Author: The Nation

• By Cyrus Ademola

Nigerian elites are mired in the cultural trait of critique. It’s adulatory and progressive to critique whatever it is the government does. This critical mind-set confers the elites a celebrity position that they identify with the masses and ordinary, struggling Nigerians. It’s a typical virtue-signalling approach that has its root in cultural Marxism, whereby every position held by the establishment is brought to questioning and ridicule.

It’s no secret that the three leading presidential candidates — Abubakar Atiku, Peter Obi and Bola Ahmed Tinubu — held similar position that subsidy had to go, and, “immediately.” Now, rather than laud the gut of the president for the political determination to uphold his campaign promises, social commentators (and even economists) are now claiming that such position is antithetical to the general view. This is hypocrisy on steroids. Added to that is the irony that subsidy removal was once a populist policy that the leading presidential candidates could push as their political talking points without the fear of losing potential votes. 

I don’t mind the criticism that the government should have rolled out palliatives and social welfare programmes before putting an end to the era of subsidy. I can understand the feeling of those who claim that the aftermath of the policy is biting the masses, and there’s a need to cushion the effect through government intervention. This is a reasonable position to hold. However, no one believes that the removal of subsidy won’t have a short-term adverse effect on the price on goods and services, but the intelligent position is that on net balance, those short-term discomforts will in turn unleash the latent potential of the oil sector and create room for competition, all the while ridding it from the inherent corruption and malpractices embedded in subsidy. 

We’ve seen in recent days how prices of premium motor spirit (PMS) have increased in neighbouring countries such as Benin, Mali, Togo, Ivory Coast and Ghana. This is due to the fact that these countries benefit massively from our subsidy programme through the intermediary of black marketers. Put differently, our oil products are subsidised not only for Nigerians, but for other African nations. As a result, Nigerians are left high and dry, leaving the citizens with record-high inflation, insurmountable public debt and unemployment, as other nations enjoy effortlessly cheap PMS to boost their own economy. This is how inherently corrupt and lopsided the subsidy era was. For a group of elites who shout the loudest against corruption and corrupt systems in governance, shouldn’t this be a big win for them? Not at all. To laud such policy will be giving up their pseudo-morality that they are against the tide. 

Read Also: Fuel subsidy and masses’ self-proclaiming heroes

One doesn’t have to support the ruling party to laud a policy that works. While criticism is a welcome development in any democratic system, it also has to be constructive, objective and nonpartisan. If all the opposition does is criticise without offering a more palpable solution, then we’re not after nation building. 

No matter how one twists and turns it, subsidy removal is a good thing for the Nigerian economy; it’s particularly a good thing for the oil industry that has been mired in corruption, opacity, unaccountability and wastage for several decades. For the oil industry to be rejigged to become a wealth-creating industry it once was, subsidy had to go. There’s a saying that one must crack a few eggs before one makes an omelette. I think the president is doing exactly that. The cracking is never comfortable, but who doesn’t like an omelette for breakfast? 

We’ll fault the government when the time comes, but to speak against a good policy simply because one is trying to be politically correct or play opposition is simply opportunistic. While we are at it, another brave move from the president is the unification of the foreign exchange market. Here’s another big blow dealt against corruption in the monetary and fiscal sector. With a multiple exchange rates out of the window, those who benefit from arbitrage and rent can kiss their fraudulent enterprise goodbye. 

The elites must realise that Nigeria is bigger than their obsessive attempt to score cheap political points to the detriment of nation building. The position that the only acceptable convention is to be unconventional doesn’t do anyone good, except the elites themselves. The arrogance of always wanting to be right borders on narcissism as well as intellectual dishonesty. After eight years of Buhari, it’s a no-brainer that whoever is at the helm of affairs of the Nigerian state has some tough decisions to make. If President Tinubu is rising to the occasion to make these tough decisions, the least we can do for our nation is to offer constructive criticism, not blatant rebuke that he’s working against the masses. 

The strategic move to revamp both the macroeconomic and monetary policy in Nigeria by the president was once the consensual position of the elites. Now that they’ve been granted what they wished and clamoured for, they should stop acting as though their wishes didn’t come true. The bourgeois view has now been adopted by the political class; it’s glaringly pretentious for the bourgeoisie to act like they didn’t know exactly what they asked for. Besides, it does no one any good if we continue to perpetuate and reward corruption and fraudulence simply because we want to uphold the status quo of elitism. Subsidy removal is a positive economic move; and no amount of virtue-signalling is sufficient to brush stroke it as calamitous. 

