Last week, this column was dedicated to a speculative projection of where the Tinubu administration might be by next May when it strikes mid term. My contention was essentially that the administration has literally squandered most of the last one and half years in failing to put an effective administration in place. It has as yet no defining policy identity. It has no character, thrust or direction. To that extent, I contended that the administration will hit the mid term mark still groping for direction with heaps of issues and problems waiting to be addressed. Worse still, the administration may just be grappling with the problems it has deliberately created in search of a policy identity: inflation, high energy prices, spiraling inflation, expending poverty, unprecedented hunger, violence and insecurity etc. The concluding contention was that next May will only activate the beginnings of the 2027 political campaigns instead of an improvement in the present desperate conditions. It is looking more like a wasted first term, preparatory for a second term that will resemble a war.
The butt of my contention was that the four-year presidential tenure imposes a time limitation on every incumbent president to work and achieve a definite identity within a restricted time frame. The first year is time to set up an administration, set a tone and define a character. The second and third years are for effective governance and establishment of an identifiable policy identity and defining character. The fourth year is for re-election campaign and the ‘warfare’ of political succession. The gavel of the argument was that a situation where only one and half years is left for governance constricts the time left for solving mounting national problems most of which were created by the very administration.
One of my readers vehemently disagreed. On the contrary, he argues that what President Tinubu has set in motion is in fact a tectonic policy ‘revolution’ comparable to those initiated by the late Obafemi Awolowo in the old Western Region. The full implications of the present policies are so far reaching and fundamental that the present tenure may as well qualify as the beginning of another ‘golden age’ of a new Nigeria. The present hardship and difficulties will pass away and those who are strong enough to survive them will enter the new paradise of a better Nigeria. Beyond reforming Nigeria for good, Tinubu is also gradually restructuring the nation in ways that may be more far reaching that many political pundits are advocating or even dreamt of. The full impacts will only be appreciated long after the Tinubu presidency has ended and passed away. Excerpts:
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Tinubu has roughly six months to provide tangible evidence of progress and he may be able to produce it by stating that petrol subsidy removal has ramped up petrol refining locally and the devaluation of the Naira is boosting diaspora investments in Nigeria, just as the proposed tax reforms when approved will be a game changer that will augur well for income redistribution and as such boost the rapid development of our dear nation.
But the benefits of Tinubu’s reforms which, in my view, tend to reflect the belief in some quarters that he is restructuring Nigeria in piecemeal as opposed to Goodluck Jonathan’s one fell swoop restructuring driven by his failed 2014 national confab initiative. Tinubu is systematically restructuring Nigeria layer by layer in the manner an onion is peeled off, layer by layer.
Tinubu, in my view, will be celebrated long after he has left office because the policies he is introducing and implementing now have a long gestation period, usually beyond the two terms tenure of elected office holders in Nigeria’s presidential system. But in due course, they will mature like the proverbial old wine and Tinubu may be remembered like the sage Obafemi Awolowo whose policies of free education in the South West and the establishment of Oodua Group that invested the revenue generated from the then highest income generating resource-(Cocoa)- in strategic assets that are till date still yielding income bountifully for the Yoruba nation.
My prediction is that while Awo’s veneration is only by Yoruba people, eulogies for Tinubu in another decade or two may cut across all tribes, creeds, and cultures in Nigeria…
We may not all survive the current hardships. But such is life. China needed electricity to power her communism crippled economy and had to dam the Three Gorges River which environmentalists objected to owing to the catastrophic environmental consequences that would arise there. But China did it and it leaped forward and became the largest manufacturer in the world, beating fellow Asian country- Japan- and all the European countries and only becoming the second largest economy after the USA.
It took the guts of a leader to damn the consequences of a few lives being lost for others to survive. It is like going to war and a few soldiers dying to liberate a nation or community. Those who die in the war attain the status of heroes.
In my view, those who do not make it through the current turbulent times should be immortalized as heroes as we do our fallen soldiers.
Of course, these views may not command popular acclaim by some, who may deem them nihilistic. But it is what it is. Leaders in war or peacetime sometimes have to make decisions that may seem foolish to some onlookers but which the leader sees as necessary and inevitable to bring about positive change or for the greater good of the majority.
I am an optimist to the core. In fact, if you read my past media interventions, you will see that l supported Gen Ibrahim Babangida’s Structural Adjustment Program, SAP. If IBB had pressed ahead as Tinubu is doing right now against all odds, l believe Nigeria would have by now been amongst the comity of prosperous and great nations in the world.
Clearly, president Tinubu does not seem to have a sufficiently credible or even competent team to articulate his vision hence it is in bits and pieces as you made clear in your piece.
When l mentioned that the ice seemed to be thawing in the Nigerian economy in a piece l wrote about a month ago, some pundits hastily called me uncomplimentary names without critically interrogating my point. Then it dawned on them that l was correct in my assessment when the price of petrol started dropping.
Although it is not being reflected in the inflation rates yet, in due course the gains in petrol price reduction and Naira devaluation will kick in via a drop in the Naira-Dollar exchange rate.
We recently saw in December how a devaluing of the naira boosted homebound investments by diaspora Nigerians as amplified Detty December activities showed. I know a friend in the USA who bought a maisonette in highbrow Parkview Estate ikoyi for $200,000 which is equivalent to N320m. For a professional who has a practice in the USA, $200,000 is not so much. But in the US, he can only purchase a flat for that sum which he applied to purchase a four (4)bedroom maisonette in lkoyi, an exclusive neighborhood in Nigeria principally because Tinubu’s reform policies led to a devaluation of the Naira.
Contrast that with the messaging under Gen. Ibrahim Babangida who introduced SAP which had similar harsh effects on the Nigerian masses. The messaging then led by Prof Jerry Gana first as MAMSA Director-General was convincing enough for Nigerians to accept SAP as an alternative to taking an IMF loan with its draconian conditionalities considered obnoxious by most Nigerians.
But change is usually initially resisted and only lion-hearted leaders survive. After a barrage of attacks from critics, disappointingly , Gen. Babangida under pressure caved in by reversing himself after embarking on the reform path before finally stepping aside with the mission unaccomplished.
Tinubu has faced similar pushbacks to the changes he is currently making. Although a civilian, as opposed to being a soldier like lBB and Buhari, Tinubu has soldiered on with steely determination to pull through the reforms. With another chance on the horizon of successfully pushing through the proposed tax reforms which will give his reform agenda a more holistic character as it will bolster the other policy changes such as petrol subsidy removal and naira devaluation as well as local government autonomy. Tinubu is on the cusp of making history in the leadership of Nigeria through his reform initiatives which in my view will have a profound effect on Nigeria and Nigerians in due course.
Of course, I am open to your offering me some sort of right of reply in your next column. l can bet that anti-Tinubu sentiment will dominate the minds of respondents simply because they are currently feeling the pangs of the harsh fallout of the ongoing reform policies. But posterity will remember Tinubu like the sage Awolowo.
Magnus Onyibe