The proposed tax bill being debated by the Nigerian Senate whose stated goal is to overhaul the country’s tax system, simplify the tax landscape, reduce the burden on small businesses, and streamline how taxes are collected has pitted national interest against parochial tribal and regional agenda. Although objective analysis seems to suggest that on balance, the proposed tax reform is great for the overall interest of the nation as it eliminates multiple taxation across the country, deploy taxation as a tool to encourage private sector investments in critical industries and boost individual disposal incomes through targeted tax exemptions, the passage of the bill hangs in the balance.
All through our history as a nation, national interest has always taken the back seat to parochial tribal and regional hegemonic interest. Even our struggle for independence from the British was almost derailed by those who perceived that their region will be disadvantaged by the more advanced and educated regions of the country.
If we were to draw an analogy to Nigerian state from the animal world, the most appropriate would probably be the image of a bleached whale in an impoverished sea-shore community whose inhabitants see a stranded bleached whale as manna from heaven and each has brought out in an orgy of gluttony, any cutting device they could lay their hands on to carve out for themselves as much of the free meat as they could grab.
There is actually a concept in political science, known as political particularism, which describes the propensity of policymakers and politicians to further their careers by catering to narrow interests rather than to broader national platforms. So, it is not a unique problem to our country for politician to think national but act locally, to take into cognizance how national policies will affect their local community. After all the essence of politics is the process by which choices are made regarding how resources will be allocated and which economic and social policies government will pursue. Put more simply, politics is the process of who gets what and how.
In the U.S. Congress, there is actually a term for this phenomenon of political particularism. Pork barrel projects, refer to appropriations for constituents’ sweetheart projects by senators and members of Congress that are inserted into and hidden in big omnibus legislative documents as part of the legislative negotiation process.
So, it is not a uniquely Nigerian problem, it is just that ours is the extreme form of political particularism in which our politicians take as their default mode of operation to subvert critical national interests in pursuit of parochial selfish agenda.
Just like pigging out on the meat of bleached whale often come with the risk of botulism Type E outbreaks, and high metal toxicity, our country has paid a huge price from our tendency to treat it as a bleached whale where everyone takes as much as they could at the expense of everyone else and at the expense of our national interest. Our extreme form of political particularism, of putting tribal parochial interest above national is the root cause of our leadership failure, the stagnation of our economy, the failure of our institutions, and the endemic corruption that has stymied our national development and pauperized our citizens. It explains why a particular region or country has cornered for itself a disproportionate number of nation’s oil well licenses and why our presidential elections have become a do or die contest for tribal hegemonic domination.
It is the reason that our country after 64 years of independence does not have a reliable census of its population and other critical national data for rational development planning.
Given our history, it will take all of the political capital the president can expend to push the proposed tax bill over the line against the massive force that has been arrayed against it.
Adewale Alonge, PhD, is Founder & President, Africa Diaspora Partnership for Empowerment and Development. www.adped.org
Power is transient, so Senator Shehu Sani, a social critic and human rights activist, seems to say as he mocks former associates of Yahaya Bello who have abandoned him in his time of need.
In his heydays as governor, it was common on social media to see celebrities displaying pictures they took with the Kogi State governor.
Now that Yahaya Bello is having his day in court and grappling with the anticorruption agencies and the police, coupled with the arm-twisting, mugshots and all, the Senator is asking: where are the celebrities, the sportsmen and women who flock to the governor regularly at Lugard House, Lokoja?
Taking to his verified X (Twitter) account, Senator Sani said, “All those Sportsmen, Beauty Queens and Movie Stars who used to visit Lokoja have now abandoned the White Lion.”
Senator Sani labelled them “Fairweather” friends who will be with you when the going is good because of what they are benefitting.
The former Kogi State Governor, Yahaya Bello is standing trial at the Federal High Court, Abuja, on multiple charges of money laundering, fraud and mismanagement of public funds totalling over N200 billion.
This most valuable asset of a policy analyst, a social influencer and political commentator is credibility. No one respects a lapdog whose mouth is in his principal’s ass leaking his or her sh!t. This Omokiri guy has built a reputation as an unapologetic supporter of the president. Many allege that he has in fact turned it into a cottage industry from which he is smiling all the way to the bank. This is mere speculation but a reasonable one at that.
No doubt the president’s reform policies were a much needed tough chemotherapy for the unsustainable Nigerian economy that was on the throe of total collapse from the metastasis of corruption, budgetary indiscipline, oil subsidy and an artificially juiced foreign exchange regime that were bleeding life out of the economy while a few were profiteering like bandits.
However it is beyond ridiculous and absurd for anyone to say that the Nigerian economy is on full rebound. That is beyond the pale for even an Omikiri.
How ridiculous can Omokiri get to include the statistics of the number of life-streaming of Wizkid’s recent album as a metric for the rebound of country’s economy. Spotify is a global music streaming entity whose subscribers are global. By the way,not all Spotify subscribers are paid subscribers. Spotify offers free subscriptions with advert.
I am also a great supporter of President Tinubu, not because he has already turned the economy around. Only time will tell. The legacy of most transformative leaders often come after their tenure has long elapsed when historians look back. That is likely to be the case for President Tinubu who I strongly believe history will judge as one, a transformative leader, if he remains committed to his reform agenda putting the interest of the country above every other consideration. I support him for his courageous leadership. Every president before him knew that our economy was heading toward the abyss of the apocalypse with endemic corruption, budgetary indiscipline, the oil subsidy scam and juicing up our foreign exchange to enrich the well connected while bleeding out and hemorrhaging our economy. They were just too lily-livered to pull the plug. They chose to prioritize their personal political expediency over the future of this country and of generations yet unborn. President Tinubu is not a saint. No one qualifies for the sainthood after playing in the mucky water of Nigerian political pigs pen. He however, has shown the courage to do the needful to safe the country.
President Tinubu needs to call Omokiri to order and let the country know that he has his three-person presidential communication team and that Omokiri is not one of them.
Like I have said before, there is no better spokesperson for this president than himself. As he busies himself choreographing the reform agenda, he must combine it more and more with his equally important role as encourager, motivator, truth-teller and empathizer-in-chief. The communication role of great leaders is often an underrated but often a most important function. Nigerians know how they feel. They live daily in the reality of the painful economic reform agenda. No amount of sweet-talking Omokiris and his unhinged propaganda machine can make them unfeel their daily reality. It is the job of the president and his team to continue to encourage, reassure and motivate the citizens by their soothing words, their action, and life style of prudence to keep holding on, bear the pain and that a bright glorious future lies behind the dark gloomy cloud.
Adewale Alonge, PhD, is Founder & President, Africa Diaspora Partnership for Empowerment and Development. www.adped.org
“Almost two years since his hare-brained twin policies, market forces are yet to fully determine the prices of petroleum products and the price of the Naira… The irony right now is that there are claims that the country is turning the corner, and that good days are on the horizon. Tinubu says so.”
THERE are too many things wrong with the regime of Nigeria’s president, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu. For 18 months since the advent of the administration, it has been a case of stumbling from one problem to the other. The tragedy is that almost all the challenges that this regime has been grappling with were self-inflicted. It started off with an ill-conceived petrol subsidy removal, and it followed that almost immediately with allowing the national currency, the Naira, to be floated.
Both policies turned out to be disastrous because the so-called petrol subsidy payment persisted in an opaque manner, and subsidizing the Naira did abate. Recently, the state oil corporation, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) insisted that it will continue to import petroleum products in spite of the existence of a domestic producer, Dangote Refinery and Petrochemical Company, Lagos, which said that it has the capacity to satisfy domestic consumption for petroleum products. Dangote’s 650,000 barrels of crude oil per day production should on full stream produce 50 million litres of petrol and 15 million litres of diesel per day.
Experts estimate that petrol consumption in Nigeria should not exceed 35 million litres per day. But corruption puts it much higher, sometimes for as high as 70 million litres per day. This outrageous figure is not strange because Nigeria is widely acknowledged as a crime scene – a country hurting in the hands of its supposed care-givers. Private importers who work at the behest of collaborators inside the government have been known to ‘import’ shiploads of petroleum products without the ships being sited anywhere near the country’s territorial waters, not to talk of discharging any products. But such ‘importers’ file claims with excellent shipping documents, and collect hundreds of millions of dollars from the public treasury. NNPCL does the same.
