*Insecurity, High Inflation, Fuel Subsidy Palliatives, others top expectations
According to Albert Einstein, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Unfortunately, the leadership of Nigeria believes in doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Unlike the Buhari administration that came with unprecedented goodwill and enjoyed long period of honeymoon, leading the nation without verifiable economic direction, failed woefully to secure lives of Nigerians and enshrined nepotism as a signpost of his administration, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the 16th President of Nigeria has no such opportunity and as such must hit the ground running with what has not been done before by previous leaders in order for him to reap unprecedented goodwill.
The reasons are obvious, Tinubu faces a litany of problems from the onset, some of which are the double-digit inflation, industrial-scale oil theft, widespread violence, (either from Boko Haram, banditry, ISWAB or the deadly Fulani herdsmen) that have made farming a luxury in Nigeria.
As if these are not enough, the 2023 electoral polls, unarguably exposed our deep-seated divisions. The APC’s same-faith ticket did not only elicited open and secret mobilization of religious personalities and organizations, it brought to the fore the regional, ethnic and other atavistic tendencies that culminated into some inflammable identities. The president, in cohort with his supporters’ actions and words, contributed to all these and he must have prepared for a very strong and sustained opposition against him from the onset. For the records, Tinubu scored only 36.61% of the valid votes cast in 2023. The implication is that, he is a minority President, as a larger majority of the voters (66.23%) did not choose him.
He should expect strong and sustained hostility in the polity, given the temper and the outcome of the 2023 polls, the result of which is being hotly contested in in courts. Given the hue and cry over the fuel subsidy removal, Nigerians expect their President to remove this highly fraudulent contraption, but the careless manner in which he removed it without adequate palliatives in place, periscope a president without a roadmap.
Informed observers believed that he could have either reviewed or delayed its implementations or bring about some rigour to its management or better still, set up a high powered technical panel to sit and raise quality discourse on the subsidy removal and proffer solutions in the shortest time, instead of the bumbling, fumbling and groping after three weeks without clear markers as to his mission and vision. And when Labour gave notice of protest, his Presidency quickly obtained an illegal no-protest injunction from the court. As it is, the survival or otherwise of his government is predicated most likely on the fallout of this singularly thoughtless and obnoxious action.
Boosting the Economy and Tackling High Level of Insecurity
High scale insecurity is one of the signature legacies of the Buhari administration. This ranges from kidnappings for ransom in the northwest to a 13-year old Islamic insurgency in the northeast, decades-old ethnic tensions between herders and farmers in the north-central region and separatist violence in the southeast.
These scenario is further compounded by economic sabotage, inefficiency in critical areas of governance, exclusiveness, persecution, low trust in government, and a growing general despair among her citizens.
The agitation in the south east was peaceful until Buhari’s personal hatred of the Igbo and the military’s ineptitude radicalized them. (He once described the South-East as a dot in a circle and bitterly referred to Igbos of the South-East as those who gave him just “five percent” of the votes that made him president in 2015).
In the South-East today, people get killed and property destroyed daily and the murderers and arsonist are not known, and sadly, and annoyingly perplexing is the fact that the government is unconcerned with this gory scene. Quenching these fire through a deliberate agenda should be the focus of the new President. Without security, whatever progress is recorded in other sectors will be undermined seriously.
A court of competent jurisdiction ordered the unconditional release of Nnamdi Kalu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOD, but the Federal Government is yet to obey the judgement by releasing Kanu. Kanu’s release by Mr. President can douse the palpable tension in the south east and buy him a tremendous amount of goodwill.
Also, Nigerians expect their president to establish a special anti-kidnapping division of the Nigeria Police with a clear mandate to eliminate the current banditry plague in the country. In like manner, a special anti-terrorist division of the Nigerian Army should be established in Damaturu, Kaduna and Minna.
Also, the outcome of the 2023 general election which has gone down in our history as the most divisive poll in the last 23 years, negatively impacting interpersonal relationships, leading to ethnic division, heightened deep seated phobia of one ethnic group against another is one issue the President should assiduously work on.
After all, Tinubu orchestrated part of this bad blood that came as a fall out of the elections and Nigerians expect him to treat all sections of the country fairly and equally, especially those that didn’t vote for him, initiating a programme for national healing, national rebirth and true reconciliation, so that the fire that have been kindled can be snuffed by a deliberate efforts of government to foster unity among Nigeria’s diverse ethnic and religious communities.
The task before Bola Tinubu is herculean and hydra-headed but the general expectations are high. Even with slow growth, an oil sector in recession, rising debt, and the instability created by the botched introduction of new naira notes, Nigerians expect their President to hit the ground running in boosting the economy.
Tinubu says he will reduce corporate tax to attract investment and plug tax loopholes to boost revenue. Now that he has removed fuel subsidy, the money, he said will be channeled to infrastructure, agricultural and social welfare programmes.
Good as these are, Nigerians expect their President to look at the high cost of governance and free up more resources for development.
