Currency chaos and an absent president mark run-up to Nigeria’s general election

It’s hard to imagine that it’s been nearly eight years since the last one. This time in 2015, I was over the moon with the prospects of a general election that was certain to end the government of President Goodluck Jonathan – a government that had lost its way.

Folks were so excited at the prospects of change that in the southwest, a Yoruba version of “February” – the month of the general election – was improvised: “Fe-Buhari”; meaning, “Love Buhari”, thus investing Muhammadu Buhari with the aura of Cupid, the Roman god of erotic love. That’s how over the moon we were. And not without good reason.

Boko Haram’s violent extremism was at its worst. Life on the streets, in the schools and at home was insecure. Corruption was rife and audacious. Jonathan claimed he was doing his best, but wherever you went, it felt different.

His government had obviously been captured by forces beyond him – a sad fact that he publicly admitted more than once, but which did not absolve him. A president is elected to solve problems, not make excuses.

When the wind got out of his sails, Jonathan invoked the consolation of failing leaders: the benevolence of history. History, he said, will remember him kindly.

On the eve of another presidential election nearly eight years after those forlorn words were spoken, it does seem history may, after all, be kind to Jonathan, the man famously called Nigeria’s most “incompetent and clueless” president. 

In a twist of fate, his successor, Muhammadu Buhari – thought to be the most capable to nail Jonathan’s political coffin shut – may well be the one who writes him into sainthood.

As Nigerians go to the polls on Saturday, 25 February, to elect a new president, not a few voters think the worst mistake would be to let Buhari happen again.  

Not that he is on the ballot. He has exhausted his eight-year constitutionally permitted tenure of two terms. But as his broken promises on security, poverty alleviation and corruption stalk voters to the 176,606 polling centres across the country, the last thing they want is to cast a vote that repeats the error of 2015.

Buhari solved a few old problems, of course. Boko Haram is in significant retreat. More supplies and equipment are reaching soldiers at the frontlines. Also, greater attempts have been made to provide infrastructure, stimulate agriculture and restructure the super-opaque oil and gas industry.

But new problems have replaced old ones – the most debilitating being the calamitous absence of Buhari. 

Never a man to interfere with his subordinates once he has appointed them, things have grown worse in his last days in office. He is present only in name, going from delegation of authority to spectatorship and from spectatorship to surrender. The cat is away and the mice party has never been so boisterous.