Then a cartel hijacks the little litres of petrol that were in truth brought in, ferrying such to neighbouring countries in 33000-litre trucks and in broad daylight where they make a kill. Nigeria has clearly delineated borders with its neighbours. We have all manner of tax-payer paid government officials at those borders. But the trade booms. Currently, an investigative reporter has been reporting on the daily massive smuggling of 50kg bags of rice into the country with the active involvement of immigration top shots. He has been doing so with video evidence. Last week the journalist reported that the leader of the smugglers was accorded a red carpet reception at the Abuja headquarters of the Nigeria Immigration Service. His reports have not been disputed and nothing has happened to the economic saboteurs.
Back to the issue at hand. Alhaji Tinubu takes responsibility for his misadventures on petrol and Naira. Almost two years since his hare-brained twin policies, market forces are yet to fully determine the prices of petroleum products and the price of the Naira. Whilst the NNPCL moderates the prices of petroleum products especially petrol by importing and fixing different pump head prices for different parts of the country, the Central Bank defends the Naira through regular sales of the United States dollars to the bureaux de change, and through the aggressive mopping up of Naira in circulation. The policies are obviously not working. The price of petrol at over N1000/litre is not sustainable. It has ruined the economy and will inflict more damage with the regime’s insistence that it will stay the course. Nigerian families are worse off. Bloomberg, an American news organization reported last week that about two -third of Nigerian households can barely manage to feed once a day. And the quality of the meal is suspect. Their report was drawn from the latest statistics from the Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
The irony right now is that there are claims that the country is turning the corner, and that good days are on the horizon. Tinubu says so. The central bank governor says the same. Finance minister who is also the coordinating minister for the economy sees the same signs of economic recovery. Even the national security adviser, yes the NSA, who should have his hands full with widespread insecurity pervading the land, parrots the same message of visible economic turn around. But they are the only people who see economic recovery on the horizon. And they all share one thing in common – they all binge on the public treasury. I wager that none of them had been to a gas station to buy either petrol for the government SUVs (armour- plated and bomb-resistant brands) that they are driven in or to purchase diesel to fire government – owned electricity generators in their residences which also are built and tastefully furnished with taxpayers money.
It is not strange, therefore, that they are separated from reality and the daily grind of the majority of Nigerians. The case of the NSA is particularly painful and pathetic. Daily, he joins the security agencies including the secret police otherwise called the Directorate of State Services (DSS), the regular Police, the Civil Defence Corps, the Armed Forces, among others, to run political commentaries on the state of the country. In place of combating insecurity, what the NSA does is to warn non-state agents terrorizing Nigeria to know that Tinubu is not known to lose any battle. Is he for real? The man cannot be, and should not be, a national security adviser even in a banana republic. What our rulers are doing is beyond talking up the economy, they are deliberately deceiving Nigerians. Any sign of economic recovery must show in the living standards and living conditions of the people. Today’s reality is that about 20 million children are out of school and about 150 million Nigerians are grappling with dimensional poverty. Of course, our country has been the poverty capital of the world since 2019.
If nothing good is happening in the country, and nothing good has really happened in Nigeria in the last 18 months, it is down to the fact that the majority of Nigerians do not trust the regime headed by Tinubu. He assumed office about two years ago with a fractured mandate. And since then he has proceeded to surround himself with people like himself (people with real and perceived blemishes), and those who speak and dress like him. He is enmeshed in policy somersaults. At every turn he puts the cart before the horse. His regime is wobbly, fumbling and floundering. And because the regime perceives itself as fragile and unstable and unsure in spite of its attempt at blustering, it now sees treason in every spoken word by non-regime supporters, in every action and inaction, and in every news story and editorial opinions of some publications. The point is that the more this regime sees enemies everywhere, the more it will retreat to itself, and the more eventually it will begin to crack down on imaginary detractors. Already, for the diminishing clan of regime choristers, anybody who opposes where Tinubu is taking the country is treated as not being patriotic. To their warped minds they equate patriotism with love for a serially bungling administration. They are not capable of putting country before party or ethnic affiliations or fleeting benefits from the rulers.
Expectedly, the gulf between the people and the regime is widening and it is beginning to play out. It’s manifesting in the new tax bills before our supine national assembly. For a start, the tax bills are one year late in coming. It is the style of the regime – to make policy statements without even a draft of the working papers. It did the same thing with the student loans scheme and conditional cash transfer to the poor of the poor in the country, to mention but two. Often its pronouncements bear no relationship with reality. The administration at Inception said it would reduce dependence on loans to run the government. That avowal may have informed what was thought to be the urgency it would attach to the tax bills. It failed. Now that the regime has roused itself from slumber, ‘enemies’ have laid ambush for the bills.
Except for a segment of the Yoruba nation, every other nation in Nigeria is now increasingly inclined to live like “onye ndiro gbara ugburu gburu n’eche ndu ya nche mgbenile” or eternal vigilance is the price for liberty. With the antecedents of Tinubu other component-nations of the country will only treat his tax bills with levity to their eternal damnation. The first thing that should set the alarm bells ringing is the composition of the team that crafted and superintended the making of the bills. They look like Tinubu. They bear similar names like his. They dress and speak like him. So why should he and his parochial team be trusted to be altruistic in the work they have done? Other nations within Nigeria have a right to suspect these tax bills because, so far, Tinubu has demonstrated that he is an ethnic bigot.
It came as no surprise, therefore, that a section of the north of Nigeria was the first to scream that the tax bills were not the ‘Hail Mary’ that the regime claimed that they were. Senator Ali Ndume cried foul and vowed that the bills would be killed in the national assembly. Though a member, Ndume must be mistaken if he believes that the country still has a parliament worthy of that name. This assembly is an extension of the Executive arm. I didn’t say so, the leadership of the assembly said so from the get-go. And they have not disappointed. Indeed the national assembly members commenced consideration of the money bills last year by first singing the personal anthem of Tinubu “On your mandate we shall stand…” Anybody who expected any better from such buffoons who masquerade as lawmakers must be living in a fool’s paradise. Then the national economic council (NEC) composed of the vice president and governors advised Tinubu to withdraw the bills to allow further stakeholders’ consultations. Tinubu promptly and derisively dismissed them. The controversy and the insistence of the president to forge ahead have alerted the other nations. The south east governors forum, for instance, was reported to have set up an expert team to review the bills for possible boobytraps.
The one bill in the basket of bills that has attracted much attention was the value added tax (VAT). Some experts and indeed non-experts are concerned that the president and his kinsmen tax team are up to some mischief. They have honed in on two words concerning the VAT bill – Attribution and Derivation – which of them should enjoy preeminence. Among other people, one writer attempted to highlight where the bodies were buried in the VAT bill. We will reproduce part of his exertion. The person who identified himself as Chris Okafor on WhatsApp wrote: “.. the truth is (that) tax experts filled with Tinubu’s apologists (and 90% of Nigerians of Yoruba extraction) worked on the bill and hid so much into the bill which will put Lagos and Ogun (states) into economic advantage slightly short of extortion of other states” of Nigeria. He argued that from the present structure of the VAT bill, 60% of the takings will go to the state of collection. His grouse was that a disproportionate amount of VAT proceeds will go to the states hosting the head offices of companies that produce ‘vatable’ goods and services even when the same goods and services were patronized in other states of the country. He illustrated with some companies saying, for instance, that if VAT of N500 million was collected from a branch of a company in one state, 60% of the collection under the proposed principle of derivation would go to the state hosting the headquarters of that company and not in the state where the product/service was consumed.
