Man of Consequence
We got there in the end. That is, the end of Muhammadu Buhari’s leadership (if one can call it that) of Nigeria. Without a doubt the worst leader in my adult life as a Nigerian.
But just because he is heading back to his hometown of Daura today (or perhaps London?) does not mean we can forget him in a hurry. We would of course like to forget him (I certainly would like to pretend like he never existed) but we are not going to be able to. For the simple reason that Buhari will go down as one of Nigeria’s most consequential leaders ever, and not for noble reasons.
Start with a series of charts published by Nigeria’s Business Day:
This inflation is directly linked to the policies he pursued as leader in particular the wild printing of money to fund the budget. It will be very tough to get inflation down to less painful levels (not least because the incoming president is also a subscriber to the same school of money printing).
Remember when Kemi Adeosun said Nigeria was going to borrow in dollars to ‘save’ money on debt servicing? Those were the days of big talk about panda and samurai bonds and wherever else Nigeria could find creditors willing to lend it money.
This one however was the doozy. Buhari’s ‘killer app’ if you prefer. A through debasement of the budget and any links between revenue and spending. This in particular is where Buhari is of most consequence — by shaping the path his successor has no choice but to travel on. As I’ve written elsewhere, Buhari has tested the idea of money printing to destruction so it is difficult to see where a President Tinubu might take this (I’m not saying he can’t do worse than Buhari, but it is an interesting thought to consider).
Not only did Buhari, in one of his final acts, hand down $50bn worth of debt to children yet unborn, the Senate met on a Saturday to raise the Ways & Means borrowing limit. What was once a temporary measure will now become a permanent fixture in the way Nigerian governments raise money to spend. It is also interesting the sheer amount of this damage that was done in Buhari’s final year. Almost as if he was determined to go out on a low.
He has shaped a lot of the way Nigerians view certain economic choices by virtue of the fact that Nigeria is such a young country and as such, a very sizeable chunk of the population will come of age under any leader who spends 8 years in office (remember how government intervention to set foreign exchange rates quickly became an idée fixe in 2015 and 2016?).
There are two lessons from Buhari that should always apply to any future Nigerian leader. The first is that a leader who does not actively cultivate his mind will do serious damage to the country he leads. Things like the border closure were done because he was convinced in his mind it was the correct thing to do and had never exposed himself to arguments to the contrary.
The second one is that it is impossible to do a half decent job as Nigeria’s president without physical energy. A lot of damage was done to Nigeria because when things began to drift, Buhari had no inclination or energy to stop them and then they took on a life of their own.
Nigeria will be living in the long shadow of Muhammadu Buhari for a while to come.