Eight things Tinubu must do to turn things around

A few days from today, Nigeria will be celebrating 64th independence anniversary. The government will do the usual official grandstanding anniversary programs that will gulp resources big enough to build a new National Hospital in Abuja to put an end to the shame of our Presidents travelling abroad for medical care.

At the States level, the story will be the same. Each governor will allocate for the anniversary celebrations resources large enough to build a world-class children hospital or establish a cottage industry that could provide employment for hundreds of their citizens.

No matter how low- key celebration the federal and states governments choose to adopt this time around, it is certain they will celebrate the anniversary alone because these are not the best of days for majority of Nigerians. With a bag of rise going for N92,000 and a litre of petrol averaging N1,000, times are really hard for Nigerians and a lot of people who are barely surviving will see no reason for celebrating.

The inflation that was already high in the Buhari days has been on an upward climb since the subsidy was removed by President Tinubu on May 29, 2023. This has pushed the prices of a lot of things out of the reach of most Nigerians to the point that even the rich now cry sometimes. The popular middle class is fast disappearing because of the economic hardships and many people in that endangered class have now fallen into the poverty class.

The pain Nigerians are going through daily because of the economic hardship has earned more enemies for President Bola Tinubu and further hardened many of the enemies his victory at the February 2023 polls already earned him.

How President Tinubu is governing is the talking point in every social media platform and many homes today. The verdict of many angry Nigerians is that the President is an uncaring leader who came to make a bad situation worse. Despite all the efforts the government is making to turn things around, the President’s image continues to fall steadily and the negative perception of many Nigerians about his government is worsening daily. The tide of negative opinion against the President has risen so high that it is tough work for anyone to defend him. Any explanation that Tinubu met an economy ran down by the maladministration of his predecessors and will require time and the understanding of Nigerians to turn things around now provokes more anger than sympathy.

Dire as the situation is, many people who know President Tinubu well believe he can turn the situation around. But beyond the believe, President Tinubu has a lot of work to do to regain the confidence and perhaps praise of Nigerians whose lives are being made miserable daily by the biting economic difficulties. To achieve this, the president has to do eight things urgently.

1) AVOID COSTLY ERRORS

The President made a costly error by tackling the issue of subsidy removal and Naira floating back to back. Though many Nigerians agree with the president that both of these conduit pipes need to be addressed and done away with, the popular perception is that the most sensible thing to do is to address these issues carefully and creatively to achieve the best result. If the President had exercised caution and waited until local refining of oil had started before floating the naira, the pressure on the economy wouldn’t have been this bad.

The error of floating the naira while 100% of our fuel was still being imported from abroad in dollars added salt to the subsidy removal injury and pushed the price of petrol from the region of N400 to N500 per litre which we started with in May 2023 to the region of N600 to N700 in July 2024 while government was still secretly paying subsidy to prevent the price from rising to around N1, 200 which was said to be the landing cost. Now that government couldn’t afford subsidy again, a litre of petrol is now an average of N1000 and prices of goods and services are also responding to the new prices.

What Nigeria lost cumulatively by the removal of subsidy and floating the naira is now much more than what we were trying to avoid loosing by implementing these twin policies in the first place.

Though many believe the president did what he did because he meant well and was in a hurry to get Nigeria out of the cliffhanger of using 97% of the nation’s revenue to service debt and subsidizing naira with 18 billion dollars annually, subsidy – naira floating error was caused by lack of proper assessment of policy pronouncements and their implications. President Tinubu must avoid these type of costly mistakes going forward. He must remember he promised to avoid costly mistakes that would make lives difficult for Nigerians during his campaign. Any further costly error may lead to the total destruction of the economy and the confidence of Nigerians in the fading hope of recovery.

2). RECRUIT THE BEST BRAINS TO FIX NIGERIA

We need the best brains in Nigeria to help Tinubu achieve his dreams. These best brains are in abundance across Nigeria and in the diaspora. If President Tinubu can get the best brains from everywhere to help him serve the nation, his party men and women will be angry with him but the country will be run properly and be transformed for everyone to enjoy. His party will gain more on the long run, will become more popular with Nigerians because of this wise decision and will win the next elections easily.

If one is to objectively rate Tinubu’s current cabinet now, the pedigree and performance of most of the appointees is below 25% of what is needed to turn Nigeria around. That’s why not much has been achieved in over one year of this administration. The President must therefore ensure that his much touted cabinet reshuffle is far- reaching enough to ignite faith in the citizens.

3). EFFECTIVE OVERSIGHT

The inconvenient truth is that we are a country weak in the culture of excellent service. Wherever this kind of weakness exists, effective supervision is the only way to get things done quickly and qualitatively.

To succeed in turning Nigeria around and lay the foundation of a truly great and prosperous country, the President must grow eagle eyes and must keep it on the ministers, their ministries and the parastatals under them. These executive organs are the engine room of progress when well led and the harbinger of failure when poorly supervised. Good oversight or bad oversight can make the ministries, departments and agencies of government the wings on which good policies fly to be impactful or the storm that destroys every good policy of government respectively. The President must therefore set clear targets for all his appointees and develop an innovative supervisory strategy to make them effectively translate good policies into performance to fasttrack tangible development.

The performances of most of these agencies of government so far clearly show that many of the ministers and heads of agencies lack vision, drive, passion, determination and understanding of purpose of what is entrusted into their care. Many people believe the President is majorly to be blamed for not pushing them hard so that they can also push the civil servants who are the engine room of policy implementations to work harder. The President must correct the inertia in his government by providing more effective supervision to provoke his ministers, aids and heads of agencies of government to higher performance. Effective oversight over these people by the President and Vice President will keep them on their toes and force them to lead their teams better for Nigeria’s sustainable development.