There’s little doubt that an arrangement such as illustrated above will make some areas of the country vassal states. It will sow seeds of discord and discontent. VAT is a sales tax and so components of the federating units of the country should be legally empowered to collect and use consumption tax. Another allegation that should be concerning is the yet to be verified claim that there’s a provision in one of the tax bills that would empower the federal government to take a certain percentage of funds that drop into personal and corporate bank accounts. We align with the national economic council that more time should be allowed for further scrutiny of these tax bills. We do not presently have a national assembly, and the claim by the Executive that the assembly should be allowed to scrutinize the bills on our behalf is gratuitous. Our so-called representatives and senators are preoccupied looking out for themselves.
It’s accepted that we operate an ugly and difficult to decipher federal system of government, but 25 years and counting, we must summon the will to begin to put processes and structures in place to approximate a federation. The ruling elite has a bounden duty to work harder to smoothen the rough edges which combined forces could lead to the implosion of Nigeria. They should see the Nigerian project as bigger than their personal and/or regional interests. And if this perceived skewed VAT distribution is part of the ongoing restructuring in the image and likeness of Tinubu, it may not bode well for this country that for all intents and purposes is tottering on the edge of the cliff. The allegation that bank deposits may be taxed by the government could just prove to be the trigger for national cataclysm. Who wants this?
When President Tinubu started his first day in Aso Rock with the bold or what many would consider a bone-headed political Kamikaze move of removing oil subsidy, and then proceeded with his excruciatingly painful economic and structural reform agenda, he made a decision that has put his presidency on an irreversible trajectory that will either seal his place as the transformational leader Nigeria has waited for or a catastrophic disaster. He locked himself into that irreversible trajectory, when unlike all his predecessors, he took what many have considered the Nigeria equivalent of the kiss of death by withdrawing the oil subsidy and floating the currency. Nigerians have taken it as their citizenship right and as the only benefit accruable to them from the corruption-ridden national oil reserve, access to cheap oil. To take that away from them was like taking away a child’s only Christmas toy. Since the Arab oil embargo fueled oil boom of 1973 when the god of crude oil smiled on Nigeria with massive inflow of petrodollar which unfortunately the country’s young president General Gowon knew not what to do with it, Nigerians have measured the health of their economy by the value of their heavily subsidized and overvalued local currency even though it was not backed by any measurable productivity to justify its valuation. We all now talked with great nostalgia of the era when our Naira exchanged for twice the dollar as if it were the apogee of economic genius, when in fact it led to the kind of insane conspicuous consumption which saw Nigerians clogging Heathrow airport runway with our useless imports. We spent money like a drunken sailor who just won a lottery jackpot. While it was obvious to everyone that artificially juicing and propping our currency was hemorrhaging life out of our economy, yet no president until Bola Tinubu had the courage to withdraw the addictive heroin from the dying drug addict. Floating the Naira exchange rate and in the process pauperizing the citizen was therefore another third rail of Nigerian politics that President Tinubu was courageous enough to touch. To do one was bad enough, but to do both, that is remove the oil subsidy, and at the same time float the currency was a political equivalent of jumping off the cliff of Mount Kilimanjaro without a parachute. It is for that precise reason that every Nigerian president for decades has promised to remove the oil subsidy but have chickened out even as everyone knew it was the bitter pill Nigerians had to swallow to stop the insane plunder of our commonwealth but a small but powerful oil mafia. This explains why President Tinubu has become one of the most divisive political figures in Nigeria history, who is virulently hated and despised by his detractors, and beloved by his loyalists and those who believe in him. With President Tinubu you either hate or love him. Many have compared him to blood thirsty Abacha while others have lost their minds to the point of equating him to genocidal Hitler.
Whether you like or hate President Tinubu and yes, we may argue whether or not his reform policy could have been better deployed, or whether he could have taken more time to properly put in place palliative measures to ameliorate its excruciatingly painful impact, however, no rational or objective analyst will deny that President Tinubu deserves the presidential medal of courage for putting the country’s future above his political calculus. If anyone has wondered why I have been unwavering and unapologetic in my support for the President, that exactly is the reason, his political courage to do the unpopular and to risk his political career if that was the price. I have never met the President nor anyone in his circle, however, I believe in his reform policy as the necessary painful therapy our country needs. Our country desperately needed the very painful reform that President Tinubu has taken on if we were to have any chance to dig our country out of the economic grave it was in. A grave many past presidents have dug deeper and deeper to the point of no return.
As a member of the baby boomer generation who enjoyed the stupendous prosperity of the heady days of the oil boom of the 1970s, when a college degree was a ticket to the middle class, I believe the last act of our generation, was to make this one last sacrifice to patch up this country whose huge potential we frittered away, to give the next generation a fighting chance of salvaging a livable country from the mess we have made of it. Regrettably, members of the same baby boomer generation who bear much culpability for the mess our country is in, are also the most vociferous in opposing President Tinubu’s reform agenda to salvage it.
So, readers might ask, what is the connection between the presidential communication architecture and his economic reform agenda? A lot. One of the major mistakes President Tinubu made which has done so much damage to his bold economic reform agenda was his failure to have a presidential communication team in place at its launch, that was up to the challenge of selling it especially since they knew it was going to impose so much excruciating pain on the citizens. That mistake has turned out to be a costly error for this presidency especially in a fast-moving social media era where bad news travel at the speed of light, shaping perceptions along its path. Social media with its information overload has unfortunately made us less contemplative and more susceptible to perception manipulation which are often hard to shake off. It is easy to get the policy right and yet lose it all with a poor communication infrastructure. That has been the Achilles heel of this presidency as it has embarked on some of the toughest, excruciatingly painful but much needed economic reform agenda. It was political malpractice for a government that knew that its proposed policy was going to impose pain on the citizens not to have in place a first-class communication team to sell it.
It is therefore within this context that one can analyze the present effort by the presidency to rejig its communication architecture. The presidency seems to have gotten the message that it had better addressed the communication mismatch or it will have a tough time going to the electorate for a second term despite its recent electoral success in gubernatorial elections. Presidential elections are a different ball of wax. However, the proposed architecture which trifurcates the function of the presidential spokesperson into three-person architecture is to put it mildly odd and unconventional. Choreographing and harmonizing the most important function of presidential spokesperson with a three-man team is like choreographing a three-person tango. If it works, it would be the most genius presidential communication architecture in history. My fear is that it might create discordance and a turf fight unless the three can subjugate their egos to the task of marketing their principal and his agenda. Time will tell if they can pull off the miracle.
Last line. There is no better spokesperson for a presidency than the president himself, not even the best in the business. Closeting President Tinubu in Aso Rock away from his constituents is bad communication strategy. President Tinubu must become the empathizer-in-chief. Every president in the world understands the value of well choreographed interview with sympathetic media. It is the reason you have not seen Biden grant an interview with MAGA Fox-news nor Trump with CNN. President Tinubu’s communication team should organize press conference and interviews to allow him go over the noise of social media to talk directly to Nigerians.
Adewale Alonge, PhD, is Founder & President, Africa Diaspora Partnership for Empowerment and Development. www.adped.org
“Buhari was an intentional man but because he was inept at whatever he did, he failed to accomplish his parochial vision of restructuring Nigeria. He failed himself. He failed his people. But he left a template for his successor.“
“Soso onye nzuzu bu onye na-amagh mgbe ekechara nku ukwa”. Only a fool would not know when the bazaar is over. I used to have a friend. He is now late. His name was Jimanze Alowes. He said he was Igbo from Amaigbo in Imo state. But his name did not sound Igbo. However, he spoke impeccable Igbo, if there was any such thing. He also spoke impeccable English, if there was any such thing also. He was brilliant, and articulate. He was certainly street wise. In hindsight, he probably knew that longevity of life was not a gift to him from his creator. He understood this country, and he wanted things done, and done fast to his personal upliftment.
On occasions when we sat down to discuss and bemoan the challenges that the country threw on the path of youngsters, he would sit in disturbing and disconcerting silence. He left you with the impression that he was not paying attention. But when you expressed frustration that he was not listening he would quietly but intently look you in the eyes, and then say something to the effect that bells were being rung every morning and those with trained ears knew where to go to grab their share of the looting that was going on in the country. Here, I am referencing conversations that took place almost 30 years ago.
