Nigeria has just strolled past the first 100-day milestone of the Buhari Administration. Critics insist the performance has been bland and lacking in colour, but is this really fair comment? Staunch Buhari followers will tend to see the first 100 days through rose-tinted glasses, hyping up only the pleasant parts of events and choosing not to see what the critics see. However, the critics only see things in black and white and occasionally they throw in a bit of mud to relate sepia coloured events. Those who have been tracking the promises of the new government, such as through the Buharimeter of the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), claim the President made 222 promises gleaned from documents such as “One Hundred Things Buhari Will Do in 100 Days” and “My Covenant with Nigerians”, regarding his first 100 days in office of which, only one promise has been achieved (asset declaration), a total of 24 others are in progress, while 197 cannot yet be rated.

A fair assessment of Mr. President’s performance so far might require examination of the first 100 days through a completely different set of lenses. The right equipment with which to view the “heated” state of Nigeria’s political economy, in a manner of speaking, is not a pair of glasses but a thermal imaging camera, even if this produces pictures only in shades of grey – for we are likely in the final analysis to find neither success nor failure but circumstances, ways and means.

Take the “heat” generated over election of principal officers for the Eighth National Assembly. This battle seemed to be about preempting Mr. Tinubu’s choices for National Assembly leadership. This lost valuable legislative time and that for anyone trying to balance the geo-politics of the leadership of the country. It also left people wondering if the President’s authority was not whittled as leader of the party. Today, we see a compromise agreed in the House of Representatives, and trouble still brewing in the Senate but a stronger posture from the President.

His re-focusing of the war on terror necessitated replacement of the National Security Adviser (NSA), and changes at the Department for State Security, Police, and line up of Service Chiefs, issuing them an ultimatum to contain Boko Haram within 90 days. The NSA’s removal generated debate and controversy as politicians wonder whether his removal and being charged with firearms offences were not related to the NSA’s poor treatment and subsequent incarceration of Buhari in times past. The real “thermals” behind this manifestation are unclear.

Leadership of several government agencies has changed such as in the Customs, Immigrations, Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC), the Nigeria National Petroleum Company (NNPC) and so on. These changes can be related to Buhari’s anti-corruption drive and his infusion of change agents into the system. Nigerians argue that there could have been more consideration given to the Federal Character principle in the new appointments than it would appear he has done, asking if change agents come only from the North – the net beneficiaries of the movements.

Many more events from the first 100 days left “heat signatures”, such as the choice to focus the anti-corruption war on the immediate past administration. However, by far the most “incandescent” event has been that of choosing aides and forming a cabinet. It had been rumoured that Dr. Kayode Fayemi, Mr. Fashola and Mr. Amaechi should expect to play key roles in the new government. Some have argued that Mr. Tinubu is not in agreement with the fielding of some of such candidates and his alleged struggle to “omit/replace” them has resulted in the delay by Mr. President to name his full list of aides and final list of ministers. Despite denials issued by the Jagaban himself, it is widely speculated that the tarnishing of Mr. Fashola’s record in recent times was not unconnected with him and this struggle, which saw the president drop Fashola from his entourage for foreign trips beyond London and Germany. Some analysts suggest the South-West lost out in the process as Fashola could neither be minister nor Chief of Staff after the revelations, and the South-East lost out as well due to similar “in-fighting” and tarnishing of candidates – leaving the president constrained to take his A-team from amongst northern candidates. So, even if the 100-day image is not rosy, it is neither black and white nor sepia.


Is the 100-day milestone a really good indicator of progress for the new administration against the backdrop of a weak, corrupt State with predatory stakeholders in an environment of economic decline? Just because it worked for Theodore Roosevelt who is credited with it, does it mean it would work for President Buhari? Is it not time we paid greater attention to reading the thermal “images” of our political economy and strengthened our voices to influence the outcomes rather than sit back to track and react at prescribed milestones?

To the uninitiated it may appear that nothing much happened in Buhari’s first 100 days since they did not have the equipment with which to see into that which was shrouded by the dark of politicking. With “thermal imaging” we now see that on each of the 100 days, the President must have dealt with one specific shade of grey or the other. One can summarise the entire period under one rubric by describing “President Buhari in 100 shades of grey.”

Credit: Soji Apampa

Soji Apampa, the co-founder of The Integrity Organisation, can be reached at Twitter: @sojapa, and email: soji.apampa@integritynigeria.org.


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