By Taiwo Adisa
Exactly a week ago, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar took out President Bola Tinubu’s policies and gave them uncomplimentary tags. He condemned the hasty implementation of the subsidy removal programme and the bullish implementation of the foreign exchange policy of the Central Bank of Nigeria, which has taken the Naira from about N600 to $1 to about N1,700 to $1 as counter-productive to social welfare, and “trial-and-error economic policies” that have orchestrated “excruciating pain” for Nigerians.
In a detailed analysis of almost all of the critical aspects of the administration’s policy initiatives, Atiku advocated a gradualist approach to the fuel subsidy removal and backed up his argument with examples from Malaysia and Indonesia, where such policies were phased.
While admitting that he also advocated fuel subsidy removal as a policy on the campaign trail, Atiku said: “Yes, I have always advocated for the removal of subsidy on PMS because its administration has been mildly put, opaque with so much scope for arbitrariness and corruption. Mind boggling rent profit from oil subsidy accrued to the cabals in public institutions and the private sector.”
He, thereafter, advocated four key steps Tinubu should have taken. One is the need to the fight corruption in the oil sector by reforming the NNPCL, which he said has been a part of the problem; next is the need to shore up the refining capacity of the country, by refining at least 50% of its production and dominating the West African market with 50% of the refined products; a gradual subsidy removal that could take some years, as in Malaysia and Indonesia and the fourth being the implementation of a robust social protection programme.
Atiku also highlighted how he would have implemented a $10 billion Economic Stimulus Fund (ESF),to support MSMEs across all economic sectors and another $25 billion Infrastructure Development Fund(IDF), which he said would have hit the ground running by putting the building blocks for a private sector-driven infrastructure development.
On foreign exchange management, Atiku advocated a gradualist approach and specifically “a managed-floating system.” He said: “We would have sequenced my reforms to achieve fiscal and monetary congruence. Unleashing reforms to determine an appropriate exchange rate, cost-reflective electricity tariff, and PMS price at one and the same time is certainly an overkill. Add CBN’s bullish money tightening spree. As importer of PMS and other petroleum products, removing subsidy on these products without a stable exchange rate would be counterproductive.”
In its reply to Atiku, the Presidency, which spoke through the Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Mr. Bayo Onanuga said that the former Vice President’s ideas would have worsened the nation’s woes.
“While advocating for gradual reforms may sound appealing, Tinubu took measures that should have been implemented decades ago by Alhaji Abubakar and his boss [Olusegun Obasanjo] when they had the opportunity,” Onanuga said in a statement he issued on November 3, the same day Atiku’s tweets were posted.
Recall that Tinubu’s administration has been dogged by his “subsidy is gone” declaration on the inauguration day, which was followed by the unified foreign exchange policy, another euphemism for Naira devaluation. While the president’s spokesman admitted “temporary difficulties” he branded Atiku’s submissions as cheap talk.
According to Onanuga: “Firstly, Alhaji Atiku’s ideas, which lacked detail, were rejected by Nigerians in the 2023 election. Had he won, we believe he would have plunged Nigeria into a worse situation or overseen a regime of cronyism.
“Abubakar lost the election partly because he vowed to sell the NNPC and other assets to his friends. Nigerians have not forgotten this, nor would they be comforted by Atiku’s track record when he managed the economy during President Olusegun Obasanjo’s first term from 1999 to 2003.
“As Vice President, Atiku oversaw a questionable privatisation programme. He and his boss showed little faith in our educational system, establishing their universities while allowing others to decline. Despite his futile attempt to mislead Nigerians again in his statement, it is telling that the former Vice President could not dispute the economic reforms pursued by the Tinubu administration because they are the right course of action.”
The Presidency added that Atiku’s proposal of a gradual approach demonstrated his lack of awareness of the “severe issues President Tinubu inherited,” declaring that it was easy for Atiku to present “a flowery to-do list.”
Though the back and forth between the Presidency and Atiku went further as Atiku released another follow-up statement on Monday November 4, I believe that the government missed a great opportunity to succinctly communicate its policies to Nigerians. Today, if you ask many Nigerians about the details of Tinubu’s programmes, what they would reel out are the components of the “excruciating pain” Atiku talked about. And rehearsing Obasanjo/Atiku scorecard cannot help the government in anyway because the statistics out there would show that living standards were better under the Obasanjo/Atiku administration.
Though the Minister of Finance, Wale Edun, had revealed details of the president’s eight-point agenda in August 2023, not many can recall the exact components of that agenda. What we have seen since May 29, 2023 include galloping inflation, job losses, shutting down factories, companies relocating, under performing Naira, persistent fuel price increase and consistent rise in cost of food and drugs. Even though, Edun, had admitted in August 2023 that the 24 percent inflation rate Tinubu inherited from President Muhammadu Buhari was unacceptable, the Tinubu administration has taken inflation well beyond 30 percent mark, while interest rates kept rising as well.
As much as we expect the government to defend its line against Atiku, one does not expect personal attacks on the Adamawa politician. What we expect is a robust conversation that would have educated Nigerians about the policy trusts of the contending parties. For instance, why did Tinubu make the “subsidy is gone” declaration when he has nothing on ground to cushion the effects? That’s a misstep which even the military did not dare. As things turned out, that declaration has worsened socio-economic challenges. Many would want to ask, where are the benefits of the “subsidy is gone” declaration, one and a half years after? If a policy is supposed to last four years, are we not supposed to have started seeing the benefits mid-way into the tenure? What happened to the advertised ERGP reforms of the Buhari administration? If Buhari’s ERGP achieved nothing in eight years, where is the assurance that Tinubu’s reforms would fare better? How long does a people need to endure painful reforms before they reach the eldorado? Answers to these were missing in the response by the presidency.
I think our democracy has long suffered from policies that are malnourished in conception and implementation. The unfortunate thing is that the policy implimentor would go scot-free no matter how badly he leaves the people at the end of the experiments. The undue assumption that a president’s ideas or that of the governor of a state would instantly transform the nation or the state from the woods has remained unhelpful to this democracy. Rather than subject the politicians’ ideas to formal and informal debates, ahead of the elections, our countrymen prefer to gather in ceremonial attires during campaigns and dance away the truth. Drumbeats, drama and short speeches characterise the campaign scenes where no one interrogates the “lofty” contained in the manifestoes being circulated by surrogates. The candidates mumble some highly inaudible messages, sing, crack jokes or fire shots at opponents and leave for the next location. He talks in general terms all through the campaigns and while in office, he would discover that he was holding aloft an empty calabash. And because the constitution does not expressly prescribe consequences for bad leadership, one leader after the has come and left the people worse-off.
What I will recommend is that henceforth, a candidate’s manifesto should be made his bound. Once a candidate wins either the presidency, the governorship or council chairmanship seat, his or her manifesto should be submitted to the parliament which would legislate the same into law, thereby making it justiceable. The document would, therefore, become an instrument to measure performance on an annual basis. It could constitute an avenue for impeachment of the office holder and possible prosecution after office. That way, no office holder would have the temerity to take the people for a ride or embark on ceremonial governance in four or eight years, as the case may be.