In another vein, Nigeria is like the Biblical story of the 10 Virgins as recorded in the Gospel of St. Matthew chapter 25 from verse 1 and following. “Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom. And five of them were wise, and five were foolish”. You will wonder about the relevance of this illustration to the topic above and the broad theme of the subject under discussion. The five virgins who had oil in their lamps represented real Nigerians, while the five foolish virgins who profess to be Nigerians are only outwardly so, doing so just with their lips. In reality they are outsiders who have been left, or who allowed themselves to be left, with the short end of the stick. The Igbo in Nigeria may just be the five foolish virgins. This is not an effort at self deprecation.
We know it as a fact that some Nigerians have been mouthing the urgent imperatives of restructuring the country. But some elements in the Igbo nation are campaigning for an excision from this country, and the creation of a new country to be called Biafra. This new country was actually first created on May 30, 1967 and became defunct in January 1970. So, Biafra was a country that lived for about three years. The point to note is that while some Nigerians are still clamouring for restructuring, the smart ones are at work doing the deed of reshaping the country. This started with the advent of the All Progressives Congress (APC) political party with Maj.-General (rtd) Muhammadu Buhari in government in 2015. Buhari (2015-2023) was a bad ruler. And he was inept in his attempt to restructure Nigeria to benefit Muslims and the northern parts of the country.
Nonetheless, he tried his best. He populated his regime with people who worshiped like him. He moved every movable government institution to areas which he considered to be part of the the greater north. He borrowed offshore funds in the name of all Nigerians but concentrated on the citing of public facilities and infrastructure in the north. Buhari’s regime went into overdrive to explore for crude oil in parts of the north. He spared no expense to make this a reality. Where the money for the Buhari venture was not borrowed, it came from the resources from other parts of the country. He commenced building pipelines from the Niger Delta region to the north, and further afield to neighbouring Niger Republic, his alleged ancestral home, to pipe natural gas to yet to be built power stations, and for storage.
Buhari was no fool. He had a clear picture of Nigeria’s tomorrow. He knew that what we were doing, and are still doing, in this country was not sustainable. He worked very hard to ensure that the north or part of the north was ready for the inevitable. It was this reasoning that informed his borrowing billions of dollars from the Chinese to construct standard gauge rail tracks from the north to the heart of Niger Republic, his other home country. Nigeria will repay the debt but will only get crumbs from the designated projects. The eastern axis of the country will get a narrow rail gauge. Buhari was an intentional man but because he was inept at whatever he did, he failed to accomplish his parochial vision of restructuring Nigeria. He failed himself. He failed his people. But he left a template for his successor. And the new man is adept at devious schemes.
The new ruler, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu, is focused and determined to restructure Nigeria to benefit his south west people. And he is not shy about it. He has already said that those expecting restructuring along the lines he had been campaigning for in the past three decades will have to wait in vain. He said that restructuring of the country has been moving apace since he was made president about 18 months ago. And Tinubu’s new definition of political and economic restructuring of Nigeria included stuffing the institutions of the federal government with people who speak and dress like him. He has captured the commanding heights of the security sector and gifted the same to his acolytes who mostly are members of his ethnic group. The same goes for revenue generating agencies of the federation. His presidency recently attempted to dismiss the allegations of his crass nepotism but ended up compounding the situation. The graphics it published actually confirmed the allegations and went further to show that two geo-political zones of the country – the south south and south east – were completely left in the cold in the headship of the security agencies.
In like manner one of the road infrastructure that was repaired and reconstructed to enviable standard soon after Tinubu took office was the Third Mainland Bridge in the economic capital of the Yoruba nation. If you want to fully appreciate the magnitude of the work done there, drive through it at night. I have driven through many bridges in Nigeria, some of them at night, and I can say with emphasis that none compares with the ‘new’ Third Mainland Bridge. When I drove through that bridge at night soon after the reconstruction was completed, the word restructuring immediately flashed through my mind. To think that Buhari had actually worked on the same bridge some months earlier. Of course, he did it casually since it was not in his zone. Meanwhile, two massive road projects are currently ongoing. The Lagos -Calabar Coastal Super Highway and the Badagry-Sokoto Desert Highway. Both have some things in common: they will cost Nigerian taxpayers trillions of Naira; they will take-off from Lagos, the economic capital of Yoruba land; and, they will pass through all or almost all Yoruba states. The contracts for these super highways have been awarded to one contractor, Hitech Construction Company, whose owner is alleged to be a long-standing business partner of the president. If there were public tenders and competitive biddings for the projects such information is not in the public domain. And there’s no evidence that any environmental impact assessments were conducted ahead of awarding the contracts. What we know is that the right of passage for the Lagos -Calabar road has been changed multiple times. The same for the width of the road. It has shrunk from 10-lanes to six lanes but the cost has not come down. The cost, if ever it will be delivered, will increase beyond the N15 trillion price tag going by the way the Nigerian government operates. It’s worse for these road contracts because the processes are opaque. They are in-your-face contracts.
As our rulers, first Buhari and now Tinubu, restructure Nigeria in their own image and in their own likeness through the accumulation of debts, many Nigerians including succeeding generations will be saddled with paying debts that had not been used to benefit them. The Igbo of the south east will be the worst hit. The other day it was reported that if Nigerians share the current quantum of the country’s public debt, each citizen will have to pay about N620,000, which is eight times the prevailing minimum wage, to defray the debt. Where’s the equity in this, given that the loans that had been incurred had not been used to the benefits of all parts of the country. Indeed, not too long ago some persons from the Igbo nation said they intended to approach appropriate international courts and tribunals to ensure that Ndigbo would not be obligated to pay back offshore loans that were procured by the federal government but were not used for their (Igbo) benefit.
*In our next intervention we will explore how Tinubu and his economic witch doctors are scheming to aggrandise a section of the country to the eternal damnation of the rest through their so-called tax reforms. And why there should be a last ditch battle to stop them. That should be a patriotic duty.
The New Third Mainland Bridge, Lagos
Ugo Onuoha, Veteran Journalist, was the Managing Director, Editor-in-Chief, Champion Newspapers Limited
A sad day for a historic figure and an elder statesman. …it is especially sad to see a historic personality like President Obasanjo who fought to defend the sovereignty of this country, who in his own word has testified that not in his wildest dream could he have dreamed of twice becoming the accidental president of Nigeria, travel outside the country to declare to the entire world that his country was a failed state.
All politics end at the water’s edge is a global cornerstone principle in partisan politics. Water’s edge is a metonymy for “national border”. It is the unwritten rule that partisan domestic political disagreement must not cross the national border. It is a global norm that a true patriot does not go outside his or her country to trash and de-market his own country, talk less of calling it a failed state. That rule is observed by every self-respecting political figure to avoid doing irreparable damage to the international reputation and economic interest of one’s country.
So, it is especially sad to see a historic personality like President Obasanjo who fought to defend the sovereignty of this country, who in his own word has testified that not in his wildest dream could he have dreamed of twice becoming the accidental president of Nigeria, travel outside the country to declare to the entire world that his country was a failed state. Anyone who does not realize what a gross malpractice that is but instead applauds such a despicable act needs a deep examination. Many might not realize that the Yale meltdown was more of a reputational damage for President Obasanjo than it is for the target of its venom, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
It does not take a genius to know that the concept of a failed state is so specific in its usage in international development. In order for a country to be so classified, it must meet a specific threshold of total economic, political, social and security failure including inability to defend its sovereignty. Yes, our country is facing arguably one of its most challenging economic landscape, however, only a mind warped by pathological hate and bias will write off a regime that is less than two years into its tenure as a failure and of being responsible for turning the country into a failed state. A failed state does not hold elections and maintain a governmental structure for 25 straight and uninterrupted years. No one is claiming that Nigeria is a fully functioning state operating optimally. It is not even close to being that, which has been the source of our national disappointment. It is true that the country is facing very serious economic and security challenges but those challenges are not a new phenomenon. In fact some of it dates back to the tenure of President Obasanjo who himself tried unsuccessfully and unconstitutionally to truncate our fragile democratic governance with his third term agenda.