• By Ronke Bello

For leaders, essential communication strategies in the public sector help ensure a message or program is understood and gets through to the target audience with as much clarity and conciseness as possible. These strategies can directly impact different elements of a program’s success and operation, making them vital to develop as best as possible; this is participatory governance and is the order of sane and working democracies across the globe. The more informed the citizens are about the policies of their government, the more they develop interest in participation either in support or against.

So many policies of government have been attacked by the masses simply because they were not well informed or involved in the process or processes that led to the formulation and implementation of those policies. After all, it is a common parlance that what people do not understand they tend to ignore or attack. Thus it is of utmost importance for the masses to ‘flow’ with their government and this is something the presidency of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu has promised to take seriously.

Renewed hope in itself is a message. According to Woodrow Wilson ‘The ear of the leader must ring with the voices of the people’ and vice versa.  Apart from being explicit about programs and policies, it is also very crucial to reach out to the masses with messages of hope and inspiration whenever the pulse of the populace indicates trust deficit even though this must be beyond rhetoric.

For instance in 1984, under the military, there was a television commercial by NTA featuring a character called Andrew who bemoaned the hardship occasioned by lack of basic amenities like power, roads and water and wanted to leave Nigeria for greener pastures abroad saying to his listeners: “I’m checking out,”. But he was persuaded to stay back, that there was hope.  The jingle became the most popular back then in what will be referred to today as “viral”. It was such that whenever anyone experienced some frustrations about life in Nigeria then, what usually followed was, “I’m checking out” in what in today’s term is known as ‘japa’.  That commercial in itself was not just a tool for mass enlightenment but for awakening patriotism and belief in one’s country.

The government must attempt to constantly match communication with real time actions and as the policies roll out because the world today is over-informed from various sources 24/7. So our own government must be alive and deliberate at pushing through the necessary and productive awareness to its citizens.  This means leaders must communicate the concerns, needs, and goals of all constituents, even to those who may not embrace a certain program or initiative at first.

Read Also: Oil & gas community development committee commend Tinubu, pass vote of confidence on NDDC MD

Public policy leaders can construct effective policies by building this mutual path of understanding through strong communication, not just about stating facts but conveying facts in a manner that fosters a sense of trust and responsibility to the public, so it doesn’t come off as manipulative spins.

Our government need to design a clear two-way relationship with an effective engagement strategy which can yield several benefits; for instance proper representationthrough direct engagement with people within heterogeneous communities can ensure policies are shaped holistically and not geared toward a smaller but vocal communal segment. Secondly, with a better understanding of needs, leaders can more effectively dive into the minutiae of public policy issues based on hearing how they specifically impact people within a community. Thirdly, with a deep sense of community ownership, more engagement with a community can allow its members to provide a deeper insight into a proposed policy based on a community’s historical and cultural context since informed and engaged citizens are better partners.

Our nation has experienced some turbulence in the past decade due to improper management of information leading to crisis. Going forward, the occurrence of such must be curtailed to the barest minimum through swift and strategic dissemination of information by the most capable hands in the land, in synergy with relevant security agencies. This not only involves getting word out at the earliest possible outset of a crisis, but also constantly and clearly communicating data to the public as the crisis evolves.

Effective public leaders will fully understand how to adjust their communication strategies to directly address different situations. Regardless of the goal or situation, good public leaders have the leadership and critical thinking skills to build a strategy that optimizes information. Once this crucial data is gathered, leaders need to pare it down in a way that conveys the most essential information to the public in a clear, unambiguous manner even in languages that are native to her citizens. Doing so gives the public its best chance of fully grasping the information that can impact them the most. It’s all about information dissemination, engagements and buy in/ building trust between the led and the leader after all according to HE Luccock ‘No one can whistle a symphony. It takes a whole Orchestra to play it.’

Finally, since ‘The art of communication is the language of leadership’ according to James Humes, this government under the leadership of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu must aim at getting it right.  After all, President Tinubu is one leader whose backbone is the people and whose message of renewed hope resonates with where the citizens are as they look forward to a prosperous nation.

•Bello PhD, a publicist and policy analyst, member Public Affairs Directorate of the 2023 APC Presidential Campaign Committee writes from Abuja.