Author: The Nation

• By Sheyi Money

After years of despondency, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has renewed the hope of citizens. After the dark and dreary years in the valley of darkness, the people of Nigeria now have cause for hope. If the morning shows the day, then there appears to be a ray of hope at the end of the tunnel. A politically and religiously polarised and divided nation may have begun the process of healing. She may eventually recover the lost grounds as a result of the divisive policies of the previous administration(s).

Take for instance, the recent appointments of the service chiefs and heads of security institutions of the country.  The Chief of Defence Staff, Major General Christopher Musa, hails from Kaduna State, northwest Nigeria. Major General Taoreed Lagbaja, the Chief of Army Staff, is from Osun State in southwest. The Chief of Naval Staff, Rear Admiral Ikechuckwu Ogalla, hails from Enugu State in the Southeast.  Air Vice Marshal Bala Abubakar, Chief of Air Staff, is from Kano State in the Northwest. The Chief of Defence Intelligence, Major General Emmanuel Undiandeye, hails from Cross River State in the south-south.

The new Acting Inspector-General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun, is from Ogun State in the Southwest. The National Security Adviser (NSA), Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, a former chairman of EFCC, hails from Adamawa State in the northeast. Yusuf Magaji, from Kano State, remains the Director General of Department of State Security (DSS).

President Tinubu had earlier appointed Senator George Akume from Benue in the north-central as Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SSG). The appointments made so far, including Special Advisers and Special Assistants, reflect the diversity of Nigeria without sacrificing quality and competence.

Recognising the heterogeneous nature of the country, Section 14(3) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) provides as follows: “The composition of the Government of the Federation or any of its agencies and the conduct of its affairs shall be carried out in such a manner as to reflect the federal character of Nigeria and the need to promote national unity, and also to command national loyalty, thereby ensuring that there shall be no predominance of persons from a few States or from a few ethnic or other sectional groups in that Government or in any of its agencies.”

It is a matter of regret that the previous administration observed the federal character, enshrined in the constitution, only in breach. This created enormous distrust and avoidable tension in the country.

In the last dispensation, it was as if the country was on auto-pilot, a rudderless ship sailing in turbulent waters. Inter-agency rivalries, the magnitude never witnessed in the annals of Nigeria, became the norm. Insecurity spread like fire on a sunny day, leading to escalating food shortage and mass poverty. The quip that ‘business is a coward’ is always true. Hence the last dispensation witnessed a lot of divestments in the country; the unemployment situation became exacerbated.

The mismanagement of the monetary policy by the Central Bank of Nigeria worsened the human development indices. For instance, the bungled currency redesign and naira swap led to mass misery and depression. The already challenged small businesses across the country collapsed in millions. It beats one hollow why a supposedly independent and apolitical regulatory institution with consequential responsibilities on monetary policy, money supply and inflation, currency and financial stability, among others, got absorbed in partisan politics and literarily became the government’s ATM. The Godwin Emefile-led CBN sacrificed the independence of the apex bank and became involved in virtually every fiscal policy through its financial interventions in almost all sectors of the economy. Through ways and means, it lent an unprecedented sum of N22.8trn to the federal government, which almost doubled the entire public debt of Nigeria as at 2015.

Read Also: Hope rises for naira stability, forex market liquidity

 The suspension of the CBN governor by the new government is, therefore, a welcome development that will impact positively on the economy of the country.

Within weeks of being in power, the Student Loan Bill and Electricity Bill were signed into law. The latter is particularly most consequential, as it opens up new vistas for the beleaguered power sector.

A nation in a coma in the last 10 years seems to have been bludgeoned to life by the Tinubu administration. Things are moving so fast and in the right direction. The giant feet of a nation hitherto stuck in the mud for over a decade now appears to leapfrog. The political atmosphere is now assuring. I wish the federating states can take their cue from the central government and create reasons for their traumatized citizens to rise from the ashes of despondency and look to the future filled with hope.

Admittedly, things are still difficult. The standard of living is appallingly poor. Nigeria’s ranking in the United Nations Human Development Index leaves much to be desired, a cumulative effect of years of mismanagement of the economy. The cost of living is bound to rise, especially as a result of fuel subsidy removal.