According to the World Bank’s 2022 Public Expenditure Review report, Nigeria’s revenue-to-GDP ratio is the lowest among its peers, meaning that Nigeria is ranked among countries with the lowest human development index, a rank of 167 among 174 countries globally, spending very little on development and spending on humongous debt servicing. This is despite the fact that every year, Inland Revenue, Customs, JAMB, Ports Authority, Digital Economy etc. make trillions to the national coffers with little or no effect.
According to the Debt Management Office, Nigeria currently spends 96% of its revenue, servicing debt, with the debt-to-revenue ratio rising from 83.2% in 2021 to 96.3% by 2022. No nation pays their debt using GDP. No serious nation pays debts using revenue, but unfortunately, Nigeria earns revenue currently to service debt—not to grow, this is abnormal and Mr. President must change the narrative.
While campaigning, Tinubu said he will increase tax handles, widen tax nets, scrap waivers, end multiple exchange rates, block leakages and wastes. But financial experts are of the view that raising taxes is not enough, because Nigerians pay one of the highest tax rates in the world, given the fact that they are forced to provide their own electricity, sink boreholes to get access to water, and repair roads in their towns and environs and providing other sundry amenities, thereby questioning the value of paying taxes, leading to the incidences of high level of tax evasion. What Nigerians expect of their President is reliance on the private sector for infrastructure development and reduction of fiscal burdens on government.
It is erroneously assumed that one of the major challenges of Nigeria is the need to diversify the economy but stakeholders observed that the economy of Nigeria is one of the most diversified in Africa, with the oil sector accounting for only 15% of the GDP, while 85% is in the other sectors.
“Nigeria’s challenge is not diversification but revenue concentration. This is because the oil sector accounts for 75.4% of export revenue and 50% of all government revenue.”
Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, President, Africa Development Bank (AfDB), stated this recently during the Inauguration Lecture for the New President on 27 May 2023. The solution, according to him, is to “unlock the bottlenecks that are hampering 85% of the economy. These include low productivity, very poor infrastructure and logistics, epileptic power supply, and inadequate access to finance for small and medium-size enterprises.”
Creation of Youth-based Wealth and Agricultural Business
For so many years, Nigeria has been regaled with the cliché “youth empowerment programs”. Youths, as rightly observed by informed technocrats, do not need occasional windfalls, rather, they need investments luckily, Nigerian youth are daring and already pushing the boundaries, reinventing itself and challenging the status quo.
What Nigerians expect of the Presidency is to release the entrepreneurship of the Nigerian youth that is conversant with financial ecosystems that understand and foster business ventures. Currently, over 75% of the population in Nigeria, according to the United Nations report, is under the age of 35. The nation’s youth are angry, for they desired a Nigeria that is safe and prosperous, the reason why they worked hard for candidates they thought would work for the birth of the nation of their dream.
Unfortunately, they came out disappointed in both the umpire and the outcome. If human capital is a nation’s greatest asset than its natural resources, Nigerians expect their President and his team to shun ethnic, religious, regional, and other atavistic tendencies that have prevented the nation from investing heavily in youth to build up the skills needed to be globally competitive, in a fast digitized universal economy; they expect the ‘city boy’ to be an exception that would cub the ‘japa syndrome’.
Only then can we build world class educational institutions that is devoid of limiting factors such as (cashment area, educationally disadvantaged states, quota, federal character, religion, nepotism etc) and focus on what would accelerate skills development in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, as well as in ICT and computer coding, the prerequisite that will shape the jobs of the future.
All the six geo-political zones are battling with one form of insecurity or the other and this is further exacerbated by the archaic and obnoxious open grazing of cattle that is, a direct antithesis to agricultural business.
Nigerians expect from their President an anti-open grazing laws that will compel cattle to be moved to secured ranches within three months or be seized. Until this is done, agriculture can never be a business and a wealth creating sector.
Only then can the revival of the rural areas that are not only forgotten but a zone of misery and sorrow (as a result of the menace caused by Fulani herdsmen) be transformed to a special agro-industrial processing zones that will not only help turn rural areas into new zones of economic prosperity but create millions of jobs.
Furthermore, instead of spending trillions of naira annually on road contract constructions, Nigerians expect their president to compel the States and Local Government Areas through a bill of the National Assembly to translate these humongous trillions into purchasing heavy moving equipment for the construction of both the inter and intra road networks in the country and destroy the gaping gap between the urban and rural areas. This, aside from the employment opportunities inherent here, stakeholder believe, is the starting point that will lead to macroeconomic and fiscal stability.
For starters, he should begin by sending a bill to the National Assembly linking the salaries of President and Vice President, Senators, House of Representative members and Governors to grades in the civil service and free the local Governments from the State Governments, thereby granting autonomy to the Judiciary, Legislature and the Local Government Councils, thereby writing his name in gold.
