By Dr Chidi Amuta
Very few presidents get the unhappy privilege of previewing the full gamut of worries that will torment their presidency all within their first 100 days. President Bola Tinubu is lucky to belong in this rare collection. In less than a hundred days in office, he has faced challenges in the key areas that make or mar any national leadership. He has hit a domestic economic storm over his sudden halt of a troublesome subsidy regime on gasoline and foreign exchange. That has unleashed still unfolding economic and social consequences. He has faced severe political indigestion over his tardy handling of a ministerial list that almost got him into a constitutional trouble. As if that was not enough political palaver, he has had to cast away the bumbling chairman and secretary of his wobbly ruling party and replaced the chairman with a dollar loving ex- governor. Still to his benefit, a group of ambitious military officers in nearby Niger Republic decided to boot out the fledgling democratic government of President Bazoum. That has thrown in a foreign relations angle to Tinubu’s cocktail just as he assumed the ceremonial leadership of the sub regional ECOWAS bloc.
If the world at home and abroad were to be still and at peace for his first hundred days, Mr. Tinubu would probably have concluded that being president of Nigeria is a cakewalk. But somehow, the man is lucky to have a fair sample of what lies ahead for him. These are the previews of a presidency that will be defined by unusual happenings. Each of these challenges presages an interesting time that could redefine the life of Nigerians and the future of the nation. Hovering at the background is of course the unresolved matter of the legitimacy of the Tinubu government and the integrity of the controversial February 25th presidential election now before tribunals and courts.
On the domestic front, the subsidy related crises have just begun. The impact of the hike in gasoline pump prices is in its infancy. The immediate rise in transportation costs, food inflation and escalating business costs are still unfolding. Labour unions are merely rehearsing long drawn protests and strikes that could linger for long stretches. The president has shown a perennial willingness to engage with representative of those hurt by his harsh policy options. That is a plus for the man.
The end of the subsidy regime was inevitable and a matter of national survival. A national economy that is spending over 100% of its revenue on debt servicing and with an external debt burden of over 100 billion dollars has nowhere to run to for relief. Subsidy on gasoline in particular is more like a gasoline tax whose incidence falls on hapless and helpless citizens. Foreign exchange arbitrage, disguised patronage and racketeering is also a form of subsidy to users of foreign exchange which had to end. Sundry leakages like crude oil theft, illegal mining and outright pilferage from the treasury have become imperatives if the economy must survive. For Mr. Tinubu therefore, these hard decisions were national existential imperatives.
It however remains debatable whether the President’s rather cavalier method of ending the subsidy regime is the best. Experts have argued that the subsidies could have been removed on a stage by stage gradual basis to cushion its impacts. But it turns out now that beyond the bravura of the Eagle Square off-script announcement of the withdrawal of the petroleum subsidy, little or no serious thought had gone into the consequences of the policy measure. That the announcement of the policy was made far ahead of the constitution of a cabinet and other critical bodies of the new government may indicate a government that is prone to hasty ad hoc policy measures than a rigorous approach to policy issues. Predictably, an equally hasty and lazy cash transfer measure was announced and touted as a comprehensive palliative. It turned out to be lazy, haphazard and almost foolish.
The arrangement was presumably designed to pay N8, 000 a month to each of 15 million households for a six month period. When subjected to widespread public scrutiny, it turned out that the measure was not properly thought through. No one was sure of the credibility of the statistical base for the cash transfer or the authenticity of the list of projected beneficiaries. It turned out that the list that the Buhari administration had used to implement its own N5, 000 per family cash transfer was adjudged unreliable and dodgy by the National Economic Council (NEC). The pressure of public opinion and outright lobbying from cash hungry state governors forced the presidency to drop the move and return to the drawing board.
Predictably, the President has now been forced by pressure of strikes and protests from labour unions to announce a new set of palliatives and relief measures. These range from food supply boosts, small business low interest credit incentives to provision of buses for mass transportation. In the absence of a fully formed government and a mechanism for ensuring serious implementation of the relief measures, we are still left with a scant instrument for policy implementation. What is required is not just the good intentions of a compassionate president but the combined will of a committed government as a collectivity. More importantly, government’s communication strategy needs to be revised to inform the public that the end of a subsidy regime implies a revision of our economic model. It requires time for the economic benefits of the end of subsidy to translate into beneficial outcomes. Most importantly, the federal government must re-direct the development goals of the nation from landscape decoration and white elephant projects to massive investment in social sectors of health, education and strategic infrastructure. In his handling of the unfolding ripple effects of the end of subsidy, President Tinubu failed an elementary item in the code of presidential conduct. Presidents preside over good and bad news. But they are not supposed to break bad news. They appoint fa;; guys to carry bad news and clean the mess. The president only appears on television with the good news when the clean up is done or almost done. Tinubu should have waited to appoint ministers to manage the subsidy removal trouble and only appear to address the nation when the palliatives and relief measures are ready.
The political challenges and methods that will define the Tinubu presidency are already in full display. The president has obviously displayed unnecessary sloppiness in coming up with a list of ministers. A president that prides himself in having been long in politics and angling to lead could not readily come up with a list of 40 odd ministerial nominees over nearly a three month? The Nigerian public expected a faster delivery of the list to the Senate in contrast to the embarrassing delay in Mr. Buhari’s first term. Although the list has at last been delivered, the list reads more like a telephone directory of jobless strange bedfellows. The hopes that were raised in terms of the caliber of persons and the skill set required by the nation’s current state of disrepair.