Given his antecedents and his choice in the recent presidential election which his candidate lost, it is no accident that President Obasanjo chose the occasion of a memorial lecture in honor of Chinua Achebe to launch his most virulent attack to date on President Tinubu. We have not forgotten that President Obasanjo opposed Asiwaju Tinubu candidacy, threw every ammunition in his armory at him only to fail woefully. So most people understand the Yale meltdown for what it is, the outburst of a frustrated old man.
It is so ironic and should not be lost on all of us, that as President Obasanjo was doing his best to bring President Tinubu into international disrepute, his global status got a huge boost. The G-20 will not invite the president of a failed state to its summit in Brazil. Neither will the international investment community be directing billions of dollars into a failed state. President Obasanjo is a global figure who has earned the right to be treated as an elder statesman in the mold of highly respected General Yakubu Gowon. The problem is that he has proven again and again that he is not able to control his insatiable and mind-numbing need to be the center of attention, to bring down anyone who he sees as a threat to it. Every single President since President Obasanjo left office after his failed third term agenda has been subjected to his biting, caustic, virulent negative assessment of their presidential scorecard including his handpicked protégé, President Jonathan. One can only hope that after the Yale meltdown, that President Obasanjo will finally realize that he has gone too far and will settle down to enjoy the grace that good fortune has bestowed on him and will finally retire as to his earned status of a respected elder statesman whose counsel is asked for and given behind the limelight. Everyone has their moment and President Obasanjo has had more than his fair share.
Adewale Alonge, PhD, is Founder & President, Africa Diaspora Partnership for Empowerment and Development. www.adped.org
ALHAJI Bola Ahmed Tinubu violently shook and severely unsettled the national economy in the first few hours after he assumed office eighteen months ago. That of its own could not have been a problem. What manifested down the line was the real issue – Tinubu had no discernable plan to methodically work on an economy that, it must be acknowledged, had been dealt a severe blow by a serial bungler, one Maj.-Gen Muhammadu Buhari, the affliction who passed through here masquerading as a president. If this country were to be a human being what Buhari inflicted on it between 2015-2023 would have had more severe and deadlier outcome than the COVID-19 pandemic that swept through the globe in 2020/2021, leaving millions dead in its wake, destroying economies, and permanently impairing the health of many people worldwide, especially those with pre-existing health challenges. And Nigeria when Tinubu took the helm had pre-existing political and economic conditions. But instead of stemming the hemorrhaging, he made it worse.
Tinubu clearly mistook naivety bordering on ignorance for courage when he declared on May 29 last year that subsidy was gone. The spirit that he said led him to act in such a manner was the evil spirit. That same spirit drove him to act in such a manner in the foreign exchange market. The combined effects of those impulsive actions are responsible for our severely depressed and damaged economy and the littering of the landscape with human skeletons. Everything that followed had added to compound the dire straits this country has been consigned to in less than two years. The greater tragedy is that the regime is still digging, assuring only itself that it was on the journey of great economic reforms. Though it has no benchmarks and timelines for its promised dividends of democracy, it keeps assuring of light at the end of the tunnel.
It’s now obvious that this regime believes that the vigorous and mindless application of a narrow monetary policy instrument alone will cure the many ills afflicting Nigeria’s economy. Through the central bank of Nigeria (CBN), it has misguidedly pursued taming the rampaging inflation which, by the way, it caused by its own impulsive decisions early in the life of the administration through the so-called petrol subsidy removal, and the attempt at market-determined value of the Naira. Both policies have spectacularly failed in spite of the concerted efforts by the regime to put a spin to them.
Let’s explain why we argue that the twin policies have already failed. When Tinubu announced the scrapping of the so-called petrol subsidy in May 2023, Nigeria had no petroleum resources minister and no cabinet. And 18 months down the line, the country still does not have an oil minister. Information adviser to the president, Bayo Onanuga, said this much recently in a national television interview. Crude oil generates about 80% of our national revenue, and until recently the country imports 100% of the petroleum products for domestic consumption, and has had no dedicated minister for almost two years. It only has a junior minister or what we call minister of state. Furthermore, there has been no physical manifestation of the gains from the removal of subsidy. If anything, we have suffered from the illusion of money, that is, a situation where the federal and state governments get more money from the federation account which has had no tangible impacts in the lives of the people. The national minimum wage has been increased from N30000 to N70000, but in real terms the value of the minimum wage is less than what it was about 40 years ago. Indeed, the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) and other workers’ unions are gearing for a further upward review of the minimum wage barely two months after it was passed into law. More than 70% of the country’s 36 states and the federal capital territory have not even started implementing the new wage.
Every increment in salaries and wages impacts inflationary trends. In Nigeria it has been a constant case of the monetary and fiscal policies in misalignment. It’s obvious that salaries and wages are the least of the problems at the root of galloping inflation. The government is implicated with its voracious appetite to borrow in our name, and steal or spend on consumption. At a time the CBN pretends to be fighting inflation by mopping up money in circulation, bank credits to the government are experiencing a phenomenal rise. Data from the central bank showed that credit to the government rose by 89.9% year-on-year to hit N42.01 trillion in September, up from N22.13 trillion in the corresponding month last year. The clear implication is that the Tinubu regime relies almost exclusively on offshore loan facilities and domestic borrowings to run.
According to the report, “When government credit levels rise, it indicates that it is increasingly borrowing from the financial sector, particularly from domestic banks and other lenders. This rise in borrowing generally reflects an increase in government debt, as funds are sought for financing various operations, social programmes, and budget deficit coverage”. The surge in banks’ credit to the government is in conflict with the stated drive of this administration. In August 2023, President Tinubu had vowed that his government will break the reliance on borrowing for public spending. One year on the evidence points to the contrary. Domestic and foreign borrowings have surpassed every projection, and there’s no end in sight. When a government sucks up credit from banks other potential investors are crowded out and production is negatively impacted. So where’s the basis and expectations for economic revival?
When Tinubu spoke last year of curbing government’s appetite for credit from domestic banks it was at the inauguration of the presidential committee on public policy and tax reforms. Coincidentally, the report of that committee chaired by Taiwo Oyedele, one of the tax czars of Tinubu, which has taken the form of a bill now with the national assembly, is facing a vigorous pushback from a section of the country. Stakeholders in the north met about two weeks ago , and demanded that the tax bills be withdrawn because they will impact their people and governments negatively. Days after the north took a stand against the bills, the national economic council (which comprises state governors and others with the Vice President presiding recommended the withdrawal of the bills by the president. But the president promptly dismissed the advice fearing that If the demand of the north and the request of the economic council were heeded to, then the reforms in the revenue sector will stall, and the borrowing from the domestic financial market will continue apace with its deleterious effects on private sector investments, production and economic revival. Contrast the current uncertainty as regards the reforms in the tax laws with the urgency of the task as stated by Tinubu more than one year ago. “The Committee, in the first instance, is expected to deliver a schedule of quick reforms that can be implemented within thirty days. Critical reform measures should be recommended within six months, and full implementation will take place within one calendar year“. Obviously, all the targets have been missed, so where’s the hope for the government to avoid crowding others out of the domestic credit market? The emerging picture is not made any better by the fact that the north, apparently speaking through the controversial and outspoken Senator Ali Ndume, has committed to scuttling the tax bills in parliament. Another issue we should not gloss over is the indication that the bills appeared to show a fracture in the presidency.
There’s yet another reason why the revival of the economy is not in sight apart from the profligacy of this regime and the admonition by the Bretton Woods institutions that we should be prepared to wait for some 15 years for a possible turn around in Nigeria’s economy, as long as we stick with the ongoing punishing prescriptions. The piggyvest saving report for 2024 which was released recently is revealing, insightful, and depressing. It said 65% of Nigerians have a monthly income of about N100,000 ($65) or less; 86% earn below N250,000 ($151) monthly: multiple income sources dropped by 10% against the corresponding period last year; and, only 3% of over 220 million Nigerians spend above N500,000 ($303) every month. The findings should be concerning to every discerning citizen. And the pathetic picture about the state of our country and its people did not end as in above.