Provision of Electric power supply
Nigerians expect Tinubu to move far away from import substitution to export-focused industrialization. Nations do not make drastic progress through import substitution; they make progress through export-bound industrialization. And this is depended largely on excess electricity power supply. The reason given for Nigeria not having enough electricity power is not satisfactory and Nigerians expect Tinubu to conclusively fix the issue of electricity power, once and for all as it is no rocket science.
Egypt, Kenya and Ghana did it and Nigeria cannot accept the abnormal as normal as it can be done in record time. Also, Nigerians expect massive investments in renewable energy, particularly solar. The private sector today is susceptible by the high cost of power. Nigerians and foreign investors are moving in droves to Ghana today because of the steady supply of electricity power. Providing electricity power therefore will make Nigerian industries more competitive and investors friendly.
The Northern Nightmare
To fix Nigeria is to first fix Northern Nigeria. This is because northern Nigeria is the nation’s problem incubator, hatching them in torrents and spreading them with reckless abandon. As a result of the North, Nigeria’s population according to the UN is projected to hit 400 million in the year 2050.
About half of this figure, are multi-dimensionally poor people. The North, informed observers say, must be saved from itself and from its ways, for fast and accelerated development, and the new President must address this northern nightmare.
The United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF’s current statistics, states that “one in every five of the world’s out-of-school children is in Nigeria.” This irritatingly vexatious reputation is as a result of the North who unleashed Boko Haram and Fulani herdsmen, leading to unprecedented internally displaced people across the region.
This is further compounded by the brand of Islamic religion that is being practiced, which is in a class of its own; a practice where people are seen more as subjects rather than citizens. The brand of Islamic religion practiced also promotes Almajiri, a concept that is not found anywhere in the world – not even in Afghanistan.
Six years ago in Kaduna (May 2017), the Sultan of Sokoto at a gathering of northern Muslims, told them to abandon Almajiri and embrace education. “Almajiri does not represent Islam but hunger and poverty.
Islam encourages scholarship and entrepreneurship and frowns on laziness and idleness as exemplified by itinerant Almajiri.” Between then and now, nothing has changed except that yesterday’s Almajiri has grown to be today’s carrier of assault rifles causing untold hardship on hapless Nigerians.
When a region celebrates sexual prowess with a resultant loads of children, (most of whom are not catered for) Almajiricin, an unislamic concept ensued, producing a vast torrent of uneducated poor, banditry and drugs related malaise, spreading anguish from the desert to the rain forest as is currently playing out. Speaking at a meeting of Nigeria’s Inter-Religious Council (NIREC) in Abuja in 2020, the Sultan Abubakar further stated that, “the north is the worst place to be in this country.
Bandits go round in the villages, households and markets with their AK-47 and nobody is challenging them.” And the results are in legion, as the Muslim north is the most impoverished, diseased, socially backward, ignorant and economically underdeveloped zone in the country whose woes was heightened by the destruction of the multibillion naira Abuja-Kaduna rail service by the children of the desert.
Aside the Kanuris, other ethnic nationalities in the core north are collectively referred to as Hausa-Fulani but the political –economy of the Fulani banditry has tilted the scenario dangerously to a scary dimension as the indigenous native Hausa people came up recently with an organization, Tura Ta Kai Bango; (Native Indigenous Hausa Peoples’ Movement for Self Actualization).
Hajiya Kalthoum Alumbe, leader and mobilizer-in-Chief of the organization, said they are made up of all native indigenous nationalities, Hausa Christians, non-Muslim Hausas (Maguzawa) and Muslim Hausas in the northern region and “our aim is to fight the Fulani who we consider is involved 100 percent in the current Fulanisation agenda.
This movement of mainly Hausa people comprises of non-Hausa natives (exclusive of Fulani people) who are trust worthy people (unlike the Fulani) and friends of the Hausas that share in our pains, worries and aspirations”.
Earlier this year, this motley group began to organize themselves into vigilante groups to protect themselves against the deadly Fulani bandits and like the Boko Haram, if the President does not do the needful immediately, Nigeria might soon be turned into an IDP camps. Though not at war, Nigerians in their hundreds are being killed daily, inflicting in its wake misery, injustice, wickedness, hatred, injustice and callousness.
Ordinarily, the election of a new President should elicit hope and despite his deluge of baggage, Tinubu’s Presidency does elicit faith and hope. Given that Leaders are as good as their team, Nigerians expect their president to appoint the best hands with capacity, competence and credibility, not just within his party but also across and beyond party lines.
Interestingly, Tinubu hinged his campaign on “renewed hope”. But hope is in the future, Nigerians therefore expect this hope to be brought to the present, as hope deferred makes the heart grow weary. Nigeria is a country of hope, possibilities and surprises. It’s only when there is hope in the present, can one believe in hope that will lead them to a new wave of prosperity, security, peace, and stability. And this president, complete with his own cabal, must assure Nigerians with his actions, that he will rise above party lines, ensure fairness, equity, and justice and lead Nigerians to the promised land. And will he? Only time will tell.