The subsidy regime drained the economy. Some marketers would load PMS at the subsidized rates and then divert the fuel to the neighbouring countries where they would sell at a minimum of 400 per cent above the local price. Besides, when government was able to offset the cost of fuel subsidy, it depended largely on borrowing as it lacked adequate revenue to foot the bill, hence aggravating the financial situation of the country. The subsidy regime is like a cancerous cell in the body that has to be removed via surgery, with concomitant pain. With the positive signs shown so far, we can sacrifice our comfort today for a better tomorrow.

It must be mentioned that through deft political moves by the Tinubu administration in ensuring the emergence of a Christian as Senate President, the tension and fears generated by Muslim-Muslim ticket, which, ironically, enjoyed endorsement across the religious divides during the 1993 presidential poll, have now been doused and mollified.

The actions taken so far by the president, especially with regards to ethnic balancing in appointments and religious sensitivity, have calmed frayed nerves and by all accounts, sit well with majority of Nigerians. For the first time in a long time, the ship of the Nigerian state now appears to be cruising in largely calm waters.

Should we be surprised, given the antecedents of the president? Tinubu is not the typical Nigerian politician; he is a businessman, an accountant, economist and above all, a democracy activist. Not many may recall his struggles against military rule. Tinubu was a member of the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), which fought for the restoration of democracy in the country. As governor of Lagos State, he changed the face of the megacity through innovative security architecture, transportation, judicial reforms and friendly business environment, which led to massive leap in the Internally Generated Revenue of the state and better life its citizens. There is no doubt that he will replicate at the national level the Lagos success story. Tinubu may turn out as the ideal leader that this nation mostly desires and mostly deserves.

•Money, a social enterprise development consultant, writes from Lagos

Fresh-in-the-saddle Sokoto State Governor Ahmad Aliyu, last week, broke with the conventional mould of the conduct of power as we are familiar with in this country. He paid an impromptu visit to a government hospital on a fact-finding mission; and what’s more, he went in a disguise and rode in a tricycle to get there. It was a populist foray outside the conventional mould, because their excellencies typically ride in motorcades with sirens blaring to sites where reception parties had advance information they were coming and would have put up veneers that accord with, or at least border on what would gratify the August visitor. Most times, those veneers are deceptive and only momentarily dissemble the stark reality that ordinary members of the public encounter in transactions with facilities in question.

The Sokoto governor toed a different path. He reportedly arrived at Sokoto Specialist Hospital unannounced last Monday following complaints by state residents about collapsed state of service delivery at the facility, and he spent considerable time getting first-hand experience of ongoings there. A statement by the governor’s spokesman said he rode to the hospital in a tricycle, with the stunt visit enabling him to personally appraise the hospital’s dilapidated structures, erratic power supply, dearth of manpower and lack of functional medical equipment among other challenges. He was also able to get first-hand information from hospital workers.

The statement cited Governor Aliyu saying: “I was surprised with what I saw during my visit  to the hospital, which lasted four hours; it afforded me the opportunity to see things for myself. Patients and their relatives are subjected to all kinds of hazardous situations owing to dirty environment and lack of functional  equipment at the medical facility. Patients’ relatives rely solely on alternative sources of power due to erratic electricity supply in the hospital.” The governor added that he had directed the management of the hospital to see him for further discussions on how to remedy the ugly situation. Agency reports also cited a top management source at the hospital saying the rundown state of things owed to the failure of past administrations in the state to release allocations to the institution when due.

There are many things to say for the prankishness of Aliyu, who took the reins of leadership in Sokoto barely three weeks before his outing. His going to the hospital in a tricycle indicated a daring affectation for the people he leads. Many in the Nigerian leadership elite, including legislative representatives and council officials who should be close to the grassroots, go around with security fortification that keeps them out of touch with the people they represent and suggest they indeed detest the rabble in the manner Shakespeare’s Coriolanus detested the Roman plebeians. Then, Aliyu’s choice to see things for himself helped unquantifiably in exposing the true state of things, because if he had stayed away and merely asked for reports, he would most certainly have been fed lies about the status quo. Besides, those hospital workers he was opportune to speak with would never have gotten their voices heard by the governor, while the voices in position to be heard would have masked the reality from him to the extent that it profits them. If you bother to check, you may find that allocations that reportedly weren’t getting to the hospital may not be for failure of past state governors to approve some funds, but rather that such funds were intercepted upon being disbursed. Meanwhile, their excellencies sitting cocooned behind mahogany desks would not know any better as the public languishes under dilapidation of services arising from contrived neglect. The derring-do approach by Aliyu circumscribes distortive mediation and gets ungarnished facts to the surface.

