TINUBU AND MATTERS OF URGENT NATIONAL IMPORTANCE
two candidates won, it is unlikely that this scenario would have been avoided given how competitive the 2023 presidential election was.
The complication, however, is that this means that a significant majority of the voters did not choose the winner—66.23% in Shagari’s case and 63.39% in Tinubu’s. The extra complication is that this sizeable majority in Tinubu’s case coincides with significant ethnic, religious and demographic constituencies. This makes a compelling case for prioritising accommodation, not as a political ploy to secure legitimacy or acceptance but as the right thing to do. Tinubu should make peace with the fact that some people will never accept him as the winner of the election or as their president. It goes with the terrain. Late President Shagari had to contend with this in a section of the society and the press even after the Supreme Court confirmed him the winner of the 1979 elections. Tinubu should do right by all, irrespective of their attitude to him.
The instinct to adopt a winner-takes-all approach is natural and there will be the temptation to see appointments as spoils of war. This will not only be wrong but can potentially exacerbate the growing sense of hurt and alienation by sections of the country. It is thus important that the president, in words and in deed, treats all segments of the country fairly and equally, including those that didn’t vote for him and especially under-represented groups like women, youth and people living with disabilities. Over-compensating will not be a bad idea in the interest of peace and unity.
The second area I want to highlight is the need to tackle widespread insecurity in the country. The importance of this cannot be over-emphasised. But suffice it to say that without security, whatever progress is recorded in other areas will be undermined. Also, securing life and property is a core and constitutional responsibility of the state and a public good
that can best be delivered by the government. In addition, tackling insecurity was one of the few major areas that the candidates and the voters agreed should be a high priority during the campaigns.
Despite the best efforts of the outgoing government, Nigeria is today confronted with what has been aptly described as generalised insecurity. All the six geo-political zones are battling with one form of insecurity or the other. It is very important to build on what has been done to significantly reduce the incidence of and the fatalities from conflicts, crimes and terrorism in Nigeria.
This will mean having a more nuanced understanding of the drivers, triggers and manifestations of insecurity in the country, improving the quality of actionable intelligence and acting on time, enhancing coordination, improving resourcing, increasing accountability and reviewing our security architecture to ensure that our armed and security forces are up to the current and future security challenges. Also, some of the security issues will demand deft political engagement.
The third area is the economy, which to put it mildly is not in a good place. Almost all, if not all, economic indicators are worse than they were eight years ago: GDP growth rate, inflation rate, interest rate, unemployment rate, poverty rate, public debt, budget deficit, excess crude account etc. The new government needs to take some urgent steps to facilitate job creation and poverty reduction and to bring our public finances to good health. The federal government needs to improve revenue collection, spend more smartly, and block wastes/leakages. Some of the urgently needed measures will not be painless or popular. Some of them will be resisted, for both genuine and purely political reasons.
One of such is the ruinous and suboptimal petrol subsidy, which is billed to gulp as much as N6.7 trillion if kept for the entire year. If the 2023 budget stays at N21.83 trillion, this means that petrol subsidy alone will consume 30.69% of the budget and 63.87% of the expected N10.49 trillion revenue for the year (which is likely not be realised in full.) But the fact that petrol subsidy is an obviously and very inefficient use of public resources and a major burden on our public finance does not mean that its removal will not be resisted. The fact that the major candidates promised to implement full deregulation also does not mean they will not make common cause with those opposed to its removal.
Petrol subsidy removal is always going to be contentious for a number of reasons, including the probability of further spike in inflation, the disproportionate negative impact on the poor, Nigerians’ attachment to ‘the only thing they enjoy from their country’ and lack of trust in government. Petrol subsidy is thus not purely about economics. The government needs to have the skills and the courage to remove it, the humility to engage in frank dialogue with Nigerians and the discipline to implement an efficient and accountable programme for reinvesting the savings from petrol subsidy removal.
Some tax handles need to increase, the tax net needs to be widened, oil production and oil revenues need to significantly go up, some tax expenditures and waivers need to go, multiple exchange rates need to end, revenue generating agencies need to remit more and cost of collection for some fat and extravagant agencies needs to be removed or significantly reduced. The leakages and wastes must be addressed and revenues should be significantly bumped up. The instinct to resort to borrowing or to literally just print money should be contained. We cannot borrow our way out of this fiscal hole. According to the World Bank, Nigeria expended 96.3% of its revenue on debt service in 2022. This is not sustainable, and we need to make the necessary adjustments before we are forced to.
The economy is the fulcrum for everything else, both for the country and for the citizens. As the Americans would say, it is the economy, stupid. To signal that he gets it, Tinubu needs to appoint proper managers of the economy, and very early too.
The narrator in Ben Okri’s ‘The Famished Road’ notes dreamily that “a dream can be the highest point of a life.” True. Now, Tinubu has achieved his highest dream. It may be for long, and it may not. No matter how long it lasts, he has the onus to make it count for Nigeria, and quickly too. The clock starts counting from Eagle Square.