Malam Garba Shehu, the SSA media to President Buhari has sent a stinging rebuke to the Financial Times of London, following an article on the Buhari administration.

The article was titled “What is Nigeria’s Government For,” and authored by David Piling, in the newspaper’s edition of 31 January 2022.

“The caricature of a Government sleepwalking into disaster is predictable from a correspondent who jets briefly in and out of Nigeria on the same British Airways flight he so criticises”, Garba replied in his short and sharp rejoinder.

“He highlights rising banditry in my country as proof of such slumber.

“What he leaves out are the security gains made over two Presidential terms.

“The terror organisation Boko Haram used to administer an area the size of Belgium at inauguration; now, they control no territory.

“The first comprehensive plan to deal with decades-old clashes between nomadic herders and sedentary farmers – experienced across the width of the Sahel – has been introduced: pilot ranches are reducing the competition for water and land that drove past tensions.

“Banditry grew out of such clashes. Criminal gangs took advantage of the instability, flush with guns that flooded the region following the Western-triggered implosion of Libya.

“The situation is grave.

“Yet as with other challenges, it is one that the government will face down”, Shehu concluded.

What Piling wrote:

On the British Airways flight between London and Nigeria’s administrative capital of Abuja, one of the airline’s most profitable routes, nearly all the space is taken up with flatbeds. The unfortunate few making their way to a crunched economy section at the back must trudge through row after row of business class.

Evidently, there is plenty of money to be made in Abuja’s corridors of power. Nigeria’s economy may be flat on its back, but the political elite flying to and from London will spend the flight flat on theirs, too.

Next year, many of the members of Government will change, though not necessarily the bureaucracy behind it. Campaigning has already begun for presidential elections that in February 2023 will draw the curtain on eight years of the administration of Muhammadu Buhari, on whose somnolent watch Nigeria has sleepwalked closer to disaster.

Buhari has overseen two terms of economic slump, rising debt and a calamitous increase in kidnapping and banditry — the one thing you might have thought a former general could control. Familiar candidates to replace him, mostly recycled old men, are already counting their money ahead of a costly electoral marathon. It takes an estimated $2bn to get a president elected. Those who pay will expect to be paid back.

There are some promising candidates. If Yemi Osinbajo, the technocratic Vice-President, were miraculously to make it through the campaign thicket and emerge as president, the hearts of Nigerian optimists would beat a little faster.

But that may be to underestimate the depth of Nigeria’s quagmire. The problem is not so much who leads the government as the nature of government itself.

Nigeria’s administration is fuelled by oil — though not its economy; more than 90 per cent of output is generated from non-oil activities. But for decades, the business of government — whether military or, since 1999, democratic — has been to control access to oil revenues and earn patronage by spreading petrol-dollars to federal and state supplicants.

Outside oil, government raises a petty amount of revenue, proportionally much less than other African states. Since the provision of services is so dire, no one who can afford to pay taxes is willing to do so. Nigerians with money opt out of the system. They send their kids to private school, attend private hospitals, employ their own private security and generate their own power. The state borrows ever more heavily to fund what little capital expenditure there is and service mounting debts. Like a giant leech at the top of the body politic, government is essentially there to fund itself.

This thwarts the aspirations of millions of highly capable Nigerians. Officials extract “rent” by controlling access to business opportunities. The objective thus becomes to slow down investment not speed it up.

Almost all the energy, drive and wealth creation in Nigeria happens outside government. New unregulated businesses in the booming tech sector, fashion, design and the creative arts are flourishing. Every day, tens of millions of Nigerians somehow get by, despite the efforts of those supposedly looking out for them.

As is said of India, Nigeria grows at night while the government sleeps — hardly surprising that some libertarian tech entrepreneurs want the government to withdraw and leave the private sector in charge.

YinkaOlusesi:
Garba, pdp will shock you in 2023, just be prepared for the last result.

juxeakin:
Garba Shehu should be thinking about what will happen to him in 2023 because of pdp wins, he might get the Olisa Metuh treatment

juxeakin:
Garba Shehu should be thinking about what will happen to him in 2023 because of pdp wins, he might get the Olisa Metuh treatment

juxeakin:
Garba Shehu should be thinking about what will happen to him in 2023 because of pdp wins, he might get the Olisa Metuh treatment

Aderewah:
As Piling rightly said, Osinbajo is the right person to succeed Buhari.

Dawn91:
The points raised by the journalist in the financial times are succinct accurate and precise . Buhari means well for Nigeria it's just the Rouges in power around him that has stagnated the nation.

But the president's master stroke has been in hiding Amaechi from elimination and vetting his turbanning so that way the caliphate must protect him from Tinubu and Osibanjo .

Amaechi Zulum 2023

Aderewah:
As Piling rightly said, Osinbajo is the right person to succeed Buhari.