Read Also: Tinubu’s revelatory leadership style

The greatest tragedy of governance would be if the prankishness of the Sokoto governor was all that – prankishness and symbolism; if not much gets done to remedy the challenges at the hospital after his visit; and if administering the hospital remain business as usual. It would indeed be tragic if the new governor enacted that whole act for mere dramatic effect and to get attention, rather than this being a philosophy of governance for him. In other words, we wait to see that it wasn’t mere initial zeal that will soon fizzle out into insulatory comfort of routine governance.

There are examples across the world of leaders who were noted for adventure in their bid to get the pulse of the reality of the people they rule over. Soon after attaining the throne in 1999, King Abdullah II of Jordan was reported stunting in covert exploits to identify with the Jordanian masses. At one time he posed as a taxi passenger, spending two hours watching life unfold on Amman’s often chaotic streets. Reports said for his taxi ride, the then 37-year-old monarch wore the kind of beat-up clothes an ordinary Jordanian would put on in the harsh economic clime. His disguise was so convincing that he avoided detection even when he and the supposed cabdriver, who was a palace aide, stopped to ask a policeman for directions and later, eager to test local law enforcement, made what palace sources called “a manoeuvre or two that was illegal.” The conduct of policemen, who reportedly stopped the errant taxi and scolded the ‘passenger’ for not wearing a seat belt, but were talked out of issuing a ticket, did not help the reputation of the force seen by many Jordanians as less than competent. And King Abdullah took all that in.

At another time, the Jordanian king reportedly disguised as a television reporter, complete with fake white beard and Arab robes, as he and an aide armed with a video camera went to inspect Jordan’s free trade zone about which investors had bitterly complained of suffocating bureaucracy and red tape. During that outing, the monarch had to ditch his disguise when trade zone officials obstructed the camera team, saying they could not work without a permit. In response, according to reports, the king pulled off his fake beard to reveal his real, stubbly and black one. If nothing else, he thereby served notice – to the public and to businessmen, to bureaucrats and other members of the Jordanian power elite – that he was willing to break the mould to shake things up.

In more contemporary times there was Norway’s Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, who in 2013 spent an afternoon working as a thinly disguised taxi driver in Oslo to gauge Norwegians’ views on a range of issues. Even in autocratic China, there was once a report that President Xi Jinping dumped his private car and hopped into a cab. He reportedly probed the driver’s views on air pollution before disclosing his true identity, saying: “Everyone is equal, and I’m from the grassroots too.” And British politicians are fond of appearing as being in touch with the people by taking public transportation. Prime Ministers Tony Blair, David Cameron and Boris Johnson at different times travelled on London’s underground network accompanied by photographers. As premier, Johnson was as well fond of riding bicycles to neighbourhood grocery stores to do personal shopping. Of course, some members of the Nigerian power elite have also at different times been spotted in populist posturing, like when they commingle and eat corn off the streets with the rabble crowd. Only that much of such showing occurred during electioneering when votes were being hunted; outside of electioneering periods, power actors get walled off by power from easy access to the people.

But there is no doubt that stunt populism has value if it contributes to delivering good governance. It would be nice, for instance, if Nigerian power actors come down every now and then from the Olympus and get the street experience of the impact of their exercise of power, just like ordinary Nigerians do. It is a win-win effect such practice would have for both the leader and the led: it would garner emotional support for the leader who would be seen as being in touch with the people; and because the leader is really in touch, policies would be enacted with empathic touch as would succour the people. Let me be clear that the idea being canvassed is not to stage vacuous shows of populism just to win spontaneous applause; because where you have such happening, it is more or less like watching a nice theatre movie: when you go out of the theatre, you get hit with the hard facts.

•Please join me on kayodeidowu.blogspot.be for conversation.