By Lami Ladan
A very interesting news item in the past week was the brickbat between the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) concerning how Nigeria fared under the administrations of the two political parties.
Perhaps it would be an interesting academic research work to have analytics comparing the first five years of PDP’s Obasanjo-Atiku and APC’s Buhari-Osinbajo administrations. Well, one fact that is clear to all Nigerians is that in the case of the former, the presidency was defined by the names of the two personalities at the helm of affairs.
In the later, the presidency has been by proxy as neither Buhari nor Osinbajo has ever been the main driver behind the wheels of state.
It’s unfathomable to have all these achievements as reeled out by the APC publication in a national newspaper, yet, the poverty rate in the country is alarming and has never been this high. One can only conclude that their so-called achievements are mere dreams based on our reality today’s
The Obasanjo-Atiku led administration laid the basic foundation and put in place policies that would drive and sustain socio-economic development of the country.
Before the return to democracy, Nigeria had become what the international community would call pariah nation, no thanks to the coup and counter coups of which, General Buhari himself was guilty of.
With the election of Obasanjo-Atiku in 1999, the two leaders embarked on redesigning, retooling of our governance that had hitherto been basterdized.
The administration swiftly took measures that helped in laying the foundation for the debt-relief from the BN Paribas. The establishment of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offenses Commission (ICPC) are notable among many others.
The EFCC, no doubt helped in cleansing Nigeria’s image and restoring confidence to the foreign investment drive. Economically, Nigeria became a force to reckon with in the League of Nations with a GDP of 6 – 6.5 percentage growth
Need we remind the APC of what the exchange rate was before their “super exciting policies” brought the Naira to its knees? Or, perhaps, the prices of commodities before their arrival on the scene.
During the Obasanjo years, there was conscious and pragmatic effort to reduce bureaucratic red tapes hindering the smooth running of the day-to-day affairs of the nation. We know what it is like today to want to do business in Nigeria. Conversely, in the Buhari years, the more they say they are addressing it, the worse it gets.
