I will take time to write brief summaries on these issues which will weigh heavily on the chances of Buhari continuing as Nigeria's President after May 2019. For a variety of Nigerians, the decision to vote for Buhari can be summarized into one of the bullet point below. The question is whether our hopes in Buhari has been met or dashed. Do we feel fulfilled or disappointed with the President's activities and methods?


1. The Jonathan mismanagement that contributed to Buhari's 2015 victory
Under President Goodluck Jonathan, cabinet Ministers went wild with looting of government resources. The frustration was largely the seeming inability of GEJ to remove or punish the erring Ministers. The Petroleum Minister, Diezani Madueke easily comes to mind. A lot of sordid acts happened in NNPC that the former CBN Governor, HRH Emir of Kano Alhaji Sanusi Lamido Sanusi had publicly announced that about $20 billion dollars were unaccounted for at the NNPC. The regime of Jonathan practically swept the issue under the carpet and inadvertently allowed such percieved corruption to go unpunished. This weighed much in the determination of some Nigerians to show Jonathan the "red card" at the pools

2. The broken promise by Buhari to belong to all
One of the most laudable things President Buhari did during his inauguration was to declare that he belong to all Nigerians. This statement rekindled some hope of national unity after the bitter but peaceful change of power from a Niger Deltan to a far northerner. Buhari's proclamation as many others he did turned out to be mere empty words of propaganda. From his appointment of cabinet Ministers, Service Chief and finally his speech at the United States Institute for Peace in July 2015 where he revealed his deep grudges against Nigerians he described as 5% who did not vote for him. Therefore, should not expect much from his regime. This statement drew a lot of reaction from the regions he made reference to as the 5% (Southeast and Southsouth). The low tempo agitation for independence of Biafra took off and gained mainstream relevance led by charismatic Nnamdi Kanu and the there was an explosion of sabotage activities in the Niger Delta by the Avengers. All of these actions impacted negatively on the economy and helped tilt the balance into an economic recession for the country. Things could have got worse and escalated, but it appeared seasoned former Heads of State had advised Buhari on the futility and risk of all out military action and the need to use the civil society in the regions to douse tensions. This was also tempered by the behind the scenes work of notable Nigerians to reverse the "Quit Notice" on the Igbos and we dodged the bullet as a country. Again, the immaturity of Buhari as a leader had pulled us into a recession and almost into a civil war in a short span of 2 years.

3. The mismanagement of the the anti-corruption crusade
The war on corruption started on a great promise. Buhari had declared that all looters would be made to give up their loot, and the government would transparently publish the recovered loot and the names of the looters. The novel idea of whistle blowing was launched and indeed many people started giving up their loot rather than go to jail.
Then it became clear that those pursued for looting were simply members of the opposition PDP and if a corrupt politician crossed over from PDP to APC, they would be "forgiven" and allowed to keep their loot. Many corrupt politicians immediately left PDP and registered as APC members and so the anti corruption war no longer had anyone to arrest or force their forfeiture of ill gotten wealth. That became the end of the hitherto promising "war on corruption" under Buhari. The worst part was that Buhari's personal friends such as the former Secretary to Government and others were furiously looting the national treasury through ridiculous contracts to import grass etc. The deputy Minister for Petroleum Ibe Kachikwu out of frustration listed that NNPC had not remitted a whopping $25 billion dollars fraud! The NNPC Group Managing Director Maikanti Baru and Kachikwu were invited into the Presidential villa villa and ordered to "hush" the issue. As we saw under Jonathan, the issue was swept under the rug and no respectable independent panel of external auditors were invited to investigate the issue. Till date, nobody has heard anything about the missing $25 billion dollars.

4. The mismanagement of the economy
When President Buhari took over, there was a lot of hope that the economy would soon blossom. Indeed, the price of oil dropped due to circumstances beyond the control of President Buhari. However, we know regimes of President Obasanjo, Babangida and others had seen oil prices less than $40 dollars per barrel. Yet, Obasanjo was able to pay off Nigeria's foreign debt and embarked on a lot of laudable projects to boost the economy including completion of NLNG project amongst many others. President Buhari's immediate reaction to the lower oil price was to artificially restrict the flow of dollars and peg the Naira exchange rate at N200 to $1. This created a worse economic nightmare for CBN that had to sell dollars at below market rate to banks, who in turn gave the dollars to "selected" customers who had clearly bribed the bank managers. These customers went ahead to sell these cheap dollars at the true market rate in the black market and made huge profits while the CBN was depleting our foreign reserve to defend Naira at N200 to $1. When it became obvious that we would soon deplete our foreign reserves and there would be nothing left to defend the artificial exchange rate, Buhari reluctantly agreed to allow the naira depreciate and stop the practice of giving dollars to banks at ridiculously lower exchange rates. Unfortunately at that point, serious damage had already been done to the national economy which is still felt by every Nigerian till date.
Again Buhari borrowed massively during this period which blew up the eternal debt from about $6 billion to more than $15 billion today.


5. The silence on creating jobs for the youths
The youths were exhilarated that Buhari would bring back jobs and therefore voted massively for him in 2015. This was not the case as Buhari soon abandoned his promises to drive industrialization, develop the petro-chemical industries, stabilize power to improve ease of doing business and generally improve national infrastructure. The result of lack of any of Buhari's electoral promises was the rising incidence of armed robbery and banditry in the country. Nigerian youths traveled in droves through the desert in a futile attempt to reach Europe. Many of these youths were sold as slaves and horribly abused in Libya and other places for many years. It took the intervention of CNN to exposing these atrocities and shaming the Nigerian government to send planes to rescue her trapped youths in Libya.
In the face of failure of the promises of new industries, foreign investors and new businesses to employ youths, Nigerian youths are taking to crime, drug abuse and prostitution to simply survive.

