Public Affairs analyst and Professor of Political Science, Gbade Ojo, in a chat with Weekend Trust speaks on what President Bola Ahmed Tinubu-led administration can do to make things better.
What do you make of the protests?
Nigerians have demonstrated their annoyance and displeasure with the government. However, it doesn’t mean that they are unhappy with the Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration in particular, but successive administrations before Tinubu are the essence of #EndBadGovernance. Bad governance has been in place for several years and the economic problem started with the Shehu Shagari era.
Since then things have been getting tougher on a daily basis. The issue now is that the essence of the protest has been achieved.
Talking about the protest, why do you think it turned violent in some states?
Nigerians don’t know how to protest and that’s why it has taken violent dimensions. In the developed society of the world, when they protest they can decide to park their cars on the highways for days until the government gives in. But in Africa, our governments are not responsive and they are not responsible. That’s why protesters go violent so that the government can take them seriously.
If you are protesting for a whole month, the government may not do anything meaningful. As a political scientist, my expectation is that Mr. President would hold a broadcast so that it would be in the news that the government is aware of the displeasure of Nigerians and tell us steps they are taking.
Our government has been saying that they know protest is part of the fundamental human right of Nigerians, but the protest should achieve something. People should not protest for the fun of it, that’s why they are being violent.
If the protest does not achieve anything positive, it could lead to apathy in future elections. Many people may not bother to vote again. The government needs to listen to the masses. Government should not be providing water where they need roads, the government should not be building hospitals where they need electricity, the government should not be building schools where they need hospitals. We should get to a stage where opinion polls will count, where after the election government will try to find out what the people require, not just doing anything they like.
We understand there were some efforts made by the government to stop the protest. They reached out to stakeholders, opinion leaders and traditional rulers. Was that the way to go?
You see the government tried in terms of communication, especially propaganda, dissuading people from protesting. It is an economic issue, but the government tried to politicise it. It tried to ethnicise it also. There was nothing the government did not do, but it couldn’t have worked because all Nigerians are shoe wearers when it comes to economy. The rich too are feeling the pain because of the number of liabilities, number of dependents they have to take care of.
The government should learn lessons with this protest by beginning to do something that would make the people happy. The government needs to placate the protesters also.
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In terms of placating the protesters, what do you think government can do, looking at some of their demands which include a reversal to the pre-May 29 fuel price. How sustainable is this?
They have about nine demands and one of them is that the government should reverse the fuel subsidy removal, that the subsidy was a scam is not an excuse and they are correct. The responsibility of the government is to fight corruption. If subsidy was a scam the government should look out for decent people to supervise the process. I can’t forget easily that Sanusi Lamido Sanusi (former CBN Governor) said it was very easy to police the subsidy era. How? If you have imported a million litres of fuel and you invite the insurance company to come and sign papers that actually you imported, the insurance company will not go for what is a scam because they will pay for it if you did not import.
If a ship should capsize on water, who pays for the damage? So, insurance companies that insure importation, they should be able to say actually, that this person imported a million litres of fuel.
So, there are better ways of supervising it. Two, Nigerians are gradually becoming impatient, that all the refineries are comatose. They expect the government to do something about the turnaround maintenance of the refinery, rather than relying solely on Dangote refinery. Our hopes are now on Dangote, if anything happens to the Dangote refinery, the whole economy would suffer for it. That is not the way to run a country that is as big as this.
The government enjoyed sympathy because having withdrawn the subsidy more than a year ago, it has just signed a minimum wage which has not been paid. That means the government is to placate the masses for what it took from them.
It is not about palliatives. Our culture in Africa is not about palliatives. People want to go out, work, have money, feed themselves and their families. If you are giving them money, how long will you do that? If you are giving them rice, will you give them rice for the next 10 years? And is it only rice they should eat? So the government should look critically into the demands of the protesters and do something about them.
I suggest that Mr President should talk to Nigerians. They should explain to Nigerians what they are doing and what they want to do and public office holders should scale down on their flamboyant lifestyles. You are asking us to tighten our belt and you are doing nothing in terms of your own belt. If you started a government and you distributed very expensive cars to legislators and they are telling us they want to reduce their salaries by 50 per cent, what does that do for the economy?
The president should also rejig his cabinet. The ministers that are not performing should be dropped. Those that are performing should be retained. Let the masses see that actually, he is doing something. The governors are doing practically nothing. A state government should not wait for national minimum wage before it does its own. Their allocations have increased, they should do more.
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