One school of thought expected Mr. Tinubu to replicate his Lagos state emphasis on technocrats and seasoned reputable experts as against politicians. Instead, what the Senate is currently considering is a mixed bag of odd fellows. There are less than half a dozen worthwhile technocrats of any description. There are less than a dozen women, fewer than eight real youth. The rest is a mixture of former governors and opportunistic political jobbers.
Clearly, the segment of the Nigerian populace that harbored a messianic expectation of the Tinubu cabinet may be in for a rude shock. The majority of ex- governors on the ministerial list have only one major qualification: they are APC governors who helped Tinubu corner the presidential election. Other than that, they are the same governors who could not secure their states from casual bandits, who could not pay workers salaries and benefits for months on end. They are the same bunch of incompetent governors who literally sank their states in debt and shut down schools at the slightest opportunity. The only conspicuous outsider from the APC band is former Rivers State governor, Nyesom Wike, who is being rewarded by Mr. Tinubu for betraying his party, the PDP, and pumping up Tinubu’s vote tally by all means in his state.
The internal politics of the ruling party, the APC, has now equally received Tinubu’s attention. The president has quickly moved to rejig the party machinery in line with his perceived cult of devotees. No one knows exactly what belief holds these devotees together other than crass loyalty to the president. The Adamu -led executive may have been good enough to deliver Mr. Buhari’s succession plan or lack of it. Mr. Tinubu has now jettisoned that arrangement by forcing out Mr. Adamu and his secretary Mr. Omisore. Astute political observers have noted that Tinubu is reorganizing the party for his second term as president. The party has appointed or ‘elected’ former Kano state governor, Mr. Ganduje, as the new Chairman. The diehard Tinubu supporter has a less than attractive national appeal. He is more popular nationally for a viral video in which he was shown serially pocketing wads of dollar notes from an anonymous generous giver. The matter is still under investigation in Kano state but he now has a higher responsibility as the supremo of the nation’s ruling party.
While the ways of politicians remain forever mysterious and extraordinary, political parties remain vital national institutions for the survival of democracy. To that extent, the credibility of those who preside over and run the affairs of political parties ought to be subject to no less a rigorous integrity test and scrutiny than the very state officials periodically nominated by the parties for public offices. It may be convenient at this early stage to fill key party positions with favorites of the president. Subsequently, opposition to these questionable party officials could graduate into pockets of opposition to the political foothold of the president himself. That is usually the seed of instability in our political parties. In his political body language so far, Tinubu has been quite predictable. He is part of the old politics of assembling bad men and women to assuage a public that thrives on impressions. His cabinet selection is a mix of a few good men and a multitude of ordinary persons. They will do business as usual and disappear into the national pool of incompetent anonymity.
By far the most telling and far reaching early challenge for the Tinubu presidency is in the sphere of foreign affairs. The coup in nearby Niger Republic has come at a ‘good’ moment for Mr. Tinubu. Many Nigerian presidents serve out their tenure without experiencing a consequential foreign policy challenge. Tinubu must be grateful to the Niger coup makers for the opportunity they have given him to start out as a significant foreign policy president. Barely a fortnight after he assumed the ceremonial chairmanship of ECOWAS, the coup happened. In quick succession, the coup makers detained the democratically elected President Bazoum, suspended the constitution, sacked the government and garrisoned off the capital, Niamey. ECOWAS has issued a one week ultimatum for the coupists to back down and back off. But the soldiers seem to have dug in. They have been openly supported by fellow juntas in Mali and Burkina Faso as well as tacitly by Russia’s Wagner Group of mercenaries which is conspicuosly present all over West Africa. More interestingly, Algeria, as an expression of its long standing historical anti-French sentiments has pledged support for the coupists. In open rebuff of Nigeria which is leading the sub regional pressure against the coup, the dictatorship in Niger has broken off ties with Nigeria and ordered ambassadors of Nigeria, Benin, France, the United States and EU to leave Niger. The stage seems set for a major confrontation or at least a war of diplomatic nerves.
For Nigeria, the challenge is one of diplomatic leadership in a crisis virtually next door. The implications for us are wider than many are prepared to admit. First, Niger is important to the world only because of its uranium deposits which the West is not prepared to let into the hands of rogue elements especially the Russians. For us, the location of Niger is strategically important. The ousted Niger government was a barrier against the southward spread of jihadist insurgency from the Sahel.
For President Tinubu, therefore, the management of the Niger crisis is multiply important. It is important for Nigeria’s stabilizing role in the West African region. It is important in terms of Nigeria’s capacity to partner with the West to frustrate Russia’s ambitions in the West African sub region. At a time when French influence in the region has waned, can Nigeria fill the gap as a force for regional stability? More importantly, the spread of military dictatorships in the countries bordering the Sahel poses a challenge for the sustainability of Nigeria’s democracy and those of its neighbors like Cameroun, Benin, Togo, Ghana, the Gambia and Cote d’Ivoire.
With a basket of unfolding domestic economic, social and political challenges, President Tinubu now has to define his authentic presidency. So far, he has not yet shown the steady hand of a prepared economic manager. Nor has he indicated a convincing capacity to choose wisely and assuredly in terms of a team to work with. But in the area of the foreign policy challenge that is unfolding in Niger, Tinubu has a clear and urgent choice to make as the ECOWAS ultimatum to the Niger junta ticks away. Will he become a ‘war president’ abroad even before he becomes a legitimate and capable leader at home? Yet, the nation and the world are anxiously waiting whether he can lead the forces of freedom in a world where the forces of freedom are now poised against a rampaging authoritarianism.
Dr. Amuta, a Nigerian journalist, intellectual and literary critic, was previously a senior lecturer in literature and communications at the universities of Ife and Port Harcourt
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