One month to President Muhammadu Buhari’s swearing in, his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), put out a press release stating that the ‘incoming government was ready to hit the ground running.’ President Buhari’s government did hit the ground on May 29, but if anything, it did not run. In fact many would argue that in its first hundred days, the new government crawled so much that they nicknamed its head Baba go slow. Supporters of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) revelled in the caricatures of the person who had just defeated their preferred candidate, one of which was a photoshopped picture of his head joined to the body of a snail.

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While the members of the opposition enjoyed the mounting criticism of his (lack of) pace of governance, some members of the ruling party, and indeed diehard supporters of president himself, were worried. Among the main issues that concerned them were President Buhari’s delay in appointing ministers and his decision to not get involved in the leadership crises in the two chambers of the Parliament, both of which are controlled by his party. The media reported of internal wrangling and discontent within the APC and Dele Momodu, a popular media personality and supporter of the new president, in an open letter to the president, published in June, wrote; “Sir, let me say right away that the goodwill garnered during your campaigns and the jubilation that heralded your recent victory are fast fading and you need to, as a matter of urgency, convince the people of Nigeria that you’re now ready to hit the ground running. They are not going to listen to excuses since you had 30 years after quitting the high office to onerously prepare for the job again.”

Three weeks later, Momodu published another article this time detailing his meeting with the new President, instigated by his open letter, and how the commander-in-chief personally calmed his worries. “The President said he was aware of people’s expectations but they should exercise some patience as they would realise his vision and mission as events he was directing begin to unfold. He sounded like a man who knows what most of us don’t know. He’s the man in the driver’s seat and only he can see the blind spots,” he wrote. This is the same line of thought pushed by the president’s supporters who have hit back at the criticism of the government as slow. “This government is not slow. The government is focused; it is methodological,” argued Lai Mohammed, the National Publicity Secretary of the APC, in an interview in July.

The President has since then announced that he will make known his choice of ministers in September. He has also reshuffled his service chiefs and given the new military leadership a mandate–with the pledge of additional material support–to crush the boko haram insurgency in three months. On the anti-corruption front, he has ordered several probes including one of the much maligned NNPC. He has also changed the leadership of state-owned oil company and ordered a review of its allegedly corruption-infested crude swap deal with oil marketers. The anti-corruption watchdog, the EFCC, seemingly taking cue from the president’s zero tolerance policy, has embarked on several high profile investigations into former public officials. For the president’s supporters, this is evidence of a working government keeping to its promise of tackling the major challenges facing the country, particularly insecurity and corruption.

However, President Buhari and his party promised much during the campaign, a lot which has not even been mentioned since they assumed power. Chief among these are his social safety net programmes. On the campaign trail the president promised free and universal healthcare, a nationwide feeding programme for children in public primary schools and a Conditional Cash Transfer that pays N5000 – N7500 monthly to 25 Million of the poorest Nigerians over the next four years as long as they send their children to school and get them immunized. Nothing has yet been officially said of these programmes since President Buhari was sworn into office 100 days ago. The APC press release, made a month before, was also the last time the party talked about these programmes. While in that April statement the party did say these programmes will come with “steady incrementalism,” the public has seen almost no movement.

Instead, the APC and President Buhari, have in the last couple of days been roundly criticised for walking back from  another batch of promises, many of which were supposed to be carried out within the first 100 days of the new government. This began with their respective statements denying two documents—My Covenant with Nigerians and What Nigerians should expect from Buhari’s first 100 days in office—both of which were widely circulated during the Presidential campaign. The party spokesperson, Lai Mohammed told Africa Check that he was “not aware that [Buhari] promised to deliver anything in his first 100 days,” while the President’s spokesperson, Garba Shehu, stated that “as the Director, Media and Communications of that campaign… I didn’t fund them and I didn’t authorise them,” in reference to both documents.

According to Premium Times, a popular online news website renowned for its investigative journalism, the president and his party lied.  The platform, citing the results of its investigations published a report on September 1 that “the claims by President Muhammadu Buhari and his party, the All Progressives Congress, that a key campaign document, ‘My Covenant with Nigerians’ did not emerge from them is false and misleading.” It added that “while a volunteer group backed by the party and the presidential campaign may have produced the document on ‘One Hundred Things Buhari Will Do in 100 Days’, PREMIUM TIMES can authoritatively report that the policy and research directorate of the APC presidential campaign, headed by former Governor Kayode Fayemi, produced the covenant document… PREMIUM TIMES can also report that “The Covenant with Nigeria” was also one of the documents the Ahmed Joda-led Transition Committee used in producing an 800-page report detailing swift steps Mr. Buhari must take to fix Nigeria… Mr. Buhari accepted the committee’s report without any complaint, and promised to implement the recommendations.”

This current allegation of dishonesty and deceit heavily taints President Buhari’s much celebrated public image of a man of integrity who is steadfast to his word. However, his supporters and his party continue to insist that there is no denial of campaign promises, which, according to them, are only contained in the constitution of the party and its manifesto. For them also, the issue of change is not how fast but how well. “We prefer to talk about milestones instead of achievements; whether the milestones represent achievements or not, that is left for the people to decide. Milestones have been achieved, which is important for the country,” Garba Shehu said on Sunday. However, for Nigerians, brutalised for decades by tons of failed promises by political leaders, it is of utmost importance that President Buhari keeps his word. One word that he has not kept thus far is to publicly declare his assets, which appears in both the Covenant and his first hundred days’ promises, and is yet to be carried out.

Another of the president’s words under the microscope is his inauguration pledge to “Belong to everybody and… to nobody.” Critics of his political appointments thus far say he is failing that promise. They do have a strong point. Of President Buhari’s 30 political appointments made by the end of August, thirteen have been of persons from the North-West from which he hails, nine more come from other geopolitical zones in the North, five are from the south-south, three from the south-west and none from the south-east in which he did not get up to 10 percent of the total presidential votes. “To my mind, these lopsided appointments skewed in favour of the North is a reminder of President Buhari’s tenure as Military Head of State and I hope the President is not seeing Nigeria of today as that of 1984 because doing so will mean that he has turned himself to a northern president, thereby justifying his notion that those who gave him 97 percent votes must get more benefits than those who gave him five percent votes, commented Ayo Fayose, the PDP Governor Ekiti state in South-western Nigeria. The president’s critics are not just members of the opposition PDP. The ethno-cultural pressure groups of the Southwest and Southeast have also expressed worries – the latter in particular which had expected to land the position of the Secretary General of the Federation, a position which ended up going to a northerner.,

While the first 100 days of Buhari’s presidency has seen some success in starting the fight to clean up Nigeria’s government, there growing concern about the commitment of President Buhari and the APC to their promise of fixing Nigeria as a result of his slow speed and contradictory statements. With the slow pace of the change project, the delayed launch of many of its aspects and the denial of some of its crucial elements, there is the rising fear that after these first 100 days, the self proclaimed “Change Government” could after all change into more of the same.

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