6. Impact of Buhari health issues
One of the controversies of Buhari's candidature was his true age and when he actually finished secondary school. Buhari's official age was said to have been much younger than Buhari's younger sibling's age and the age of his peers in the army. This led to speculation that Buhari could have been much older than he told Nigerians. In a few months into his presidency, the effect of old age on governance was obvious. Buhari first complained about partial hearing loss and then he had to embark on two long periods of absence. In his long absence, governance feel apart and he was even rumored to have been in coma or died. Since Buhari hid his medical condition from Nigerians, he didn't want to give proper executive hand over to his Vice President. Therefore people like Maikanti Baru and other corrupt government officials simply flew to London and came back with purported signed contracts from the President from which billions of dollars were stolen from Nigeria. Under these circumstances, it was unclear who ran the country and massive corrupt practices happened in this period. It is noteworthy that nobody has been held to account for anything out of the fear of giving the impression that the president's long absence negatively impacted the country.



7. The failed promise to stop Boko Haram insurgency

In his iaugural speech, Buhari put Boko Haram on warning declaring the defence headquarters would temporarily be deployed to the northeast to neutralize the bombing of Boko HAram. These all happened to be mere words as the invasion of Sambisa forest was postponed again and again to allow Boko haram time to escape. When the invasion finally came and the President declare Boko Haram had been technically defeated, the insurgents replied him two days later with massive bombing on several locations simultaneously in the northeast. Since that day, like everything else, the fight against insurgency has been shrouded in secrecy. Nobody knows for sure what progress if any had been made. But the recent request for about $1 billion dollars and nearly constant bombings by the insurgents clearly tell Nigerians that Boko Haram is till alive and kicking despite the lies that we have been told.

8. Corruption and looting has continued in Nigeria
Sadly, corruption had continued unabated under Buhari. Nigeria had indeed become one of the reference countries for corruption in the world under transparency international. This issue and it's impact on the economy had already been discussed above.


9. Fostering deep national divisions and disunity (The Fulani Herdsmen agenda)
Through his actions and inactions, the avoidable clash between farmers (Mainly southerners and Fulani herdsmen- mainly northern fulanis) had led to several deaths. The seeming inability of Buhari to use the Nigerian armed forces against armed herdsmen who were killing villagers enmass and destroying their farms had led to deep national divisions and again threatening our unity. Highly respected Nigerians including President Olusegun Obasanjo and Gen Theophilus Danjuma has at various times openly urged the President Buhari to protect Nigerians living in their villages from the invading herdsmen. In frustration General Danjuma openly called on the villagers to defend themselves rather than fold their arms and be slaughtered. The fact that the invaders are Fulani who belong to the President Buhari's tribe and the victims are not the President's tribesmen has been used as explanation why the President would not act to punish tha invaders and save the victims. Instead, the President has called on the victims to cede their land as "Grazing zones" for the invaders.

10: Lack of responsibility for anything. (The blame game: Blame Jonathan: Blame PDP: Blame Nigerian youths: Blame Nigerians in diaspora etc)

The most outstanding attribute of President Buhari's regime is "Blaming game" If the blame isn't on Jonathan, it is PDP or oil price. More recently, the blame has shifted to "Nigerian youths" who have been declared as lazy and unable to engage in any economic venture. While some of these can be true, the overwhelming majority of Nigerian youths are extremely hardworking and innovative. In fact, Nigerian youths perform at par or beyond their counterparts when they go abroad. Nigerian youths created a music industry that still dominates Africa, a movie industry that is 3rd largest in the world and have excelled in numerous endeavors too numerous to count here. If the government of Nigeria especially under Buhari can be compared to Ghana or other African countries in terms of innovation and good governance, Nigeria would definitely have taken off as a great nation by now.


Finally, Nigerians must get their personal voters card (PVC) and make sure nothing stops you from participating and voting in the next round of elections. Stay in your polling station until results are announced, then use your phone to take pictures of the pasted result sheet and post here on NL and facebook. This is the only way we can collectively help to make Nigeria a better place and give red card to any bad government that had caused so much pain and suffering to Nigerians and their families.

If you do not vote and defend your vote by posting results, YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO COMPLAIN LATER.

Only zombies are still living in fools Paradise. The fool is finished already, he knows it n they know it. Their defense! The real voters are not online, but they forgot that they got their victory by using/relying, mainly on online publication's to favour them. #I have my PVC#

The real reason Buhari will lose the election is because:
The South West and Middle Belt made him win the election of 2015 and are against him now.
In 2015,Jonathan was voted for by the people of South East and South South. The people of north east and north west as usual voted for Buhari. The people of the middle belt and South West that voted Jonathan in 2011 voted against him.

Today,the Fulani kinsmen of Buhari has killed thousands in the middle belt, stealing their land,burning their homes and raping their women. They will vote Buhari out. In South West, the people have realized the failed promises of APC. Nothing has changed and the blame game has continued. They are ready for Buhari too.

Buhari's defeat will shock him that it will likely put him in a permanent state of shock.

Votes from the north didn't help Buhari till the middle belt and South West joined hands to put him in office. The north won't be able to save him next year when others withdraw their support.