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.
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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
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