Tinubu’s first things last

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu needs to calm down, and quickly too. The president needs to calm down to recognise the difference between hubris and wisdom, and between bluster and quiet strategy. In his little more than two months so far, President Tinubu, in my view, has demonstrated more hubris and bluster than wisdom and strategy, and it is time the president and his advisers calmed down.

Across nearly everything he has touched so far on both the home front and the foreign scene, the president has taken decisions and actions that have only worked to box him into tight spots, leaving the administration with little room to wriggle out than wholesale policy reversal that has then become impossible to even contemplate. This is so much so that a pattern has begun to set for how the government approaches issues, however complex: act first, think later.

Beginning from day one, President Tinubu has introduced a raft of policies that have, literally, thrown both the economy and society into a tailspin. The immediate effects of full withdrawal of fuel subsidy and the so-called unification of exchange markets, and both at a time of already high inflation and even higher food prices, have left Nigerians and the economy reeling. The after-effects of these policies are particularly galling for a society without safety nets of any kind.

Perhaps the government had expected to receive gushing praise from Nigerians as these two signature decisions work wonders immediately. Not much of that has happened beyond those for whom praise-singing is a job or a necessity, never mind the unprecedented revenue accrual for the month of June. So, the government’s initial goodwill, which was no more than cautious in the first place, is fast dissipating. Many have begun to compare the current government unfavourably to the immediate past, a comparison that is not only unfair and premature, but would have sounded even unthinkable only a few months ago.

One policy mistake begets another, often, several others, however. Therefore, in order to cover for the enormous pressures created by the fuel subsidy removal and naira devaluation policies, Tinubu has introduced a number of far-reaching measures designed to sustain the signature policies rather than assuage their pains.

In his latest national address, delivered at a time when confidence and hope in the government was already running low, Tinubu promised Nigerians so much it is hard to quantify: N1bn each for large 75 enterprises, N50,000 each to one million ‘nano’ businesses, N500,000-N1,000,000 each to 100,000 small businesses, and lots more. Make no mistake, these are very serious ideas that if implemented carefully by the government with even just 50 per cent success rate, they will go a long way in renewing the hope of Nigerians in the Nigeria project. Still, it is difficult to escape the question: why didn’t the president start with these on Inauguration Day?

I don’t know how these ideas sound to the president because for me, other than the release of 220, 000 metric tons of grains into the markets to crash the prices of food, these are not palliative measures but real policies in their own right that a government would seek to pursue with or without the fuel subsidy withdrawal and naira exchange polices of the government. And it is a minus, I think, that the government is now being forced to present them to Nigerians as “palliatives”.  Yet, these are not the only areas where the government’s good intentions have been overshadowed by hasty first steps.

After two months of waiting, Tinubu finally released his ministerial nominees in the past two weeks. There are quite a few good and serious names on that list, enough to help the government leave some mark over the next few years, all other things being equal. I get the criticisms against the nominees many have raised, but I am realistic enough to realise that a mix of very good hands personally selected and plain hacks politically imposed are about the best a president in our present circumstances can get as ministers, at least at this point.

Still, a single episode in the process has overshadowed everything else. Tinubu submitted and then promptly withdrew the nomination one Dr Maryam Shettima from Kano State. To her personal credit, and wide public admiration, Shettima has taken the embarrassment of being told the news just when she appeared for the confirmation at the Senate coolly, and even congratulated the eventual replacement. But Tinubu has done himself no favours when news, and videos, filtered that both the initial nomination and the withdrawal were all meant to please one man, or rather, his wife. Pray, has the constitutional process of selecting ministers of state now at the vanishing whims of the politicians’ wives?

Yet, as if first things last approach at home was not enough, the government has extended it to foreign matters. The military coup in Niger Republic next door is perhaps the most tasking foreign policy challenge Nigeria has had to face since the Bakassi crisis 20 years ago. But rather than pause to first grasp the situation clearly and then reflect deeply on how best to approach it beyond verbal condemnations, the government, now at the head of ECOWAS, hastily issued a 7-day ultimatum for the putschists in Niamey to walk back their decision or face military action from the sub-regional body, without consulting widely across the country, without consulting even with the country’s security chiefs.

That was possibly the most clumsy and reckless situation a Nigerian president has ever created for himself in the annals of our foreign affairs. It was, in effect, hubris taken too far. And overnight, President Tinubu himself became the most hated figure among one of our neighbours. Yet, rather than find a soft landing for oneself, the president doubled down by sending a request for troop deployment to the Senate only for it to be rejected there.

Perhaps that was the government’s way of finding a soft landing after the rather hasty and ill-advised proclamation of ultimatum. Where in Africa have soldiers ever walked back from a government takeover because somebody else talked them out of it or issued an ultimatum?

My point, however, is not to investigate the merits or demerits of some or all of the government’s decisions so far, at home or abroad. The point is to say that the government tends to put the wrong things first, and the right ones last. It would have been best to first pursue the policies that will help revamp the economy and alleviate poverty before going ahead with subsidy withdrawal. It would have been best to find out more about Dr Maryam Shettima’s relationship to some favoured politicians before humiliating her publicly on the national stage. It would certainly have been best to recognise diplomacy first before issuing trite ultimatums to soldiers hell-bent on taking over their country’s government with external support.

Underlying the government’s act-first-think-later approach is the thinking, self-recognised or not, that the President and his rather very small circle of advisers have ready answers to all the problems of governance in Nigeria and on the continent. There lies the source of the hubris and bluster. And it should stop because, in both politics and government, it is precisely how the mighty are fallen.