In the President Muhammadu Buhari’s address at the just concluded two-day Ministerial Performance Review Retreat of his administration, he expectedly scored his government high in all ramifications, including infrastructure, security, health, anti-corruption, social security and others. One area that stood out clearly for him was infrastructural development.  According to him, in recognition of the importance of critical infrastructure in economic development and the quest of his administration to leave a lasting legacy, they have implemented high-impact projects across the length and breadth of the Country that meet the yearnings and aspirations of Nigerians. He  named some of those “high-impact projects” to include completion of 326km Itakpe-Ajaokuta-Warri rail line and railway ancillary facilities; the completion of over 156.5km Lagos–Ibadan standard gauge railway modernisation project with extension to Lagos Port, Apapa; the construction of 408km of roads; 2,499km of SUKUK roads and maintenance of 15,961km of roads across the Country; the ongoing construction of the second Niger Bridge; 941km of completed SUKUK road projects nationwide; 21 selected Federal Roads totalling 1,804.6km.
On Wednesday, the Minister of Transport, buttressing the President’s claim, told news men that the second Niger Bridge is ready and will soon be commissioned for use. Of a truth, we must commend the Federal Government under the leadership of Buhari for starting and completing the second Niger bridge.  Though a lot of the paper work on the project was done during the immediate past administration of Dr Goodluck Jonathan, the actual work was started and completed by the current government.  The importance of this bridge to our national unity and integration and national economy cannot be over emphasised. It is a bridge that links two important zones of the country – the South-South and the South-East and coupled with the effort by the Nigeria Inland Waterways Authority, (NIWA), to make the Onitsha River Port functional, the commercial activities in Onitsha, Anambra State, other south-eastern and south-south states will surely be better off for it. Therefore, one does not think the completion of the second Niger bridge should be a basis for the present government to thump its chest and claim that they have done fantastically well and have met the yearnings of Nigerians. As a matter of fact, it is hard to understand why people who have pledged to come and serve the nation and solve the people’s problems should be bragging about carrying out their duties.
One should believe that it should be left for the citizens to assess the government’s performance.  like a lizard that fell from a height and getting no cheers from anyone, nods his head in self-praise for a great achievement. Let Nigerians be the ones to not only ascertain the existence of these projects but their quality and whether the projects were evenly distributed to the six geo-political zones in the country or not. Some people, especially writers and journalists  are beginning to sound like broken records having to talk about the challenges of the country over and over again but obviously we cannot help but continue to high-light these problems especially when our leaders at any given opportunity make erroneous claims about the state of things in the country. During the aforementioned ministers’ retreat, the president alluded to the fact  that his administration has done so well in growing the nation’s economy. Hear him, “on the economy, we have witnessed seven consecutive quarters of growth, after negative growth rates recorded in the 2nd and 3rd Quarters of 2020. The GDP grew by 3.54 per cent (year-on-year) in real terms in the 2nd Quarter of 2022. This growth rate represents a sustained positive economic performance, especially for the Non-Oil GDP which fell by 4.77 per cent in Q2 2022 against Oil GDP that grew by -11.77 per cent. Most Sectors of the economy recorded positive growth which reflects the effective implementation of the economic sustainability measures introduced by this administration.”
The president’s position is at variance with some other available records and the realities staring us in the face. Available World Bank report has it that while Nigeria’s economy is projected to grow at an average of 3.2 per cent in 2022-2024, the growth outlook is subject to downside risks including further declines in oil production and heightened insecurity, as well as continued scarcity of foreign exchange and tighter liquidity which could affect the economic activity in the non-oil sector and undermine the overall macroeconomic stability. The uncertainty is also expected to be accompanied by high inflation and continued fiscal and debt pressures. In its monthly report released last week, the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, disclosed that the nation’s inflation rose to 20.77 per cent in the month of September, 2022 on a year–on- year basis. This, the bureau said was 4.14 per cent points higher compared to the rate recorded in September 2021, which was (16.63 per cent). The economic realities in the country are not hidden. Millions of citizens are living in extreme poverty, the prices of food and other commodities in the market keep skyrocketing and with the unprecedented flood that has continued to wreak havoc in many communities across the country, the days to come are bound to be tougher.  The country has been perpetually in an energy crisis and it keeps getting worse. Today, the main issue of oil theft, fuel subsidy which continues to gulp a great percentage of the nation’s budget and has made it impossible for the country to benefit from soaring oil prices is not doing our economy any good.
Also of great interest is Buhari’s scorecard on Social Investment Programmes. He said, “The implementation of our Social Investment Programmes and other socio-economic programmes and policies, demonstrates our administration’s continued commitment to enhancing the welfare of the average Nigerian. As of June 2022, we had enrolled 75 per cent of the 1 million beneficiaries of Batch C under the N-POWER Programme. Additionally, 9,990,862 pupils are being fed through the School Feeding Programme, which employed 128,531 cooks in local communities. The big question is, where are these beneficiaries. Where are these pupils that are being fed daily? What has been the impact of the so-called school feeding programme on these pupils and their parents? . Where is this huge number of cooks in our local communities? Definitely, our leaders can do better than just dishing out such outrageous figures all in a bid to convince the citizens that the government is working. We need empirical evidence – states, local governments, wards, families, schools, names and ages of these pupils and cooks. Nigerians will like to know all details. Of course, we know that many of the problems in the country today predate the Buhari government but we are saying that the administration should not throw a party claiming that it helped to make the situation better because that may be far from the truth.
Let us hope that in the forthcoming elections Nigerians will elect leaders who will be ready and willing to serve this great nation and turn things around for the better, people who will not give excuses, people who will not see Aso Villa and various state government houses as their retirement homes but people that will hit the ground rolling right from the word go and will not sleep on the enormous task of getting Nigeria on her feet again.

By: Calista Ezeaku