Biting reforms should not lead to cynical politicians milking people’s pains. Yet, FG too should tweak the reforms to minimise mass hardship
It’s the crunch: policy reforms bite hard, the gloves are off and cynical politicians home in with tales of the Apocalypse — it’s end times for Nigeria because the ruling order deliberately saps the populace with harsh policies.
That is not true, though no one can seize the democratic rights of the political opposition to talk down the government, in order to enhance their own cause.
Indeed, were the present rulers in opposition, there is no guarantee they would bad-mouth the government any less, especially if there were popular pains and anguish to be milked — as indeed, there are, in the present case.
It’s an unfortunate pathology of Nigerian politics; and why there must be a shift to better, reasoned exchanges across the political aisle. That way, clinical dissection of policies would hallmark public discourse, not milking bile and emotions.
Which brings the matter to two separate events in two states, where the public protested the current harshness. One protest was in Minna, the Niger State capital, where citizens seized a popular highway, and crippled traffic. The other was in Kano, Kano State, prompting Governor Abba Yusuf to promise a pilgrimage to Aso Rock Villa, to seek special palliatives for Kano, to halt the extensive suffering of Kano people.
The two protests could have passed as normal — or spontaneous — until Niger Governor, Umar Mohammed Bago, started levying allegations of the opposition wilfully baiting the rumbling tummy of citizens, to allegedly settle political scores.
The governor even went as far as claiming the protest organisers had the sinister plot of looting and diverting foodstuffs — which was in a convoy of trucks heading towards the blocked highway, to further allegedly subvert the government’s efforts to tackle hunger. The foodstuffs were programmed palliatives.
But for the government’s intelligence that exposed the alleged plot, claimed the governor, the food trucks could well have been looted under the guise of “protest”. Well, the governor should submit his evidence to the security agencies. Whoever is found culpable should be taken through the grill of the law, until legal conviction.
Still, even the Niger governor would admit that, even if there was a plot, that plot registered with too many grumbling mouths and rumbling bellies. That is the chilly reality all sitting governments — federal, states and local councils — must fix, if they must turn the ugly tide.
Meanwhile, on the basis of this allegation, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has been clashing with opposition voices, from the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) to the Labour Party (LP).
The ruling party insists the opposition voices are playing crass politics of the belly. The opposition counter the reform policies are too harsh, even if both PDP and LP, at the 2023 elections, pledged themselves to similar reforms, should they win the presidential mandate: removing fuel subsidy and finding a market-determined parity for the Naira, against the dollar and other foreign currencies.
However the Federal Government feels, even it would admit the pain and misery in the land. To be fair, President Bola Tinubu loses no moment to acknowledge citizens’ pains; and how he and his policy suite are working hard to improve things.
But until gains are clear and manifest, the opposition would not be robbed of its democratic right to gloat; and to paint a doomsday scenario to push own message. What the government must do in the circumstance, is to own up to its policies; be more clinical in thinking, less pissed in emotions, and try to periodically tweak the policies to bring citizens progressive relief, without surrendering the ultimate goal of the reforms, so long as it feels that is the hard and straight path to economic rebirth.
Here, there are two fundamental policy pillars: subsidy removal and finding a market-realistic parity for the Naira. Both have been responsible for soar-away inflation. It rose in December 2023 to 28.92%, from 28.20 % in November 2023. It was 22.41% in May 2023, when the Tinubu Presidency was inaugurated, citing National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) data.
One of the two pillars, however, has a possible soft-landing nest. With local refining of petrol taking off, the pump price of all grades of petroleum products should moderate in months, other things being equal.
That should temper inflation, if it happens — and there is no reason it should not, if we deal with market forces. Besides, forex spent on importing products should seriously reduce — and freed for other productive uses — thus easing the dollar-shortage crisis.
So, what the government should do is to further pressure the ready local refineries to start business and push out products for the local market — and effectively share its efforts with the public via a vigorous partnership with the media. Fortunately, the Federal Government has stakes in both the Dangote Refinery and the Port Harcourt Refinery, both ready to start pumping fuel.
The second leg of the policy pillar would appear not so predictable — not with executive and street rogues, from the banking halls to the hustling lane, barricaded to game the system, fatten selves but bankrupt the majority. Such a roguish mindset makes the market even more imperfect, leading to a Naira free fall, not on the basis of sound economic activity but out of system rigging, by those who should play the game by the rules.
To deal with such a greedy and irresponsible elite, the government must get very aggressive: clamp down on these thieves, treat them as the economic saboteurs that they are, hand them their harsh comeuppance according to the law and publicise these corrective activities to act as deterrence to others.
Still, at the earliest, all of these will yield result in the medium run — given Nigeria’s leisurely pace of prosecution and trial. To complement that, however, the government could embark on a media blitz, combined with deliberate activities that forcefully discourage these criminal conducts, stressing the stiff penalties such would earn, while the Central Bank should not hesitate to roast the executives of the errant banks.
Aside, the government should carry out a vigorous tracking of the exchange policy, tweaking it from time to time, to ease the pains on the citizens. The idea here is to be flexible, not adopt a rigid orthodoxy that could put the Naira sinking in a bottomless hole.
Meanwhile, the Federal Government should speedily dispense with whatever dissonance and drama with the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, so that monetary transfers to the poorest and most helpless among Nigerians can resume — if indeed, it ever stopped.
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To fob off opportunistic partisans preying on public rage, such monetary succours are absolutely imperative. It should also complement this step with palliatives from the national strategic grains reserves, as President Tinubu reportedly just ordered, to tamp down food inflation and assuage mass hunger.
Still, a palliative economy is no long-term solution. It’s only a reminder that the basic problem is still there. Palliatives are only short-term tinkering, which should give way, when the economic fundamentals are much better.
Besides, removing subsidy and floating the Naira, thus risking this current massive devaluation, are supposed twin-tactics to avoid further debts but instead attract venture capital by global investors.
Inasmuch as it is fine to critique the policies, it helps a great deal to at least try to understand the policy framework. That way, it would be critical but constructive critiquing, not blind blusters. Such wild blusters not only traduce or criminalise policy makers for whatever motives, they add zero value to policy review and improvement.
Such, unfortunately, would appear the din that today drives policy discourse in the public space. Even if politicians are way too wayward to achieve such rigorous heights, the media should aim at it, being the esteemed Fourth Estate.
Why? A more rigorous media tracking will help to curtail hell raisers and rabble rousers, with suspect public interest value. Besides, every nation goes through rough patches and lean times in its history — and most navigate through it. So, it’s not every difficult time that Nigeria faces “Armageddon”.
The media has a pivotal role to put things in proper perspectives. It cannot afford failure in that bounden duty. We, after all, have no other country beyond Nigeria.
