PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari may be facing the manifestation of the old dictum “uneasy lies the head that wears the crown’’. Owing to the current challenges confronting the nation, the buck stops at his table. There is no gainsaying the fact that Nigeria is facing hard times. The man at the helm, the President no doubt has a Herculean task on his hands. His administration is dogged by several seemingly insurmountable challenges that continue to tax the leadership capabilities of the administration. No doubt, the Presidency is an enormous post that anyone would wish to have. But taking over the mantle of leadership at a time of global economic recession occasioned by fall in oil prices is a major challenge that the Presidency has continued to grapple with.
As things stand today, the Nigerian government which operates a monolithic economy has found it extremely difficult to meet its financial obligations. As a result, many states have found it difficult to pay salaries, pensions and meet up with their other obligations. This reality dawned when the Federal Government paid a huge sum to states as bailout funds in order for them to pay backlog of salaries. The federal government, through the Central Bank of Nigeria, paid over N300 billion bailout fund to states in August, 2015. Less than a year after, many states are still grappling with the payment of staff salaries with labour leaders in many states spoiling for war. President Muhammadu Buhari himself, while speaking at the recent APC NEC meeting said, “the fall of oil prices after Nigeria has made itself a mono-economy is a disaster. I wonder why people could not believe that in Nigeria, about 27 out of 36 states have difficulty in paying basic salaries to their workers.”
A major offshoot of the economic hardship that seems to have gripped the nation is the hard times that is now the order of the day due to the dwindling oil price which has also resulted in the acute shortage of petroleum products.
This is compounded by the soaring cost of commodities, especially food prices, thus making it increasingly difficult for most people to feed themselves and their families. This soaring cost of commodities which is also not unconnected with the scarcity of foreign exchange is seriously taking its toll on the people, and became compounded with the acute fuel shortage which has further tasked the financial capabilities of Nigerians. The President’s All Progressives Congress-led government has however got its own part of the bitter pill reflecting negatively on the party’s image.
The federal government had been busy trying to correct the negative impression by attributing the current hardship to sabotage and lack of a clear direction by the past government.
Although, the insurgency war is gradually being won, yet the issue of the Chibok girls remains a pain in the neck for the President. He is worried by the continued stay of the Chibok schoolgirls in the hands of their captors and has been working tirelessly to get them released. The President stated this in Paris while responding to questions from members of the Nigerian community in France under the auspices of Nigerians in Diaspora Organization (NIDO).
On the economy, restructuring the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) is another major task the administration is faced with. For instance, the NNPC was recently split into seven units. No other issue has exposed the government to public sentiments as the recent energy crisis occasioned by the shortage in the supply of Premium Motor Spirit which paralysed the economy of the nation for most parts of the first quarter of the year. Power sector challenge in the country has been somewhat intractable before the inception of this administration. The irony of it all was that the power situation in the country improved shortly after the inauguration of President Buhari in 2015.
It was widely reported that Nigeria’s power generation collapsed to zero megawatt as at March 31, 2016. And the situation lasted for about three hours. According to the Transmission Company of Nigeria, TCN, no power generation company produced a single megawatt of electricity throughout that period.
Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, said the sudden downing of the three turbines at the Jebba Hydro power station was responsible for the situation, adding that the power supply in the country was inadequate and that the faulty turbines had been fixed.
Another major worry for President Muhammadu Buhari is the issue of Internally Displaced Persons. The Federal Government has continued to struggle to remove the remnants of the Boko Haram insurgents from the North East and the safety of the over two million displaced persons remains uppermost in the agenda of the Buhari government. The issue of Fulani herdsmen killing people in different parts of the country is another major hard nut for President Buhari to crack. There have been series of calls from different quarters to address the problem of the Fulani herdsmen invasion once and for all.
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