By the time you are reading this column next week, the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari’s (retd) thought will not be about Nigeria wahala. He would have played his role. He would care less about the scores awarded him on different sectors or subject matter by analysts or the opinions of him by the citizens. He could be on his way to Daura or even Niger Republic for leave. Economic growth is nose diving; River Niger is overflowing causing flooding along its bank and washing away farmlands; or the national grid has collapsed will no longer be his concern or headache but the business of Bola Tinubu.
Definitely, General Buhari was overwhelmed by Nigeria’s problems. He did not appear prepared for the office despite his attempts to be president. At the initial stage, he seemed enthusiastic to influence things; to make some differences or some positive impacts. But, it did not take long before he found out that a democratic president cannot just issue orders and get results like in the military. Under democracy, you have to poke your nose; you have to follow up and possibly get deeply involved if you want to get results. Within a short time of trying to conform with democratic norms, the man landed in a hospital in the United Kingdom where he not only got medical counselling but some tutorials on si don look. I noticed that since the President returned from that medical retreat, he completely lost interest in active decision making and returned to his original concept of governance: ‘say something, do nothing.’
The working team of the President-elect would have been harvesting ideas of what Nigerians consider priority needs to move the country positively from the present depth of social and economic woes. It is the best thing to do in preparing ground for quick delivery of deliverables. The last three weeks and particularly last week, we have witnessed lots of workshop training for incoming political officials and personnel. Of particular interest was the training for elected governors, using some of their older colleagues that were found successful in different aspects of governance. The legislators were also briefed or trained in the art of legislation and possibly oversight functions without oversight corruption that sometimes filtered into the public domain. Hopefully, there will be such workshops for ministers and commissioners when they are eventually appointed. There was such training in the past without visible effects. That is why governance at both national and state levels has not been encouraging, except in a few cases. Hopefully, we can expect positive outcomes under the Renewed Hope.
Within three weeks of January 2022, I raised some issues that deserved urgent state attention. The issues were concerned with electricity, corruption and political economy respectively. Then, I called for public discussion or as titled: ‘Let’s talk about it.’ The first was on electricity. I raised issues relating to why states cannot generate and distribute their electricity without passing through a national grid. In that piece, I wrote “I often wonder whether or if, by law, all electricity production must go through the national grid and if such law is not archaic and needs to be changed? I often hear of state power generation going through the grid. Does electricity generation go through a national grid in other countries? Why must we limit power generation to three major sources viz: hydro or thermal or gas or solar? Why can we not dedicate solar, for example, to the non-industrial section of the economy and more powerful sources to industrial use, even within a state? Why must a state take permission from the Federal Government before embarking on power generation and distribution? Why this and why that?”
I am happy to announce that both the executive and the legislature have taken bold steps. The electricity generation and possibly distribution have been decentralised by legislation that President Buhari has appended his signature. It is hopeful that we will soon see a fully lit up Lagos, Kaduna, Kano, Anambra and Rivers states while those in darkness will be challenged to wake up and light up Nigeria. Can the absence of governors El Rufai and Nyesom Wike in Kaduna and Rivers states respectively prevent those states from being part of the first generation fully lit up states? Lagos will want to be the first to be fully lit up but the governor of Anambra State, Prof. Charles Soludo, likes such challenges? Albeit, this is an opportunity for Tinubu to do for Nigeria what he was prevented from doing in Lagos State.
The last issue was corruption. The innocent word that continues to destroy Nigeria, even Africa and prevent us from realising our potential. These days, Nigerians seem to be moving away from mentioning the need to fight corruption in the land. Possibly because we are disappointed that the Buhari we relied upon; the Buhari that was voted in 2014, largely to help us tackle corruption and who gave us hope when he said “if we don’t fight corruption, corruption will fight us” is leaving us with a more corrupt society than he met. In the piece on corruption, after reviewing the stages of corruption, I concluded that we were at the “Competitive-bribery state, the highest level of corruption” where it would be difficult to detect an honest man or woman. The stage where nobody wants to talk about fighting corruption because everybody is seen as virtually involved. We still have honest Nigerians.
It was declared in the article that “corruption generally reduces economic growth, as it retards long-term foreign and domestic investments; promotes inflation; depreciates national currency; reduces expenditures for education and health; increases military expenditures for oppression; misallocate talent to rent seeking activities; increases income inequality and poverty; reduces tax revenue; increases child and infant mortality rates; distort fundamental role of government and undermines the legitimacy of government and of the market economy. These are clear characteristics of the Nigerian state today.” This is the situation Tinubu is inheriting from his forerunners.
No development can take place without fighting corruption. There exists corruption in other countries and on other continents but anyone caught in those climes, goes to jail or gets the full dose of the punishment. The government here is quick to forgive or reduce jail terms and the public is quick to absorb the big offenders into society or even vote them into offices at the next available opportunity. No government can write its name in gold without reducing corruption to the barest minimum through appropriate punishment for offences committed. The government must be bold in corruption cases and not succumb to blackmail.
Taking us back to the issue of political economy as presented in the last piece on the ‘Let’s talk about it’ series, I posited that for ease of comprehension, political economy simply explains the interaction between politics and economics without neglecting the social aspects. Within that context, we can look at the political structure, fiscal federalism and socio-economic/political relationships in the country and see how to work out solutions to the multifarious problems arising therefrom.
I suggested that every state has natural endowment or natural resources that can be exploited to contribute to national or federation accounts but many states have become so lazy that they wait on largess from the federation account for expenditure, yet every year they engage in deficit budgeting. Sometimes they encourage illegal activities in the exploitation of their resources for personal aggrandisement and to avoid paying into the federation account. We have heard of and seen illegal mining in some states and the federal agency concerned turned a blind eye or feigned ignorance.
Further suggestion was that the Federal Government also needs to generate its own fund without depending on rent-seeking sources like the oil licensing, royalties or borrowing. The government that built refineries in the past knew that we needed to have them to avoid importation of petroleum and diesel as well as benefit from other by-products. The life span of those refineries has gone long ago and no amount of turnaround can solve the problems. Let us have new refineries and encourage private sector petrochemical industries to spring up. Let us have new dams and river basins and promote mechanised agriculture. For once, let our iron and steel industries come to fruition. All these will expand the economy, promote employment and raise incomes from which the government improves tax revenue.
