When passion stirs an interest for service

It is a minister’s job to do good economic policy, but an equally important part of the job would be to sell it.  In the light of this, Zainab Shamsuna Ahmed, Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, is a reassuring figure to passionately stir the Nigerian economy without undermining its stability. She is to help pursue policies with entrenched interest for service to the people without wrecking the economy.

Of course, the measure of any finance minister, just like Ahmed, former Executive Secretary and National Coordinator of the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), is whether he or she is capable of divining either a new order for the economy or a decided step-change in the functioning of the current one. Her measure has been in her ability to comprehend danger and act decisively to get rid of or minimise it.

Ahmed, an Accountant who was in 2015 appointed Minister of State for Budget and National Planning by President Muhammadu Buhari, has a thorough understanding of budgeting, with which she will have to balance government’s spending priorities with the need to maintain public services and hold up the economy even at a time of fragile growth. She, with extensive knowledge and diverse experience in finance, public sector reform and management, would probably be among the first to admit that she who assumed office as finance minister in 2018 has indeed had some luck. But her work as Minister of Finance and now Budget and National Planning has been added to her portfolio can be acknowledged much for what she did for Nigeria on her careful eight-month watch – during the economic straits in the face of the recession, which the administration confronted during the first four years of President Buhari.

The fiscal rules that she and her economic management team (EMT) put in place to deal with the recession and to stimulate the economy were seemingly proactively ahead of the impecunious. The efforts of Ahmed, a graduate of both Ahmadu Bello University Zaria and Olabisi Onabanjo (formerly Ogun State University) Abeokuta, have become almost retentive in her insistence and imposed discipline to make sure the economy did not experience anything perfunctory and was headed in the right direction. Through the implementation of policies in the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) which the administration of President Buhari developed in 2017, the economy in the real sense exited recession and has since then moved towards a path of growth that is sustainable, inclusive as well as diversified. Notably, Nigeria has achieved eight consecutive quarters of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth since the economy exited recession in the Q2, 2017.

It was a really important moment for the country as the country rallied her and her colleagues in the EMT; Nigerians worked together through that period and the results are all there, reflecting well on the government and really arguably well on the people. Apart from the fact that there is continued and deliberate effort to deepen the Nigerian non-oil economic performance with non-oil GDP growth of 2.70% as at Q4 2018, which represents a 0.38% increase in growth compared to Q3 2018, every sector is targeted to contribute to the increase in growth.

Ahmed, the Chairperson of the Board of Trustees of the African Union (AU) Peace Fund, has underpinned the Nigerian economy by moving fiscal policy rapidly into a higher gear. Nigeria has witnessed strategic investments in critical infrastructure and in human capital to spur further economic growth. The plan, according to her, has been to improve the fiscal space by boosting revenues as well as implementing the ongoing effort through Strategic Revenue Growth Initiatives (SRGI). Considering revenue growth as a strategic priority for the ministry of finance, the SRGI is a key aspect of the government’s strategy to improve non-oil revenue through fiscal buffers, and ultimately improve the revenue to debt service ratio and to improve the ratio of non-oil revenue to non-oil GDP.

If the proof of the pudding is in the eating, Ahmed’s stewardship and that of her colleagues in the EMT has brought Nigeria through the bumps. More so when the ongoing integration of different biometric databases in Nigeria is completed, it is anticipated that the figure on the taxpayer database will grow to 45 million individuals, inclusive of corporate tax payers. The minister has presided over Nigeria’s ambitious tax scheme; So far, the taxpayer database has expanded from 10 million that was inherited by President Buhari in 2015 to 35 million as at the end of 2018.

By this appointment, Ahmed is certainly being recognised for her efforts in fighting corruption and increasing transparency in government. Worthy of note is the outcome of the Presidential Initiative on Continuous Audit (PICA), which, according to her, has saved the Federation N603.78 billion from its inception in 2016 to date. Among the figure is the savings of N8.30 billion during Q1 2019.

Her reappointment and the added responsibility effectively made her the most important factor of stirring the Nigerian economy to sustainable growth and is obviously as assuring as it is based upon her leadership, innovation, the social and economic impacts and the scalability of her initiatives and policies, among others. This is also because, “We need credible fiscal plans to deal with our deficits and debt, credible to markets and a clear way forward. We need to set a very clear and firm course,”she said.

Yunusa, an economist, wrote in from Kaduna.