The report goes on to say that food remains the largest expense head in spite of findings of decreased spending from 2023. Today transport ranks as the second largest expense head, overtaking utilities and bills due to the removal of petrol subsidy. In addition, the report finds that the percentage of Nigerians saving money fell from 64% last year to 57%, while 10% of those who save do so only occasionally. In like manner, emigration as a savings goal dropped precipitously from third to eighth place, due largely to the 70% devaluation of the Naira. Also, the number of Nigerians with emergency savings decreased by 5%; over two-thirds of us lack savings for unplanned expenses without incurring debt; only 15% of Nigerians increased their savings over the past year; and, 19% who had emergency savings in 2023 no longer have any. It’s important to bear this sobering data in mind as this regime engages the overdrive to assure you about their Renewed Hope. It’s not your own hope, it’s theirs and they are very few. The few who live off their government.
Any economic recovery driven by pointing fingers at slight movement in the gross domestic product (GDP) alone is an illusion. It is worse when the GDP is growing at a slower pace than the population rate. Economies are revived and grown by human beings. And gainful employment is key to increased purchasing power. Nothing currently indicates that any of the two is happening or about to happen. In addition, there must be trust between the leaders and the led as well as implicit confidence of the people on their leaders. These ingredients are not there. They are just not there. Even without the benefits of a structured study, many Nigerians do not believe their country is heading in the right direction both politically and economically. And without a buy-in, there’s only so much the present rulers can achieve. And Tinubu by his actions in appointments into critical offices has demonstrated that he does not care about carrying every part of Nigeria along. That will magnify his failure. Sadly, the regime’s attempt to deflect its nepotism in appointments left it in a bad place. It publicly admitted that two geo-political zones (south south and south east) of the six zones of the country do not matter in appointments into critical and sensitive security positions.
Ugo Onuoha: Veteran Journalist of repute is the former Managing Director/Editor-in-Chief, Champion Newspapers Limited
As Nigeria’s first lawyer, Sapara Williams stated, the lawyer lives for the wellbeing and direction of his society. The obligation to promote the wellbeing of the society is not just for the lawyer. It is for all professionals. There is a special obligation on the professional to work for the good of the society.
Because Just Friend Club is a club of professional men and women, I think I should say something about professionalism, the professional and the future of Nigeria.
The Professions, Professionals and the Public Good
We have many professionals in public and private leadership in the country. With such array of well educated and nurtured people you would expect a high degree of ethics and competence in corporate and public leadership in Nigeria. But that is not the case as shown by Nigeria’s poor rating in corruption perception index and other indicators of public probity. Nigeria is also very poor in the rating of state effectiveness. The Transparency International rated Nigeria 14th out of 180 countries in the world in the 2023 Corruption Perception Index. This comes to 25% where 0 is highly corrupt and 100% is very clean. Nigeria is also doing badly on the Mo Ibrahim Index of African Governance (IIAG) and the World Intellectual Property (WIPO) ranking on Global Innovation Index. In the former, Nigeria ranked 33 out of 54 African countries, with 45.7% out of 100%. On state effectiveness index, Nigeria does very badly. In 2022, Nigeria’s score was -1.04, which was a decline from -1.03. The world average score was -1.05. State effectiveness is a measure of the capacity of the state’s public sector to formulate and implement policies in a manner that achieves good governance and development. An ineffective state means that the bureaucracy is not strong enough to implement transformative policies.
Nigeria faces an acute crisis of values which reflects in the gross lack of productivity in both its private and public sectors. Nigeria is abundantly blessed in natural resources. As a world leading producer of oil, we ought to be richer than we are. But we know that the wealth of nations does not come mostly from natural resources. Countries like Singapore and South Korea are not so much naturally endowed. In fact, they are geographically constrained in many ways. But Nigeria won the geographical lottery in many ways. Yet are in many ways victim of Dutch Disease. Natural resources have not translated into wealth. They have mostly turned into a curse. Natural resources in themselves are not a curse. They are a blessing. But a blessing that call for more work to turn them into lasting benefit to the people. Some of the Scandinavian countries are endowed with oil like Nigeria. They turned theirs into a blessing through smart policies and management. For them, oil resources have lubricated national innovation system that has made them high income economies. Examples are Norway and Finland.
Nigeria’s travail is partly the lack of good leadership that can mobilize citizens towards a virtuous path of productivity. Such leadership is often described as transformative or redefining. In his book on public leadership titled ‘The Myth of the Strong Leader, Achie Brown, Oxford University emeritus professor of politics, argues that redefining leaders are those who lead their country away from the unpleasant past and toward a better future. Such a journey requires adaptivity, which could be very difficult. It is the genius of redefining leadership that the people get to learn the hard lesson and embrace new values and practices that will ensure economic development and social transformation.
At the heart of leadership, whether transformative or redefining, are values and value-based practices. These values and value-based practices are usually sourced from the practice of the professions. The professions are human endeavours that highlight the highest levels of expertise, responsibility and corporateness. These are the three elements of a profession. We expect that a professional is a person of high expertise in a specialized area of human activity. A professional is also a person with overriding sense of responsibility, first to his or her craft, and second to the society which the profession serves. A professional is also guided by a deep sense of corporateness. That is, he or she is trained to subordinate his or her personal interests for collective good. These three elements of professionalism influence the direction of national politics and the economy. Where professionals manifest high levels of technical and ethical expertise and show a high degree of responsibility to the ethics of their profession and able to subordinate the pursuit of personal interest to the good of their profession and society, we see an uplift in the productivity and probity. We see the society rate high in state effectiveness and low on corruption perception index.
Arising from the above, is the proposition that the problem of high cost of governance in Nigeria relates to the problem of the crisis of value, which is partly a problem of the crisis of professionalism. Anyone who reviews the economic and social indicators of development for Nigeria in the First Republic and early in the Second Republic will see a marked difference with contemporary indicators. There is a great decline in any of these vital indicators of human and social development. These declines are somewhat parallel to the decline in professionalism in the same period. If we measure the quality of professionalism by the ratings of Nigeria’s tertiary institutions and the level of knowledge production and ethical conducts of Nigerian professionals, we can conclude that loss of professionalism leads to stagnation in development.
It is Bureaucracy, Stupid:
There are three importance elements of public governance. The first is institution. The second is policy. The third is bureaucracy. Institution is now an important buss word in political economy discourse. Two economists and a political scientist were awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in economics for their work that illuminate the importance of institutions to economic development. Daren Acemoglu, James Robinson and Simon Johnson argue that the reason for the divergence in economic performance between the developed west and the rest is the quality of political and economic institutions in the different regions. In their view, the cause of sustained economic growth is political and economic institutions that are inclusive and invest in the wellbeing of the people. In a sense, it means that growth equals to democracy or democratic society. The converse is true. Countries with institutions that are restrictive and exclusive and extract from citizens lead to economic stagnation. The predecessor of Acemoglu, Robertson and Johnson, Douglas North, defined institutions as “the rules of the game, humanly devised devices to constrain human action. Institutions provide incentives for actions and disincentives for other action.
After institutions, we get to policies. The difference between policy and institution is that whereas the former is short-termed and variable, the latter is mostly long-termed and invariable. So, the legal system is an institution. The policy of not prosecuting persons younger than 18years is a policy. Often, institution generates and sustains institutions. Therefore, the quality of institutions matters because of their generative power. Beyond institution and policy, there is the bureaucracy. We often hear about the danger of bureaucracy. The popular language makes it look like bureaucracy is itself a bad thing. But it is not. Bureaucracy is the mechanism that implements the policies generated by institution. Bureaucracy is the implementation arm of the state. Max Weber argues that the main mark of a state is the monopoly of legitimate violence in a defined territory. The state manages this legitimate violence through a government. The government acts through a bureaucracy. The quality of that bureaucracy matters.
