Appraising President Bola Ahmed Tinubu‘s maiden media chat on Arise Television’s ‘The Morning Show’ programme, the immediate past National Vice Chairman (Northwest) of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Dr Salihu Lukman, said the president was in denial of the fact that his administration’s ‘so-called’ economic reform policies have failed. He was of the view that the president’s responses to questions portrayed him as “a President who is not listening” and likened Tinubu to an emperor operating in a dictatorial manner antithetical to democracy. Ordinarily highly articulate, one would have expected Lukman to critically interrogate the President’s responses to questions on specific policies and why he considered them inadequate even though I must confess that I only read reports of his Arise Television interview and did not watch it live.
In the media chat, Tinubu spiritedly defended his administration’s economic reform policies including the removal of the fuel subsidy, merger of the hitherto existing parallel foreign exchange markets and the proposed tax reform bills while insisting that he had no intention of downsizing his Cabinet which some critics consider too large in view of the need to cut down on governance costs. But then, the President acknowledged his awareness of the severe hardships brought about by the reforms, expressed his empathy with the people and was optimistic that beyond the current pains, there would be enduring gains including a stronger, less dependent and more prosperous economy.
All of this in my view does not suggest a President who is not listening or one who is alienated from the existential realities of the vast majority of Nigerians. Rather, it is akin to the surgeon who firmly believes that putting his patient under the knife, though a painful process, is imperative to save the latter’s life. Or the dentist in Wole Soyinka’s novel, ‘Season of Anomy’ who has to inflict the pain of dental extraction on his patient as the lasting panacea to an excruciating toothache.
Lukman insinuates that if Tinubu were a listening leader, he would jettison his reforms on a wave of populism due to the attendant hardships. But Tinubu insisted during the media chat that only the reforms could save the country from the perilous path it had charted for decades. Successive post independence governments, civilian and military, had identified the need to remove the subsidy but could not summon the courage to do so. Those who did, sought to eliminate the subsidy in trickles and phases with little impact on the economy as fuel importers continued to criminally amass humongous amounts from the gargantuan fraud associated with the subsidy.
True, Tinubu as leader of the opposition had opposed the partial subsidy removal announced by the President Goodluck Jonathan administration in 2012. But then, the country at that time was earning huge revenues from crude oil sales with the price of a barrel of oil considerably exceeding a $100 while the country’s crude oil exports were also substantial compared to subsequent years when crude oil theft on an industrial scale led to a sharp drop in the capacity to export. Unfortunately, previous administrations particularly during the PDP’s control of the centre between 1999 and 2015, did not utilize the opportunity of relatively high crude oil prices and the resultant munificent revenues to resuscitate dormant refineries to boost domestic refining or concretely address the country’s chronic infrastructure deficit in roads, railways and electricity, for instance. These inherited deficiencies have contributed to the intensity of hardships being experienced today as the country continues to adjust to life without fuel subsidies.
The removal by the administration of subsidy in the electricity sector leading to increase in tariff for certain categories of power consumers have also contributed to the prevailing economic hardships. But it is so easy to forget that under the PDP, no less than $16 billion was expended on the power sector with negligible impact on electricity supply. To compound matters was the largely opaque and fraudulent privatization of the defunct Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) with individuals and entities without the requisite expertise or financial capacity buying the distribution and generation companies and thus leaving the sector no better than before the privatization. Dr Lukman is no doubt aware of all these factors but is motivated more by partisan considerations in his contribution to the discourse on the presidential media chat.
Incidentally, the Bauchi State governor, Bala Mohammed, also toes the line of Salihu Lukman in accusing the Tinubu administration of not listening to the voice of the people. Speaking on the administration’s proposed tax reforms when receiving the Christian community in his state at the Bauchi Government House, he said, “These tax reforms are not only anti-North but also a threat to the unity of our country. The government must listen to the people. This is a democracy not a dictatorship or oligarchy. Policies should never be imposed on the people without considering their welfare…No leader should feel too proud or arrogant to admit when a policy is not working. If something is not popular with the people, change it! This is not about religion or tribe; it is about fairness, justice and the unity of Nigeria”. But courageous and visionary leadership is sometimes about a leader charting an unpopular course in the short run confident that it is in the long term interest of the people and that, ultimately, history will vindicate the just.
