Generals Olusegun Obasanjo, Ibrahim Babangida, Sani Abacha, and Muhammadu Buhari are Nigeria’s most anti-democratic, anti-federalism, and anti-people rulers since independence. The addition to that roll is President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Obasanjo, as military head of state, standardised the tradition of wastage, the destruction of the public service, the pillaging of the economy, the mass killing of students, and the imposition of a anti-democracy and anti-federal constitution on Nigerians.
With the exception of Abacha, these rulers oversaw the legalised plundering of Nigeria’s commonwealth in the guise of ‘privatisation’. They also handed over the country to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (WB). In fact, Obasanjo and Babangida dressed these Western financial institutions in colourful Nigerian attires, and handed over the Federal Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank of Nigeria, amongst others, to their staff. Tinubu handed over Nigeria’s brain to them.
These rulers inherited the DNA of their father, who invaded and colonised Nigeria. With independence, their father indigenised himself as a Nigerian, married different women, and gave birth to different children. Like their father, they are extremely deceptive, divisive, unforgiving, domineering, and parasitic. They are also anti-democracy, anti-federalism, and anti-development.
Just as their father shot his way to power, so did Obasanjo, Babangida, and Abacha. Tinubu ‘shot’ his way to power with ‘his’ money, in an election rigging match refereed by the Independent National Electoral Commission.
They all claim affinity with democracy but practiced or are practising authoritarianism. They strive to lure the hungry Nigerian mass to sleep by administering on them anaesthetics called palliatives. This soon wears off and the pains return. Maybe the only exception was Abacha, who has been described as: “a man of few words and deadly action”!
Babangida imposed the destructive and deadly International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank’s neoliberalism, even after the society had rejected it. Students, in fact, demonstrated their desire to sacrifice for the development of Nigeria, when they sang: “We like amm (two times)/We we like Nigeria/We like am pass IMF/We like am pass World Bank/n Everything dey for Nigeria/Make we join hands to make Nigeria better/Make we join hands to make Nigeria greater!”
The Babangida action set Nigeria on the path of never-ending crises. Nevertheless, he created, amongst others, the National Directorate of Employment in 1986, to advance vocational training and skills acquisition, rural empowerment and, by extension, employment generation. He also established the Directorate of Food, Roads and Rural Infrastructure in 1986, aimed at mobilising, supporting, and developing rural communities to promote food production, and raise the standard of living of the rural dwellers.
The Babangida administration introduced the Better Life for Rural Women programme in 1987, designed for the improvement of the lives and social statuses of local women. It equally established the Peoples’ Bank of Nigeria in 1989, to provide credit facilities to small traders and businesses, who could not meet the stringent requirements of orthodox commercial banks.
When the the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) organised and led national protests against neoliberalism, he provided “SAP Relief” packages to Nigerian workers; created 62,000 jobs for the unemployed; gave “SAP Relief” buses to higher institutions; and provided N20 million grant to federal universities, amongst others.
Unlike his immediate predecessor and successors who glorified IMF and WB, Abacha had a mind of his own, and was, indeed, uncompromising, stubborn, aggressive, and deadly in pursuing his agenda. He denied some Western officials visas, blatantly rejected some of their policies, and retaliated against some of their sanctions.
He inherited an economy with an inflation rate of 87 per cent, negative growth rate of -1.5 per cent, and an interest rate flying at around 25 per cent. Oil price was $18 per barrel, and a debt of $30 billion. But, Abacha succeeded in increasing Nigeria’s foreign exchange reserves from $494 million by mid-1993 to $9.6 billion by mid-1997. He reduced Nigeria’s external debts from $36 billion in 1993 to $27 billion by 1997.
Between 1993 and 1995, Abacha grew the agricultural sector at a rate of 7.2 per cent, and, by 5.6 per cent from 1995 to 1997. Agriculture’s contribution to GDP was 32.4 per cent in 1993 and 34.6 per cent in 1997. He maintained a stable exchange rate of N22/$1 for five years, and reduced inflation from 54 per cent to below 10 per cent. The pump price of petrol was stabilised for five years at N11.
Abacha continued with most of Babangida’s social programmes. He also established the Family Support Programme, aimed at providing healthcare service delivery, dealing with women’s fertility issues, child care, and balanced diet for rural families. He established the Family Economic Advancement Programme, charged with providing a platform for accessing credit for agricultural production and processing. It was also aimed at upgrading small and medium enterprises through the formation of local cooperative societies.
Doubtlessly, the Babangida and Abacha social security programmes did not sustainably tackle the problems, but, at least, they showed some concern about the social problems their neoliberal policies created. They had the working poor and vulnerable Nigerians in their dictionaries.
Buhari, for now, remains the most disastrous ruler Nigeria has ever had. He significantly increased the country’s national public debt profile from approximately $63.7 billion in 2015 to $113.42 billion by June 2023. He increased the inflation rate from 15.70 per cent in 2016 to 22.8 per cent in June 2023. In 2016, agriculture contributed 25.23 per cent to the GDP, this increased by less than 1 per cent in September 2023.
Not only did Buhari inflict much suffering and pain on Nigerians, he oversaw the gigantic depletion of our commonwealth, and the employment of ethnic and filial relations in running government businesses. His administration also saw banditry become an industry and, marked an increase in the abduction of school children, kidnapping, rape, desecration of worship places, sacking of villages, destruction of harvests, land seizure, and the killing of security officers by bandits and terrorists.
He had no clearly defined poverty alleviation or social investment programme, as the one ran by his Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs did not impact positively on society.
Tinubu, since May 2023, has been tirelessly striving to overtake Buhari’s disastrous performance. Under Buhari, Nigerians, at least, struggled strenuously to stay in business, buy petrol, pay electricity bills, and feed. His policies, as I wrote elsewhere, were: “bleeding the working and other vulnerable people by enthroning more hunger, poverty, illiteracy and diseases. It is destroying family and societal cohesion by increasing unemployment, straining relationships, delaying or aborting marriages, promoting single parenthood, and inflicting hardship on Nigerian children and youth.”
Tinubu runs a government of palliatives, which as I earlier noted, “enslaves, dehumanises and depersonalises the poor by promoting dependency on the witches/wizards, while discouraging innovation, encouraging laziness, eroding self-sufficiency, and destroying peoples’ initiatives to creatively and sustainably tackle their problems.”
With the increasing disastrous performances of Tinubu, it is no surprise that popular protests are gradually staging a comeback, and a section of the popular masses even think the country was better under military misrule. This longing is disastrous to our national psyche.
The solution lies not with this crop of politicians or their military allies. Not in what described as, “Soja go, Soja come.” The solution lies with us, the people, the society!
** Ahmed Aminu-Ramatu Yusuf worked as deputy director, Cabinet Affairs Office, The Presidency, and retired as General Manager (Administration), Nigerian Meteorological Agency, (NiMet). Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
