how he did fair? All Peter Obi has been telling Nigerians is how he saved N75bn for the government of Anambra.

The question is, what did he do? What are those legacy projects Peter Obi can point out and say I did this while I was in Anambra State, there is none? Maybe what you can refer to is the infamous deportation of some hangers-on from Onitsha Bridge back to Akwa Ibom and back to Lagos and Kaduna, which raised a lot of issues. In his view, he felt that Anambra was not the place to host such people, but in Lagos, it was treated differently. If you remember, in Lagos, we housed those people and took them to a rehabilitation centre. Imagine the rehabilitation centre where some of those people were kept, and rehabilitated, and a letter was sent. Even those who were elated to go back home. A letter was sent by the Lagos state government under Fashola, to those states and those people were now sent to their state under the course of Lagos state but what did you have in Anambra? Some people were blocked, a truck was blocked at Onitsha Bridge and they were sharing snacks. And then sent back to their various states. Is that the man you are asking to come and rule the country, is that the kind of president Nigeria is looking out for? That certainly cannot be the kind of President we need in a democratic environment.

So, you can say some of the things that came out under his administration, for such a man after a few years, create a rainbow-like situation and say, oh, he’s the messiah, the country wants, I do not think the country wants a trial by error fellow or I do not think Nigeria is ready to have a president who abandoned roads, abandoned rail, abandoned the seaport, and continued saving money. In the end, he declares what he has saved. Nigeria is not a business entity, so he cannot run the system the way he runs his private business. He talks about Nigeria as not a production economy, these are parts of his economic strategies. The question you ask Peter obi is, as a governor of Anambra in 10yrs, can you tell the people what Anambra state produced under your watch, he does not believe. He only speaks of the production economy with his mouth. His heart is far away from production. Yes, a man who is willing to import even vegetables from the neighbouring country for us to use in Nigeria.