By Tagbo T. Ufondu
On the economic front, he hired economic internationalists and nationalists to find a cure for the huge debt at that time. His appointees delivered a clean slate with Western creditors of Europe and America. Also at the same time Obasanjo delivered a banking sector consolidation through the central bank, enabling deposits to be insured by shareholders funds.
Third term, as it was called. To achieve this he would need the national assembly and the errant state governors; he would also need to disqualify his vice from standing as a candidate. Obasanjo failed to achieve his constitutional change at the parliament as a vast coalition defeated his scheme.
This coalition was led by politicians seeking to dial back achievments on the issue of the national debt.
Obasanjo imposed a PDP presidential candidate as the third term gambit collapsed. Shehu Musa Yar’ Adua, governor of the Muslim-majority Katsina state, and the governor of Bayelsa state in the Niger Delta, Goodluck Jonathan, were substantive preisdential and vice presidential candidates respectively. The ruling PDP won the hotly contested vote in 2007 by the largest voter turnout since, and even for their candidates.
The next elections in 2011 after Yar’ Adua’s death in office as president saw an even higher turnout, but a lower vote number for the PDP presidential candidate in Goodluck Jonathan. In the 2007 voting voter turnout was at an historical 33,800,000 compared to another record breaking 34,700,000 for 2011, but in 2011 Jonathan got 22,495,187 when Yar’ Adua polled 24,638,063 in 2007.
President Jonathan tried to be fiscally prudent as Obasanjo did, he retained Obasanjo’s most important minister, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala whose portfolio expanded into coordinating the economy, virtually becoming a de facto vice president. She soon ran into the usual headwinds befalling frugal Nigerian presidents.
From the contested Excess Crude Account hated by Nigerian governors, Okonjo-Iweala soon established a Sovereign Wealth Fund for future savings; the Governors Forum headed by then-Rivers State Governor, Rotimi Amaechi, took up the gauntlet in becoming the most formidable opposition to the Jonathan administration. Okonjo-Iweala introduced Austerity Measures as crude oil prices plummeted globally in 2014 by nearly half the prices for 2011, further straining the fiscal standing of the country and the 36 states. The fiscal measures of Dr Okonjo-Iweala had left the state governors livid and with mounting debts, unable to pay salaries and other overheads.
A broad coalition formed around the personality of the CPC candidate Muhammadu Buhari in 2014. The ACN of former Lagos Governor, now president of Nigeria, and estranged members of the ruling PDP formed the new APC political party. This new association would go on to achieve the first political upset in Nigeria by beating a sitting president by a low turnout of about 29,432,083. The PDP lost half of their 2007 voters and for 2011 lost about ten million.
Four years later in 2019 , the low voter turnout continued to hold steady almost at the 2015 figures, at 28,614,190 it was another low point with the ruling party incumbent beating the PDP Atiku Abubakar by a low comfortable margin of 15,191,847 to 11,262,978. In this year’s February vote, the turnout took a significant dip to cause concern about the health of electoral politics.
A new presidential candidate based on a same faith ticket negating Nigeria’s decades-old power sharing unwritten constitution caused a marked nosedive to about 23,388,415 voters, and the declared winner won with the highest votes for any of the frontrunners and paradoxically with a minority of votes of the voting public.
Bola Tinubu of the APC won with just 8,805,655 compared to the PDP’s Atiku Abubakar and the Labour party’s Peter Obi taking 6,984,520 and 6,101,533 respectively.
The APC has been good in instrumentalising debt as a political weapon to keep down voter mobilisation especially in PDP strongholds. Soon after president Buhari took office in 2015 by July he had approved N804.7 billion as bailout for states owing salaries covering issues as soft loans, fresh allocations and the states’ debt-serving payments.
In 2015, about 12 states were owing their workers over N110 billion in arrears inclucing Osun, Rivers, Oyo, Ekiti, Kwara, Kogi, Ondo, Plateau, Benue, and Bauchi. All these debtor states remained instrumental in 2023, delivering victory to APC’s president Tinubu.
By 2016 the Buhari APC had effectively made the Excess Crude Account moribund, when N117.3 billion was disbursed to states from surplus revenue in the Petroleum Profit Tax, PPT. Savings from solid minerals exploitation to the tune of N3.6 billion was in July of that year allocated to the states; earlier in January, the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) , dividend payment of N7.85 billion was provided to states to meet revenue shortfalls. The NLNG had in July 2015, provided dividends to the federal government of $2.1 billion and the government remitted N92.18 billion to the ailing states.
Debt in Nigeria is serviced with government revenues, it is a national government obligation to do this on behalf of the entire country even when the usage often is not national, lopsided disbursement is a matter of politics.
The most important conclusions to draw from this anomaly is that debt, especially to borrow for consumption and overheads, is dangerous to democratic exercise and consolidation. Insecurity has spread to the southeast parts of Nigeria only under the eight years of Buhari administration, the southwest is under siege by what appears to be random incursions by Islamists. Banditry and political thugs are taking root in ungoverned spaces and urban areas respectively.
The new Tinubu administration is bonafide APC; taxes and rigorous generation of revenue will intensify. President Tinubu has called for a credit economy, buy now, pay later. Where is the money to pay later going to come from? States are salivating for new rounds of bailout, at least they supported him over the political and fiscal machinations of former president Buhari just before the February elections.
Ufondu is a Political and Social Writer in Lagos.
. Ufondu can be reached via:tagboufondu@yahoo.com
The Guardian
