A Brief Assessment of President Muhammadu Buhari’s first 100 days in office

By Bunmi Awoyemi, Ph.D

Buhari has achieved in his first 100 days what GEJ did not achieve in 6 years. Forget about whatever controversy was generated by a purported denial of a PMB 1st 100 days in office election season document by Garba Shehu. Let us leave form and face substance.

The koko of the matter is that Nigeria is rising again. The eagle is flying again. PMB met the economy of Nigeria in shambles with most states in financial quagmire but now PMB is bailing these states out with a N400 billion bail-out plan which includes their creditors exchanging the debts of those states for government bonds.

Boko Haram is on the run. Corruption and looters are on the run. Defence Ministry and military expenditure of over N4.6 trillion naira is being tracked and traced to facilitate recovery and prosecution of state and non-state actors involved in the monumental heist. N30 trillion naira stolen via crude oil theft and outright non-remittance of revenue from crude oil sales is being traced and tracked to ensure recovery and prosecution of state and non-state actors involved in the unprecedented treasury clean-out.

Power is improving. The revenue generating bodies like the FIRS, the Nigerian Customs Service, the NNPC, NIMASA, NPA are being rejigged and repositioned for service delivery by the appointment of competent individuals who are already producing results.

A Treasury Single Account has been set up and the more than 50 accounts that were being used to plunder the nation’s wealth have been closed down.

The US Government is assisting PMB to trace and track around $6b stolen by Diezani K. Alison-Madueke and her cronies from the oil industry.

Only NNPC will be allowed to import fuel from next month. Over 125 vessels used for oil theft have been banned from Nigerian waters. Oil swap deals between NNPC and some refineries abroad which were used to short-change Nigeria by not supplying refined fuel commensurate with the crude oil supplied have been cancelled. All GEJ and Diezani K. Alison-Madueke front companies that were being used to sell Nigeria’s crude oil have had their lifting licences cancelled. Since July only 5-10 major international oil trading firms are allowed to sell Nigeria’s crude oil.

Long queues have disappeared from petrol stations and petrol stations selling above the N87 approved pump prize are being shut down by the Department of Petroleum Resources. Three months to GEJ’s handover of power the impunity which was nurtured under him allowed petrol marketers to put Nigerians through untold hardship. Anyone did whatever they felt like doing without consequences.

The amount paid per liter as subsidy to marketers has dropped from N51 per liter to N38 per liter.The nation’s oil refineries have roared back to life after being shut down for years under an alleged turn-around maintenance regime that had no specific terminal date. The aim was to eventually turn them around and sell them-off to cronies and fronts if GEJ had won reelection. Most of these oil refineries were deliberately starved of crude oil to ensure that they do not produce refined products so that PDP stalwarts, GEJ, Diezani K. Alison-Madueke and their cronies can import refined products from refineries belonging to them outside Nigeria’s shores.

Stolen assets belonging to the FG are being recovered. Civil servants who cannot defend the sources of their stupendous wealth are on a watch list for recovery of assets and prosecution.

When doctors receive an emergency accident victim the first thing they do before anything else is arrest the bleeding. If an accident victims loses too much blood he could die. Nigeria’s economy was bleeding at the time PMB took over. Most of the measures he took in the last 100 days was targeted at arresting the bleeding so that Nigeria does not end up like GREECE.

You cannot expect PMB to hit the ground running without first of all stopping the bleeding of the economy inflicted on Nigeria by GEJ and his plundering death cults. You have to have a reasonably healthy economy first before you can execute your party’s road map.

Let us be sincere with ourselves, the level of rot that PMB inherited was much more horrible than we first thought. GEJ took the Nigerian economy to the cleaners. He plundered Nigeria’s economy brazenly and recklessly. Now there is a new Sheriff in town and he is cleaning up GEJ’s mess.

My long term mentor, Pastor William Bendega whom I respect so much had this to say about the unfair nature of the destructive criticisms directed daily at PMB:

“It is extremely laughable that people who were used to the old order of looting, who benefitted from the ‘wuruwuru’ of the past have sought to give different unfortunate labels to the style of Buhari’s governance. These are the same people who used everything possible to make sure he did not win the elections because they had private interests to protect, they had cases to answer, they had things that when uncovered would embarrass them, their families and cronies. Now, some have called him ‘Baba Go Slow.”