President Bola Ahmed Tinubu praised himself for recording a good performance during his maiden presidential media chat held in Lagos on December 23. When one of the panelists asked whether he was scoring himself, the president answered in the affirmative. It was like, ‘If I don’t market myself, who will’. And away from the clumsiness of the 2023 campaign period, when the president’s incoherence became legendary, he actually spoke well during the chat. He was a good marketer of his policies and sounded like the one in charge. He spoke about the recent stampedes that occurred in Ibadan, Abuja, and Anambra, he spoke on the Tax Reform Bills, currently before the National Assembly, the fuel subsidy removal and the attendant galloping inflation as well as the food crisis, his large cabinet, and the performance of the military and the security agencies against the backdrop of the report that Nigerians spent over N2 trillion on ransom last year.
The president said he was surely leading the country on the path to recovery and progress because, in recent months, he has met all his obligations without recourse to the controversial measure of Ways and Means or the NNPCL. He equally marketed the Tax reform policy quite well, when he said that the government would be open to negotiations. “Tax matters are subject of debates, reviews, and negotiations until you reach a consensus. I don’t mind cutting edges. I will,” the president had said.
Tinubu had further submitted: “Tax reform is here to stay. In today’s economy, we cannot continue to do what we were doing in the past. We can’t retool with old and broken folks.
“The essence of tax reform is to eliminate colonial-based assumptions in our tax environment.
“Every tax situation without outcry is not a tax. You can’t satisfy uniformly the largest community of tax evaders. Look at this tax reform; it is pro-poor. The vulnerable are not to pay taxes. The hallmark of a good leader is the ability to do what you have to do at the time it ought to be done. That is my philosophy.”
On the fuel subsidy removal, the president was emphatic that he did what he had to do at the right time so that he could cut away the “Father Christmas” culture, whereby Nigeria feeds its neighbours with cheap fuel at the expense of its economy. The President went on and on. One clear thing anyone would deduce from the maiden media chat is that the president has now settled into his job. Perhaps the ‘subsidy is gone’ statement he made on the inauguration podium and the attendant commotion that ensued in the economy rattled not just the citizens but even the mighty places. The elders know how to stomach words, so, no one should expect to hear buburu (evil) from the abore (the chief priest)-A kii gbo buburu lenu abore; the chief priest cannot profess evil, so the elders say. Now that things are shaping up, we can hear the vivid description of the evolutionary tales.
But beyond the self-praise in the president’s tone during the media chat, there are some missing links, we can model into two pillars-the question of whether the government is made for man or man is made for the government or whether the success of governments is solely determinable by the soundness of statistics or the smiles on the faces of the citizens. Above all, whether the concern of governments should be about the (greatest) happiness for the greatest number of persons it superintends over. The educated people will call this Utilitarian principle, originated by Jeremy Bentham in his Introduction to Morals and Legislation (1789). However, whether it is totalitarian, theocracy, communism, monarchy, or democracy, the essence of quality of life has always defined the relationship of man in society.
In our elementary Government, we were taught that humans donated their individual might to build the coercive power of the state and end the brutish era and its collective uncertainty. With the government taking control of the affairs in the society, the citizen-body also got saddled with rights and obligations. History of the rise and fall of empires, kingdoms, and all has shown us that governments are not to deviate from the search for peace, order, and good government in the society. I presume that the much vilified government of North Korea must be making its people happy in a way, outside of which we would have heard of a devastating revolution. In other words, no matter how balanced the statistical data on the performance of a government is on paper, the extent of smiles it places on the faces of its people would matter more.
While the Economists would justify President Tinubu’s policies with theories here and there, the essence of his ascendancy to the highest seat in the land would remain the percentage of the over 200 million Nigerians he can make happy. It is good to remove fuel subsidy, but it is not good for Nigerians to buy fuel attacks cut-throat prices. If anything, the prices of fuel should be commensurate with the minimum wage or living wage. If not, how do you guarantee productivity? In the wake of the escalating transport fares that erupted after the removal of subsidy, some states and organisations practically declared work-from-home policies. Some organisations (universities and tertiary institutions inclusive) asked their staff to come to work for only three days a week. A situation where the salary of the worker is completely wiped out by transport fare to his office can neither amount to good economics nor guarantee productivity. But the president said that the only way to drive down inflation is to increase productivity. There must be an equilibrium here.
On the devaluation of the Naira, which came with the euphemism called merger of exchange rates, something is equally missing. While the IMF and the World Bank were pushing the twin policies of fuel subsidy removal and exchange rate adjustment, we were told that the country would save trillions of naira, especially from the huge dollars devoted to fuel importation. The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said that Nigeria spent N3.5 trillion importing fuel in the first quarter of 2023, while the World Bank said that the country spent N10 trillion subsidising petrol and defending the Naira in 2022. At a stage when the Naira crossed above N1,000 to one USD, the CBN admitted that the nation’s currency had been undervalued. But now that fuel importation has dwindled following the resumption of local refining, we should be surprised that the dollar is not only waxing stronger, but the government has also adopted an exchange rate of N1,500 to the USD. That too, can only be a driver of inflation. As much as we don’t spend the US dollar officially here, most imported products, especially drugs are calculated in dollars. A citizen without good health cannot guarantee productivity.
One other missing link I’ve seen with the Tinubu government is the failure to prioritise workers’ welfare. While the government tries to do the big things, it must not close its eyes to the ‘small’ matters. I recall that the government of President Goodluck Jonathan fixed a date for payment of workers’ salaries but due to the usual delay in sharing funds from the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC), the government sometimes borrowed to pay the salaries to meet the fixed date for salary payment. When the then Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala made the revelation, the opposition interpreted it to mean that the government was broke.
That cannot be correct. When the worker can safely predict the date his salary will be paid, that’s a source of motivation on its own. The fact the worker can plan concretely on his or her salary, no matter how meager, is an assured channel of productivity. Reports have been out there that several federal agencies have been deferring the payment of their staff salaries and that payment of federal workers these days has been as haphazard as NEPA light. This is a minus the administration must address. Workers in some states rate their governors solely on the prompt payment of their salaries. A situation where workers celebrated Christmas, and other festivities without their salaries won’t give the government a good name. Come to think of it, whether the salary is paid on the 20th or 30th, the days of the calendar won’t get elongated by a second. To make Nigerians happy, the government should start by making its workers happy.
(The LYNX EYE column. Published in the Sunday Tribune, December 29, 2024)
