Understanding Buhari's one year in office

Monitoring and Eval­uation is an impor­tant management tool in all sectors of the economy- whether in public administra­tion, business administration or in development administra­tion; that is, in civil society gov­ernance. It falls within the man­agement function of control and enables policy makers assess the performance of their plan of ac­tions, because there is always a gap between policy formulation and results of policy implementa­tion. This is usually dictated at the stage of policy evaluation or audit.

In political governance, one year in office within the matrix of a four – year tenure means a lot both for the political party in power and the opposition. How­ever, there is a greater stakehold­er and impartial group that one year of an administration should mean most to - the citizenry; whose welfare and security con­stitute the valid public purposes of government.
On May 29, President Bu­hari was a year as President. It was an auspicious time for dif­ferent stakeholders and interest groups to assess his One-Year Re­port Card and record of achieve­ments. This piece provides a veri­table benchmark to assess the one year of his presidency.
President Buhari won election in 2015 on the platform of three issues- the first is insecurity as a result of the rampaging Boko Haram terrorists, who had made life too cheap particularly in the north-eastern part of the coun­try; in Abuja and its environs in­cluding the terrorists’ occasional killings in Kano and Kaduna me­tropolis.
The second matter Buhari promised to tackle was the state of corruption and impunity in public life in Nigeria. The brazen rate at which public resources had been appropriated by gov­ernment functionaries and their cronies were appaling. It is also important to recall that the state of unemployment and the poor condition of Nigerian economy had reached an alarming pro­portion under President Good­luck Ebele Jonathan. Therefore, even when governance trav­erses all sectors of the econo­my and human life, insecurity, corruption, and unemployment and bad economy demanded ur­gent national attention from the All Progressive Congress (APC) government.
On May 29th 2015; right there at the Eagle Square, President Buhari in his speech commenced his efforts at tackling Boko Har­am and general insecurity in the country. In his inaugural speech, President Buhari partly said on security: ‘’ the most immedi­ate is Boko Haram’s insurgency. Progress has been made in recent weeks by our security forces but victory cannot be achieved by basing the Command and Con­trol Centre in Abuja. The com­mand centre will be relocated to Maiduguri and remain until Boko Haram is completely sub­dued. But we cannot claim to have defeated Boko Haram with­out rescuing the Chibok girls and all other innocent persons held hostage by insurgents.’’
After one year, the question now is what has Buhari achieved on security, economy, anti-cor­ruption and job creation? The facts should speak for themselves. And that is, that one year after, the Nigerian military has chased Boko Haram into the Sambisa for­est, decimated them and restored the confidence of the Nigerian military which was nearly lost by the threat that Boko-Haram con­stituted. The forest has been in­vaded and Nigerian territories un­der Boko Haram in the Jonathan’s presidency have been reclaimed by the Nigerian army.
The fear of Boko-Haram is gradually vanishing as a lead into the abduction of 219 Chibok girls had been discovered with the res­cue of one or two of the girls. On security; a lot has been achieved in one year.
Another issue that President Buhari promised to address is the anti-corruption war. There have been recoveries of public resourc­es from former public function­aries and a huge control of public funds has been achieved through the implementation of Treasury Single Accounts (TSA).
The President had on the 5th of February told the Nigerian peo­ple and the international commu­nity in London that the nation had saved up to 2.2 trillion within three months. Certainly, the sav­ings must have improved and the country really needs this culture to get out of the economic quag­mire as many of those who loot­ed the treasury are being tried in relevant courts of law for various corruption offences. On anti-cor­ruption, achievements have also being recorded in the last twelve months.
On economy and job creation, the President and his party still need to do a lot to start here. How­ever, with the implementation of the 34 priority projects all over the country in the 2016 budget, the recruitment of ten thousand new staffers by the Nigerian police and the five hundred thousand teach­ers to be recruited into the teach­ing service, employment genera­tion and economic revival will go hand in hand.
The more than six trillion na­ira budget in 2016; which the President and his team have fully committed they to its im­plementation will certainly cause the economy to experience stimu­lation and a quality rebirth. There­fore, one year of President Buhari and the APC federal government is after all; not a lost opportunity.