By Waheed Ogunjobi

PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari may be facing the manifestation of the old dic­tum “uneasy lies the head that wears the crown’’. Owing to the current challenges confronting the nation, the buck stops at his table. There is no gainsaying the fact that Nigeria is facing hard times. The man at the helm, the President no doubt has a Hercu­lean task on his hands. His administration is dogged by several seemingly insurmount­able challenges that continue to tax the lead­ership capabilities of the administration. No doubt, the Presidency is an enormous post that anyone would wish to have. But taking over the mantle of leadership at a time of global economic recession occasioned by fall in oil prices is a major challenge that the Presidency has continued to grapple with.

As things stand today, the Nigerian gov­ernment which operates a monolithic econ­omy has found it extremely difficult to meet its financial obligations. As a result, many states have found it difficult to pay sala­ries, pensions and meet up with their other obligations. This reality dawned when the Federal Government paid a huge sum to states as bailout funds in order for them to pay backlog of salaries. The federal govern­ment, through the Central Bank of Nigeria, paid over N300 billion bailout fund to states in August, 2015. Less than a year after, many states are still grappling with the pay­ment of staff salaries with labour leaders in many states spoiling for war. President Mu­hammadu Buhari himself, while speaking at the recent APC NEC meeting said, “the fall of oil prices after Nigeria has made it­self a mono-economy is a disaster. I wonder why people could not believe that in Nigeria, about 27 out of 36 states have difficulty in paying basic salaries to their workers.”

A major offshoot of the economic hardship that seems to have gripped the nation is the hard times that is now the order of the day due to the dwindling oil price which has also resulted in the acute shortage of petroleum products.

This is compounded by the soaring cost of commodities, especially food prices, thus making it increasingly difficult for most people to feed themselves and their families. This soaring cost of commodities which is also not unconnected with the scarcity of for­eign exchange is seriously taking its toll on the people, and became compounded with the acute fuel shortage which has further tasked the financial capabilities of Nigerians. The President’s All Progressives Congress-led government has however got its own part of the bitter pill reflecting negatively on the party’s image.

The federal government had been busy try­ing to correct the negative impression by at­tributing the current hardship to sabotage and lack of a clear direction by the past govern­ment.

Although, the insurgency war is gradu­ally being won, yet the issue of the Chibok girls remains a pain in the neck for the Presi­dent. He is worried by the continued stay of the Chibok schoolgirls in the hands of their captors and has been working tirelessly to get them released. The President stated this in Paris while responding to questions from members of the Nigerian community in France under the auspices of Nigerians in Di­aspora Organization (NIDO).

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On the economy, restructuring the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) is another major task the administration is faced with. For instance, the NNPC was recently split into seven units. No other issue has ex­posed the government to public sentiments as the recent energy crisis occasioned by the shortage in the supply of Premium Motor Spirit which paralysed the economy of the nation for most parts of the first quarter of the year. Power sector challenge in the coun­try has been somewhat intractable before the inception of this administration. The irony of it all was that the power situation in the coun­try improved shortly after the inauguration of President Buhari in 2015.

It was widely reported that Nigeria’s power generation collapsed to zero megawatt as at March 31, 2016. And the situation lasted for about three hours. According to the Trans­mission Company of Nigeria, TCN, no power generation company produced a single mega­watt of electricity throughout that period.

Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, said the sudden downing of the three turbines at the Jebba Hydro pow­er station was responsible for the situation, adding that the power supply in the country was inadequate and that the faulty turbines had been fixed.

Another major worry for President Mu­hammadu Buhari is the issue of Internally Displaced Persons. The Federal Govern­ment has continued to struggle to remove the remnants of the Boko Haram insurgents from the North East and the safety of the over two million displaced persons remains uppermost in the agenda of the Buhari government. The issue of Fulani herdsmen killing people in different parts of the country is another ma­jor hard nut for President Buhari to crack. There have been series of calls from different quarters to address the problem of the Fulani herdsmen invasion once and for all.

.Ogunjobi writes from Lagos.