The biggest issue about state effectiveness may be about the quality of the bureaucracy. In layman’s term, bureaucracy means the public service. The colonial authorities understood the importance of the public service to development that the bequeathed to the colonies a model of the form of public service in their home countries. The public service was modelled to be meritocratic, technocratic and politically neutral. In the early years post-independence, Nigeria recorded significant economic growth. The three regions were economically vibrant than the 36 states of the federation are today. Things were so good that the Eastern Nigeria was rated the fastest growing economy in the world. At the root of great economic performance is a bureaucracy that has competence and capacity to formulate and deliver policies and programs. The quality of the Nigerian bureaucracy has both a software and hardware. The software was the quality of public education, especially at the secondary and tertiary level. The report of the Ashby Commission on Higher Education in Nigeria was the first official articulation of policy for university education in Nigeria. The policy was based on providing excellent manpower for economic and social development. Arising from this, we saw many of the regions established universities that rated highly in the world and attracted the best and the brightest scholars and researcher across the world.
Additional software of public service is the culture of the public service. Many scholars of economic development point to the interplay between institutions and culture as the main determinant of economic development and social change. Both institution and culture reinforce themselves. Culture includes values, beliefs and attitudes. Institutions include the constitution, laws, procedures, norms and standard operating procedures. The quality of the bureaucracy is determined by the software of public education and prevalent culture. The software of the public service runs on the hardware of institutional structure that sustain delivery of public service. This includes departmentalization, manning levels and staffing of the public service. It also goes to the interdependence and interrelationship between different sections of the bureaucracy. The hardware of the high-quality bureaucracy we had in the First Republic is the structure and institutions of the public service. This is what made that bureaucracy able to generate and implement policies and programs that delivered sustained economic growth to a reasonable extent. The bad hardware and software of the contemporary Nigerian bureaucracy is what has failed to deliver sustained economic growth and high human development.
Today, we have a low-quality public education and a dysfunctional public service structure that weaken the capacity of the Nigerian state to deliver development. Capacity is an important ingredient of development. With low capacity a country may not be able to generate good policies and effectively implement them. Lessons from successful Asian countries underline the importance of state capacity. These countries succeeded because they have capacity to design good policies and implement them with coherence and effectiveness. Development economists have studied what happened in Asia starting with Japan, to South Korea, China and Taiwan, in what is now referred to as developmentalist state economic model. The logic of the developmentalist state is that the state is the champion of public policy. The state, through a central agency, designs and implements the policies and mobilizes the private sector through sundry incentives to enter specified sectors that have potential for higher growth. These countries gradually improved the quality of education, entrenched meritocracy in the public service through quality examinations, enhanced recruitment of the best and brightest, and provided motivation and rewards for continued improvement of the workforce. The recruitment based on merit mattered. The reward for competence and performance also mattered.
The important point to make is that bureaucracy is an important issue in development. We have to pay good attention to the quality of the public service because it determines the possibility of escape from economic and social stagnation. The bureaucracy is the public service. The notion that what we need for economic development in Nigeria is an entrepreneurial private sector is actually a mistake. We need more of an entrepreneurial public sector. This is the reason we speak today about entrepreneurial states. As the Mariana Mazzucato, University of London economist argues in her book, The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myth (2013) that the economic growth and technological transformation we see in the United and Europe owes more to the role state institutions play in initiating innovation.
I cannot overstate the importance of a fit-for-purpose bureaucracy for economic and social development in Nigeria or anywhere else. In 2011, i was appointed to a committee to review the public service of Nigeria. Together with Professors MJ Balogun, I issued a minority report to the president where we addressed the key issues of a good public public sector reform in Nigeria. I would like to quote extensively from that report on the importance of well-designed and functional public service.
“Against the backdrop of the challenges facing Nigeria, the role of the public service cannot but be critical. Not long ago, the service was reputed for effective and efficient discharge of its statutory responsibilities. For decades, it enforced law and order, constructed high-speed expressways, built dams, managed banks and insurance companies, and opened the economy to local and foreign investors. The government worked simply because its public service instrumentalities worked. And the public service worked because it strictly observed the principles transplanted from Whitehall and bequeathed by the British colonial power—notably, those of political neutrality or impartiality, anonymity, integrity, professionalism, merit and security of tenure. So highly regarded was the public service that when the country looked like falling apart in 1967, it was to it that the government of the day turned for support. It provided invaluable policy advice, effectively backstopped the police-cum-military action which finally ended the three-year civil war in 1970, and, all the while—and even in the face of dwindling resources and the mounting war-time commitments–kept the essential services going. The impact of the public service during the immediate post-independence period was felt at both the federal and regional levels. Besides the core civil service operating at the regional level to implement policies and programmes (e.g., works, education, health, agriculture, and cooperatives), development corporations and marketing boards were established to handle commercial and quasi-commercial operations with substantial government interest. The former (the development corporations) invested fiscal surpluses on infrastructure development, the construction of health and educational facilities (including three 40 Universities in Zaria, Nsukka, and Ile-Ife and countless primary and secondary schools), as well as industrial manufacturing and mining.
The marketing boards organized small-scale farmers into producers’ cooperatives and collaborated with the cooperatives on the construction of storage depots for export commodities (like cocoa and palm oil in the east and the west, and cotton, groundnuts, hides and skins, in the north). The marketing boards also assisted small peasants to explore opportunities in overseas markets and to handle the trade-related paperwork which would have been beyond the capacity of individuals with modest or no formal education.
At the federal level, the public service designed and implemented programmes targeted at the “commanding heights” of the economy. To correct market failures, the federal (like each regional) public service directly handled key socio-economic ventures, particularly, those characterized by high technical indivisibilities and constantly increasing returns to scale, in other words, enterprises with monopolistic tendencies”.
The current situation is different. The public service has lost its capacity and competence to drive transformative policies. The public needs rebuilding. To rebuild the public service to become a true engine of economic growth and socioeconomic transformation, we need to re-entrench merit and professionalism in the recruitment, promotion and management of the public service, the rationalization of the structure of the public service and its reauthorization as the engine of development. The latter point requires a reconceptualization of the purpose and merit and rethinking the value of bureaucracy to economic and social development.
From Utility of Bureaucracy to Cost of Governance:
Currently one of the major challenges to the re-emergence of an effective bureaucracy at the federal and state levels is the rising costs of governance. We have ballooned the costs of governance such that we cannot free financial resources to invest in capital goods and services that will enhance our productive capacity. The fundamental theory of economic development is based on high capital formation. This means that the government should save and invest in capital goods like infrastructure-physical and social infrastructure. The elementary point about capital formation is that the government should reduce its recurrent expenditure in other to have enough funds for capital expenditure.
It is important to note that concern for rising cost of governance is not a recent development. Since 1980s there has been significant concern about the rising costs of governance arising from both increase in federal agencies and enhancement of entitlements. The concern for rising cost of governance is influenced by the state of the national economy. When there is economic downturn, there is greater concern about rising cost of governance than when the economy is buoyant. In our 2011 public service reform report, we argued that “Ever since the 1980s when fiscal and macro-economic imbalances warranted the enactment of structural adjustment policies, reducing the cost of governance has been the standard by which progress in public service reform is measured. Consequently, and apart from the focus on the amount expended maintaining the public household, two other issues that have constantly cropped up in recent years’ reform drives are the structure of the public service, and the number on public payroll (otherwise termed “manning level”). Yet, important as cost reduction is in an era of austerity, and regardless of the need to streamline the unwieldy structure, and check the growing size of the public service, not much gain would appear to have accrued from recent rationalization efforts. The efforts failed mainly because of the overwhelming reliance on ad hoc, piecemeal, and retroactive interventions rather than on a coherent and holistic reform strategy. If truth be told, public service structure and manning levels are only two sides of a complex reform story. Following the story requires that the hitherto neglected angle of performance monitoring and productivity management also be pursued.”.
Why should we be concerned about the rising cost of government. the first reason is that we are in a very poor economic situation that calls for great prudence and fiscal discipline. Today, Nigeria is highly indebted to the point that we service our debts with almost 80-90% of our revenue. We are not just a highly indebted country, we are borrowing to service the debts, further worsening our economic situation. We are stuck in debts after we struggled to free ourselves from debt under President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration. The first requirement of debt restructuring is to look inwards and restructure public expenditure. This is one reason for worrying about the rising cost of governance.
