After eight tortuous years, President Muhammadu Buhari\u2019s tenure as President of Nigeria will come to an end on May 29, 2023 when he hands over power to President-elect, Bola Ahmed Tinubu. At what is expected to be a colourful ceremony at Eagle Square, Abuja, Tinubu will be sworn in together with Kashim Shettima, as President and Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Tinubu\u2019s election had been controversial with election observers and his opponents at the elections accusing the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) of failure to conduct elections in line with its procedure. INEC had on March 1, announced Tinubu as winner of the elections with 8,794,726\u00a0votes. His closet challenger, Atiku Abubakar of the main opposition People\u2019s Democratic Party (PDP) scored 6,984,250 votes. The third highest votes in the announced results had surprise candidate, Peter Obi of the Labour Party winning 6,101,533 votes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Already,\nactivities leading up to the inauguration have kicked off. Outgoing President,\nMuhammadu Buhari has been on a spree of project commissioning. The Dangote\nRefinery in Lagos, which will yet begin production was commissioned on May 22.\nHe also held an emergency cabinet meeting on Tuesday, May 23 to commission the\nmuch awaited second Niger bridge and is expected to hold a valedictory cabinet\nmeeting on Wednesday, May 24. Buhari will dissolve his cabinet on Friday, May\n26 ahead of Tinubu\u2019s swearing in on Monday, May 29. As Buhari\u2019s tenure ends, a\nsearch for his legacy from his eight-year rule is still on-going, with lots of\ncritics describing his tenure as eight wasted years. His supporters point to\nsome infrastructural projects carried out by him, including delivery of the\nsecond Niger bridge, completion of the President Jonathan-initiated\nKaduna-Abuja trainline, among other achievements. Yet, the concern is that\nPresident Buhari who first won elections in 2015 on the mantra of waging war against corruption, ending\ninsecurity and eliminating profligacy in government has failed on all of these\nfronts. Critics state that insecurity levels in the country are worse than it\nwas when he came into office. Critics also cite incredible levels of corruption\nand his inability to deal with it as evidence of his failed legacy. The\neconomic situation is described as being at its worst. Nigeria\u2019s debt profile\nwhich stood at $7.25 billion in 2015 has now risen to an all-time high of $41.69\nbillion and counting. President Buhari has also been accused of incredible\nlevels of nepotism and exclusion of persons other than those of his religion\nand tribe, from government. Most of his appointees are described as lacking in\nthe knowledge and skills or even qualifications needed to improve the country. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although\nthe conduct of the 2023 general elections remains controversial and dogged by\non-going election petitions in the courts, the Constitution requires that the\ndeclared winner be sworn in and carry on the business of government. With\nTinubu being sworn in on May 29, Nigerians have been short in outlining their\nexpectations of the new administration. Some of these expectations include: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Indeed,\nmost Nigerians cannot wait to see the back of the Buhari government in the\nexpectation that a sworn in President Tinubu could begin to heal the wounds\ninflicted by eight brutal years of Buhari\u2019s reign. As for Tinubu, a new\nConstitution Alteration Act passed in 2023 now mandates the President and\nGovernors to submit the names of their nominees for the positions of Ministers\nand Commissioners to the National Assembly and State House of Assembly, as the\ncase may be, within six months from the date of inauguration. This implies that\nit will not be business as usual for incoming governments at the Federal and\nState levels, where the President or a Governor was at liberty to constitute\nhis cabinet almost a year into their tenure as was experience in the past. They\nwill be expected to constitute their respective cabinets within 180 days and\nhit the ground running with the business of government. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nigerians\nand indeed the world, wait to see what difference a President Tinubu will make.\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After eight tortuous years, President Muhammadu Buhari\u2019s tenure as President of Nigeria will come to an end on May 29, 2023 when he hands over power to President-elect, Bola Ahmed Tinubu. At what is expected to be a colourful ceremony at Eagle Square, Abuja, Tinubu will be sworn in together with Kashim Shettima, as President […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3262,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3256"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3261,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3256\/revisions\/3261"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}