Buhari’s economic history is even worse than we thought
By Brown Isiaka

One of the recurrent questions of this political season has been “When will Buhari reveal his manifesto?” It does not seem like that question will be answered soon. But is seems the General’s campaign have decided to begin throwing out sound bites for this posters. Make no mistake, the sum total of Buhari’s campaign is around his integrity and promise to fight corruption. So it is no surprise that the economic message that was released by the campaign simply read “Corruption stamped out: Inflation goes down form 23% to 5%”. On first looks, most commenters have mistaken that ad to mean the General is saying inflation currently stands at 23%, and that the General hopes to bring it down to 8%. No. The ad is making references to Buhari’s tenure as military head of state, when indeed he brought inflation down from 23% to 8%. But does this statistic show the General off as a great manager of economy? Far from it. In fact, Buhari’s economic decisions created on of the worst economic difficulties in Nigeria. To show how ridiculous that claim by the Buhari camp that reducing corruption brought down inflation, the Obasanjo regime, which wasn’t exactly the most incorrupt administration, left inflation at 6.3% against Buhari’s 8%. They also left a very good looking debt profile, after buying debt forgiveness (through structured bulk payments). Buhari brought down inflation by taking over the independence of the Central Bank, changing the colour of the Nigerian currency. This is a rather expensive operation, which would run into billions today. So the question rises – if Nigeria experiences higher inflation in 2015 due to a mixture of devaluation, christmas, and general elections, and at the same time, we voted General Burahi into office as president, will the good General change the currency again? Will he lock money in the banks again, so people don’t withdraw? Because he has done it before.

Buhari’s government did not understand any other way of doing change, other than clamping down on personal liberties. The most ridiculous clampdown of rights under Buhari was economic rights. Imagine in June 2015, you have worked hard all month, and it’s salary day finally. You know your small salary is not what is used to be, because of the devaluation of Naira to N210 – $1 (yes, it could happen), but you still look forward to your salary, because it is all you have. But then, your alert comes in, and you rush to the ATM, only to find that you can’t withdraw. There is a long line of more people who cannot withdraw. Furious, you rush to the bank, only to be told that due to new policies, rem, you can only withdraw x-amount. Of your own money! Sounds sill right? Because this is almost exactly what Buhari did while in power.

Buhari banned strikes and founded the first secret police, which was used to attack anyone who stepped out of line. Banning strikes – how does that even work in a democracy?



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