The weekly Executive council meeting strategy that the President borrowed from his predecessors has never really worked well in supervising the ministers and the agencies under them. The President need to change or restructure the weekly Federal Executive Council Meeting to something that is more innovative, efficient and effective. The idea of the Coordinating Unit is good but is not working well. I have written both to the President and Hadiza Bala Usman on this without any response. If the Presidents needs a better idea of how to improve things, there are many brilliant Nigerians all over the place who can give him ideas of the better options to experiment with. All he needs to do is to be open to humbly ask for their help.

4). ENGAGE THE CITIZENS AS PARTNERS

The government that will transform Nigeria must operate an open door policy for citizens to participate. It is difficult for patriotic Nigerians to assist any ministry or agency of government because the system is made to operate in a way that suggests they don’t need external inputs. The system is so bureaucratic and so anti – patriotic partners that many good proposals are thrashed daily in government offices without being attended to.

To transform things, the President must take the role of the Chief Innovative Officer of Nigeria. In the spirit of innovating development, the President must lead the ministries and agencies of government to open up and intentionally seek out innovative partners from the nooks and crannies of the Nigerian society and from the diasporas. He must emulate the leaders of UAE and Saudi Arabia to shake things up quickly.

5). MIDWIFE A NEW SERVICE CULTURE

Service Culture in Nigeria is abysmally poor. Twenty four years after SERVICOM was established by President Olusegun Obasanjo to change Nigeria’s abysmal service culture, not much has been achieved. Service culture of excellence is still alien to the majority of our public service officers and operatives. Our public servants and political leaders must be made to offer world-class service with sound ethical conducts. They must be made to understand their true roles and responsibilities as the servants of the people and the nation. Their current attitude of lording over their subordinates and the tax payers who pay their salaries must be uprooted.

A new service culture can only be achieved if the President is the shinning example of the culture. To achieve this therefore, the President must lead by example all the way. You can’t serve well if don’t communicate well. President Tinubu and his government must communicate with Nigerians more regularly, appropriately and effectively to carry the citizens along and make them partners.

6). LEAD THE ANTI-CORRUPTION WAR

It’s now a popular knowledge that if we don’t kill corruption, corruption will kill Nigeria. President Tinubu can’t achieve your vision of renewing the hope of Nigerians without drastically addressing corruption.

The intractable security challenges the country is grappling with is hugely strengthened by the pervasive corruption in the nation. Without addressing corruption frontally, insecurity, banditry, poor leadership and lack of development will continue to hold Nigeria down and mess the government up.

Corruption is the star performer and the major cause of the disgraceful Petroleum sector underdevelopment and crises. The same is the case of the education sector crises. Without attacking corruption fiercely and subduing it, Nigerians will continue to endure crushed hope instead of experiencing renewed hope.

Nigeria can’t promote development without addressing corruption intentionally and committedly. The resources to be harvested by fighting corruption will wipe out our national debts and provide resources to build needed infrastructures nationwide.

One of the reasons corruption continues to grow is because our criminal justice system is weak, slow, inefficient and corrupt. President Tinubu must drive the necessary reforms that will turn things around in the criminal justice system quickly because there are too many loopholes in the system that promotes corruption. Deliberate efforts must be made to identify the loopholes and block them.

7). REDUCE WASTE

There is too much waste in governance in Nigeria. This is because most political leaders see politics as their shortest and surest route to prosperity. A lot of Nigerians don’t see government resources as their own. As a result, they don’t bother to squander them or watch others squander them. That is why contracts are overloaded and overloaded. That is why we prefer to buy Toyota and gift Japan with billions of dollars annually instead of buying Incision, Proforce or Nord that are all Made in Nigeria vehicles.

Politicians and political appointees are not celebrities but they love to live like celebrities. They are the servants of the people not the Lord’s of the people. The resources of the nation must be used for developmental projects instead of being lavished on the inordinate luxury lifestyle of politicians.

The level of ostentatious living amongst politicians, political office holders and their families in Nigeria is too much and should be redressed. The culture of waste in government is one of the reasons for the anger of the people against government. This anomaly must genuinely be addressed by President Tinubu if he must renew the hope of Nigerians truly.

8. REFORM THE BUDGETING SYSTEM

Nigeria’s budget is a big lie and a huge joke. It is a lie because most of the items listed in the budget and the prices allocated to them are manufactured by employees of the executive, legislature and the judiciary. They lack truth, sincerity and are not need – based. At best, they are products of conjectures instead of scientific, systemic and solution driven exercise carefully carried out to promote tangible progress and development. The constituency projects of the law makers is part of the biggest jokes of our budgets.

The budget is a joke because it remains a wonder how countries that are half or a quarter of our population are having twice or thrice the size of our budgets. Government must look for creative ways to prepare and fund true development budgets in Nigeria.

The level of indiscipline in our budget administration is a big source of worry. This indiscipline creates a yawning gap in the budget document and the budget performance. As an accountant, no one should understand the need of a true budget more than President Tinubu. In the same vein, no one should be able to correct all these wrongs than President Tinubu.

I see President Tinubu’s famous “Emilokan” as eagerness to step forward and make the difference. It’s not been going well so far. The burden of proving that he truly meant well for Nigeria now rest squarely in his aging shoulders. He has less than three years to turn everything around. Luck or prayers alone won’t do the job.

Osho is a change strategist, development enthusiast and leadership/governance apostle. He was the Senatorial candidate of SDP for Senate in FCT in the 2023 elections. E-mail: [email protected]

Views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of TheCable.