Making sense of Mr Buhari’s eight years

Concerned to repurpose the narrative, post-office, the Buhari administration’s Pollyannaish interpretations of its time in office have consistently failed to connect the dots that matter. From the goals of public policies (invariably high-minded) to the intended outcomes, the last eight years have been a patchwork of unintended (and often adverse) outcomes. Arguably, the administration’s most storied policy was the attempt…to swap old banknotes for new ones. The net effect was as if one peered into a malfunctioning kaleidoscope.

The Buhari administration has always loved a delightful story. For this reason, its swansong has been stuffed with Mother Goose-type myths. “Nigeria is favoured. We have people, land and weather. How many nations are so lucky as Nigeria in the world? Very few nations are as lucky as we are. So, closing that border, over 1,600km, from Lake Chad to Benin, and Nigerians insist that they have to impress their neighbours and other people, then they eat foreign rice. I said no rice. You either eat what you grow, you grow what you eat, or you die. I tried to make my point and later Nigerians appreciated it.” Thus, now-former President Muhammadu Buhari justified his government’s decision in August 2019 to close the nation’s borders.

Also Read: FG Indecisive on Reopening Nigeria’s Borders

Two years after the border closure, and just before the government decided to reverse the decision, the fillip that the policy had lent domestic productivity in the agricultural sector was evident in rising domestic food prices. If increased supply of agricultural produce, in result of the shuttered borders did not depress prices locally, it appeared to have had another unintended consequence. By 2021, the Republic of Benin had become the 9^th biggest importer of rice globally. Causation is decidedly not correlation. But with only 12 million people, and its borders with Nigeria far more accommodating than a pre-owned bath-sponge, it is a fair bet where all that rice ended up.

Concerned to repurpose the narrative, post-office, the Buhari administration’s Pollyannaish interpretations of its time in office have consistently failed to connect the dots that matter. From the goals of public policies (invariably high-minded) to the intended outcomes, the last eight years have been a patchwork of unintended (and often adverse) outcomes. Arguably, the administration’s most storied policy was the attempt, early this year, to swap old banknotes for new ones. The net effect was as if one peered into a malfunctioning kaleidoscope. As a type of Rorschach tests, the administration’s policies have had no equivalent since the country’s formation ― existing as it were, in quantum superposition.

Awkwardly, the administration, head-in-the-sand like the proverbial ostrich, continued to ignore clear and present injuries to the economy from its benighted policies. Last week, the jury came in on much of that…. According to the NBS, “In real terms, trade’s year-on-year growth stood at 1.31% in the first quarter of 2023, which was 5.24% points lower than the rate recorded in the previous year at 6.54%, and 3.24% points lower than in the preceding quarter at 4.54% growth rate”.

This feature of the government, incidentally, was not just about how the characterisation of the banknote replacement programme monstrously metamorphosed from a “swap” (a routine exercise) into “demonetisation”, and finally into “cash confiscation”. The accompanying somersaults in the administration’s thought chambers were ugly. No sooner was the claim that somehow the quantity of cash-in-circulation in Nigeria exceeded the economy’s legitimate need punctured, than the Buhari government rounded on a new target for the policy. Starved of cash by the policy, the stubborn northward trajectory of inflation was supposedly going to moderate. This, of course, didn’t make sense. For it seemed to suggest the possibility of eliminating price rises simply by scrapping cash.

Also Read: FG to Soon Reopen Borders, 13 Months After Closure

Abecedarian? Much of the Buhari government’s policy portmanteau was simply that. As were the subsequent cop-outs. By the end, the banknote policy had become a cash confiscation exercise designed to sanitise the forthcoming elections by removing the influence of moneybags.

Awkwardly, the administration, head-in-the-sand like the proverbial ostrich, continued to ignore clear and present injuries to the economy from its benighted policies. Last week, the jury came in on much of that. And according to the National Bureau of Statistics, “Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew by 2.31% (year-on-year) in real terms in the first quarter of 2023. This growth rate declined from 3.11% recorded in the first quarter of 2022, and 3.52% in the fourth quarter of 2022. The reduction in growth is attributed to the adverse effects of the cash crunch experienced during the quarter”. At more granular levels, trade numbers took a particularly nasty blow. According to the NBS, “In real terms, trade’s year-on-year growth stood at 1.31% in the first quarter of 2023, which was 5.24% points lower than the rate recorded in the previous year at 6.54%, and 3.24% points lower than in the preceding quarter at 4.54% growth rate”.

You could, then, argue that the conceptual distance between the narrative and what was possible was an unwavering feature of the stories the Buhari government told while in office, and more so as it transitioned out. Still, even magical realist tales, as with every fable, yield a moral. In this case, the relevant lesson from the last eight years is how Buhari government tried too hard to do everything, despite its limited mental and fiscal resources.

Remember that trade numbers proxy for consumer spending, and recall the peripatetic lifestyle forced on the populace by the policy, and the forlorn look of many as they foraged for cash as would victims of a famine near a fresh rubbish bin, and it would have been surprising if these numbers came out any differently. You could, then, argue that the conceptual distance between the narrative and what was possible was an unwavering feature of the stories the Buhari government told while in office, and more so as it transitioned out. Still, even magical realist tales, as with every fable, yield a moral. In this case, the relevant lesson from the last eight years is how Buhari government tried too hard to do everything, despite its limited mental and fiscal resources.

Also Read: How not to make public policy

Its successor could do no worse, given the same endowment, than to make it easier for the private sector to do more of the heavy lifting that the economy needs to make rapid progress.