President Muhammadu Buhari’s Administration and the Change Mantra in Nigeria

Abstract

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country and its largest economy is credited with an abundance of natural and human resource endowments placing it potentially, among resource-rich nations and raising hopes of its development potentials. Contrary to this potentiality, the country remains underdeveloped with a large portion of the population living below all indices of human development. Democracy offers hope for pragmatic changes to leadership and government policies in society’s quest for change and stability. It was on this basis that numerous disenchanted Nigerians embraced the prospect of ‘change’ put forward as campaign slogan by Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress against the ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party in the run-ups to the 2015 elections. Consequently, Mr. Buhari was sworn in as President on the back of his change mantra, on the 29^th of May 2015 with his party remarkably defeating an incumbent president. The party was re–elected for another four years in 2019 arguably aided by factors of incumbency and some remnant of civil optimism. After the expiration of his eight year tenure, there are questions on the performance of the Buhari administration that need exploration, viz-a-viz performance to voters’ expectations; the party’s delivery relative to party manifesto; and public disposition to, and perception of standard of living under the administration. Eight years after this government, were they able to introduce the much needed change? How far did they go in fulfilling some of their laudable promises as contained in their manifesto? Did they live up to the expectations of the citizens? This paper seeks to answer these questions through evaluation of the major promises made to the citizens by the ‘Change Mantra’ government. The social contract theory was employed. The paper relies on secondary means of data collection and is analyzed using descriptive analysis and narrative report. The study concludes that the Government did not live up to the citizen’s expectations and most of their promises were never accomplished. The study recommends that corrupt politicians should be jailed to serve as a deterrent to others. Our political culture should be changed; citizens should begin to demand for dividends of democracy from their elected representatives