Another reason for worrying about the rising cost of governance is how big government affects performance. This is not just about financials costs. It is about lack of optimization and how incoherent an over bloated public service can exhibit. The essence of the public service is performance. If the bureaucracy is over bloated, it affects the efficiency and effectiveness of bureaucratic actions. Optimizing government through de-layering and restructuring is important for efficient performance.
This last point raises an important issue about the language and concept of cost of governance dominant in public discourse. Oftentimes, the focus is only on the number of ministries and departments of government. There is a call for reduction of the number of departments, agencies and ministries either by merging some of them or shutting them down. That is the approach of the famous Steve Oronsaye Report which recommended merger and elimination of some agencies and departments of government, considered to be duplicitous and unnecessary. This is one aspect of reducing cost. But there are other important aspects of cost reduction beyond the number of ministries, departments and agencies in the federal government.
It is still true as we argued in 2011 that “The challenges confronting Nigeria in controlling the cost of governance warrant a holistic response. However, in getting to the root of cost escalation, the Federal Government has consistently focused on and questioned only two of the “usual suspects”—that is, the structure of the public service and the number on public payroll. Based on pure administrative considerations, the fixation on structure and, for that matter, on manning levels, is understandable. As an approach to cost-cutting, both appeal to policymakers and senior managers seeking to get a grip on an otherwise unmanageable budgeting process”. Contrarily, the issues to consider in a robust discussion about costs of government should be comprehensive and encompass the following:
i Institution/agency proliferation;
ii ii) Distorted and misplaced priorities;
iii iii) Rising overheads;
iv iv) Duplication and overlap in the structure of the public service;
v) Retention of perquisites earlier and purportedly “monetized”
vi) Budget indiscipline and accountability failure (resulting in miscellaneous leakages); and
(vii) Lack of accurate and up to date cost data (and early warning mechanisms).
I intend to take up these issues and use them to illustrate the enormity of the problem we face in reforming government and the superficiality of the solutions peddled by political leaders.
Institutional Proliferation:
The kernel of the Orosanya Report is that the federal government over the years have proliferated ministries, departments and agencies such that the cost of administering the federal government has become exorbitant. The report recommended the merger of many departments and agencies that perform similar functions. An example of such agencies are the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) and the Infrastructure Concession and Regulatory Commission (ICRC). Proliferation of institutions is the major driver of rising cost of governance as each of these institutions will be provided with extensive capital and recurrent costs. It is also a major source institutional inefficiency as agencies get caught in turf battles and undercut the coherence and effectiveness of government policy objectives.
The recommendation of the Orosanya committee that some of the agencies be merged and some eliminated is an important but insufficient approach to reducing costs of governance. There are two problems associated with this. The first is that the rationalization may be haphazard and uninformed by a strategic vision of economic and social transformation such that actions may be taken based on public perception and vested interest. The second problem is the probable lack of political will to push through the reform, especially where it will lead to loss of political and economic power by some bureaucrats and employment for some civil servants. This problem is compounded by time lag which offers opportunity for lobbying. This is what has happened in Nigeria. No government has been bold and committed to push through implementation of Orosanya report. Tinubu promised but has not delivered so far.
How to Reduce Cost of Governance:
The problem with managing cost of governance is that it is multidimensional and must be part of a strategic vision of development. The problem of development in Nigeria can be summed by in three phrases- coherence, comprehensiveness and consistence. Incoherence relates to alignment between institutions, policies and bureaucracy. The overarching element of a strategic vision of development is that it must flow from a proper diagnosis of the problem. The problem with the public service is not that we have too many departments, agencies and ministries as much that we have created multiple agencies without clear-cut idea of how each agency reinforces the concept and project of development. Development requires coherent ideas and coherent practice.
We cannot reduce cost of governance in any systematic and effective manner unless we can articulate a strong and coherent vision of government and design simple processes that enable us to deliver. We have to learn from nature itself. Nature fits organ to function. We have to create structure that matches function. Simplicity is an art of genius. We need simple system that are cost efficient and effective.
The process of development involves three stages: strategy, operation and tactics. In strategy, you start with diagnosis which correctly captures the social pathology that you want to cure. If we mistake the social pathology we administer the wrong cure. From accurate diagnosis we get to directing policy. Directing policy asks where you want to be, what new state of affair do you want. When you have a clear directing policy which shows what is changing, then you get to coherent set of actions to create the new future. The problem is that Nigeria’s cost of governance reform does not follow this rigorous analysis.
Sam Amadi, PhD, made the presentation as Guest Speaker at the 6th Annual Lecture of the Justfrends Club on Tuesday, November 5, 2024, Abuja
On Nigerian social media videos showing Trump promising to bring the Bible back to America, opposing homosexuality and false claim of a Biden/Kamala government funded sex-affirming surgery for children are being used to portray Trump as devout Christian and savior of the faith. Health care coverage in the U.S. is provided by the private health insurance companies. Even Obama care is provided via the private market who decides what treatment it covers.
This notion that Trump is Bible-reading, scripture union (SU) Christ-loving savior of the faith is one of the mythologies that has been propagated and accepted as gospel truth by many especially in Nigeria. By the fruit ye shall know them. No one knows which church Trump attends nor his pastor. Trump is not a Christian by any standard and there are no fruit of the spirit in his life.
Yes, many U.S. evangelicals have adopted him as their reincarnated saviour of the faith due mainly to the overturning of Roe by the Supreme Court appointees who were hand picked for him by the conservation think tank. However, during the campaign when abortion became toxic Trump actually tried to walk back his claim as the one who overturned Roe. He supported Florida Amendment 4 claiming that the six weeks abortion ban was too strict before he walked it back.
After decades of cultural resistance to homosexuality, public opinion has shifted towards more support for homosexuality as more scientific data has emerged supporting the biological foundation for most homosexuality. Homosexuality has been recorded for centuries in every culture across the globe dating back to biblical time. What has changed is societal attitude towards it, causing more gays to come out of the closet. This, of course, is still very upsetting on many especially in traditional societies like Nigeria.
A recent survey by Gallup shows that 69% of Americans now support same sex marriage which is a seismic shift from just a decade ago.
However, among the core evangelicals, opposition to homosexuality and abortion is cast in stone. Trump has exploited that opposition as the cornerstone of his three presidential bids to court the evangelicals and it has worked like magic.
The Trump campaign spent over $30 million on videos like this one that falsely and effectively define Kamala Harris who, as an elected official from liberal California, has a long record of supporting abortion and gay rights.
The realignment of the traditional strong Hispanic support away from the Democrat toward Trump who took over 40% of their votes is a reflection of both their concern about inflation but moreso, their traditional value which still strongly opposes Gay rights and abortion. I saw that shift here in Miami which was once a deep blue Democratic base which has now turned Ruby Red as Hispanics have become the vast majority, a major demographic shift due to immigration. Trump spent over 30 million dollars pushing the sex affirming video ad naseum during the campaign.
By the way I know several Nigerians here in the U.S. who also voted for Trump on the same issue of opposition to Gay right and abortion.
Without understanding the nuance of the context, one can easily misread the situation. The reality is that this election result and the massive loss by Kamala has a lot to do with misogyny, racism and xenophobia. Americans were just not ready for a woman president especially one like Kamala who has a complicated immigrant Indian and Jamaican parent more so as wars are going on both in Europe and the Middle East. The image of Trump as a strong man is very appealing to many especially Hispanics many came from countries where strong men were venerated.
There were also many blacks who did not think Kamala was black enough. Janet Jackson actually voiced that opinion. Trump increased his black votes while Kamala was way below where Obama was in his presidential bids. This was a case of Kamala running a truncated presidential run (107 days) during the perfect storm when the economy, inflation, cultural sentiments were all against the Democrats. Here is the link to the pew research opinion survey data on attitude towards same sex marriage. https://www.pewresearch.org/religious-landscape-study/database/
Adewale Alonge, PhD, Founder & President, Africa Diaspora Partnership for Empowerment and Development. www.adped.org
