PBAT policy package: Understanding difficulties of take off

This week, the innocent sounding term: “All Eyes on the Judiciary” appears to seriously irritate the Tinubu government, I wonder why? The anger is seen in the decision of the Advertising Regulatory Council of Nigeria (ARCON) to remove “All Eyes on the judiciary” billboards sponsored by a group known as the Diaspora’s for Good Governance. The hashtag is an excellent description of the state of mind of ALL Nigerians wondering, fearing, hopeful, frightened of the expected verdict of the judiciary on election cases currently in the tribunals. The main focus is on the presidential election tribunal, which will soon deliver its verdict on the petitions challenging the victory of President Bola Tinubu in the general election. Is someone afraid?

President Tinubu ran his campaign on the promise that he is ready to roll out his governance agenda from day one. In other words, he was seeking to distance himself from the previous Buhari-led administration that pursued a clueless and destructive set of policy measures that brought the country to its knees. The Tinubu campaign was justified by the successes he achieved in Lagos through the appointment of competent and talented technocrats that were able to make Lagos the pace setter of governors that delivered significant results. His solemn promise was that he would replicate that at the national level. There is no evidence that the direction he is headed would produce positive results. Many are wondering today whether perceptions of the Lagos positive narrative are more a success of good public relations rather than the real success story.  

His signature programmes – removal of fuel subsidy and free float of the naira both collapsed spectacularly. President Tinubu has commended himself in announcing the end of fuel subsidy on inaugural day. He thought it presented him to Nigerians as a man of resolve and action. The problem was that he had only thought of one part of the equation, the radical action, which many Nigerians thought was inevitable but had not considered the impact of the cost-of-living crisis and high inflation, which dramatically increased the poverty rate in the country. His team had not developed adequate palliatives to cushion the impact of the removal of subsidy and as they scrambled to make proposals, it became clear that they had not developed a comprehensive policy package that would adequately address the negative impact of fuel subsidy.

The free floating of the naira was just as disastrous. The value of the naira, contrary to predictions the Tinubu team made, continued to decline rapidly and almost reached the fatidic level of one dollar to one thousand naira. In a panic move, they resurrected the Buhari/Emefiele policy package of using dollars we don’t have to support the naira. The decline of the value of the naira also meant that the price of the fuel was going up and in a clear panic move they have had to reintroduce fuel subsidy. The reason was that food riots have been emerging in the country as hungry and angry Nigerians lost confidence in the government. The irony is that had Tinubu had a solid economic team, these developments could have been anticipated and prepared for. We are yet to see the talented technocratic team we have been promised.

On Wednesday, the names of the 45-member cabinet, which is expected to rise further, was released. Serious questions had been posed since the names were released by the Senate some time ago. The bulk of the team is composed of run of the mill politicians, about 80 per cent of whom are under investigation for massive acts of corruption. Most of them have failed miserably in the previous governance function and about eleven of them are former governors with nothing to show for their stewardships. In essence, most of them lack both competence and integrity. The Minister of State for Defence, Bello Matawalle was disastrous in the security governance of Zamfara State, that was why he lost the elections to Dauda Lawal and now he has responsibility for defence at the national level. There are a few competent practitioners such as Muhammed Pate of Health and Yusuf Tuggar of foreign affairs but there are simply not enough of them to make a significant impact.

The question then becomes why was this bloated and largely incompetent cabinet appointed? The answer, very clearly lies in the first paragraph. All eyes on the judiciary. Should the outcome not favour the ruling party, they have a real need of the political striking force to address whatever the outcome is. In other words, the country will remain in political campaign mode and governance has been pushed to the side-lines. This explains the very poor quality of policy packages, the very poor sequencing of the release that does to consider what the people can take and the serial policy reversals. We had hoped for a governance team that was ready but we are not there yet.