In any case, Bala Mohammed and Salihu Lukman assume that there is a uniform and cohesive voice of the people to which a leader must listen and respond. As far as they are concerned, their narrow views, naturally based on their interests and prejudices is the sole authentic voice to which the President must listen and bow to. But this is not necessarily so. On the tax reform bills, for instance, the Archbishop of the Anglican communion of Kadina Province, Timothy Yahaya, has a different view. According to this newspaper on Thursday, the Archbishop told reporters that “The Tax bills will stimulate the economy, but the sharing of money is not the best for this country…Leaders must think outside the box and think of creating wealth instead of thinking of sharing what we extracted from the ground”.
And the Senate Leader, Opeyemi Bamidele, citing available details from data accompanying the Bills, has argued that the proposed Value Added Tax (VAT) model will guarantee more income for states in the North and a reduction for states like Lagos and Rivers. In his words, “As credible data have shown, for instance, the new model recommends 6.17 per cent to Kano compared to 0.89 per cent due to it. It recommends 1.21 per cent for Zamfara compared to 0.05 per cent. Currently, Lagos gets 80.26 per cent but the new model only recommends 15.28 per cent representing an 81 per cent decrease. Under the new model also, Rivers’ share will decline from 7.74 per cent to 4.6 per cent accounting for a 41 per cent loss. With these figures, the narrative around the new derivative model is utterly incorrect and unfounded”.
Continuing, Senator Bamidele reveals further that “For the record, the Tax Reform Bills, when finally enacted, utterly exempt all employees earning N1,000,000 annually or N83,000 monthly. The Bills exempt start-ups, shared services and technologically driven services from taxation and recommend zero VAT on essential services and consumptions. Even though it reviews the derivation formula to 60 per cent, this proposal is guided purely by the principles of equity, fairness and justice”. This is obviously why President Tinubu insisted during the media chat that the Tax Reform Bills are essentially pro-poor and seek to modernize the anachronistic tax laws that date back to the colonial era. In any case, why should Salihu Lukman and Bala Mohammed presume that the economic reform policies of an administration that is less than two years in office have failed without providing any empirical justification for their assertion?
Yes, an already high poverty rate has been worsened by the administration’s drastic fuel subsidy and exchange rate policies. But some economists have also pointed out that there are signs of emergent recovery and future sustained growth. The country’s foreign reserves has hit the $42 billion mark and continues to grow. The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has cleared authenticated humongous foreign exchange owed to various sectors including foreign airlines. The country has recorded trade surpluses of no less than $6 trillion each over the last three quarters indicating steadily increasing domestic productivity.
For whatever it is worth, the Naira accruals to the Federation Account has almost tripled and most states have declared their ability to pay the nearly doubled new minimum wage. Stakeholders report remarkable improvements in agricultural harvest this year although getting agric produce from rural farms to urban centres to curb spiraling food prices remains a challenge. Even though the exchange rate of Naira to the dollar remains undesirably high, it has at least attained a level of stability that can enable businesses plan and make more reliable projections. Competition in a deregulated downstream petroleum sector is gathering momentum and we are gradually seeing the impact on fuel prices, a process that is likely to intensify as more refineries come on stream.
Dr Lukman cites what he describes as the dormant state of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) as the major reason why he believes that the Tinubu administration cannot deliver on its promises to Nigerians. According to him, “The party cannot offer the country what it does not have. The APC is currently practically dead. There are no meetings at the level of the organs of the party. No platform to ventilate and aggregate opinions or ideas to enrich the governance system. The party members only come together when there is an election a candidate. Such candidates do not usually emerge from the internal arrangement of the party. Such candidates are not usually the most eligible and what the party does is to mobilize men and resources to rig them in”. To be fair to him, Lukman had always advocated for internal party democracy and the unhindered functioning of party organs even while he was in the APC.
However, his description of the APC is no less true of what obtains in the other parties particularly the PDP and Labour Party (LP). This is why the opposition parties are crisis-ridden and, unless they are able to put their houses in order, are in no state to challenge effectively for power in current and future elections. But here, Lukman is guilty of a degree of hypocrisy. His benefactor and close associate, the temperamental Nasir ‘el rufai, former governor of Kaduna State, is essentially authoritarian in temper and outlook. He ran the affairs both of Kaduna State and the APC in the state with despotic arrogance riding rough shod over diverse interest groups including labour and religious constituencies. The current governor, Senator Uba Sani, is working hard to heal the wounds inflicted on the state by el rufai. Yet, Lukman never perceived the combustible former governor as an emperor. Lukman reveals that he and other like minded politicians are working hard to birth political parties that can produce the right leadership “amid a groundswell of recognition by leaders of the opposition to come together”. It will be interesting to see what kind of party they come up with especially with egotists like el rufai at its helm.
