By Akaninyene Esiere
The administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has a four year contract with Nigerians. It has done one year already. All considered, it is a bit too early for a verdict. I said this to say that this regime took over a broken system; and anyone who expected it to turn things around in one year was not realistic or not very familiar with the state of affairs of the nation this time last year. However, if Tinubu’s government is to be viewed as a continuation of the eight years of the Mohammadu Buhari administration (both being products of the ruling political party that promised to deliver Nigeria from a rapacious 16 year rule of the People’s Democratic Party ), it is an unmitigated disaster.
But if we are to restrict our assessment to the first of the four year rule, we will require to cut this government some slack. You couldn’t have fixed a thoroughly broken down system in 365 days! Interestingly, the last one year did not also appear as if the government wanted to do its utmost to begin the process of fixing the system. On Inauguration Day, May 29, 2023, the President took a very bold and positive step to address a major challenge: end the fuel subsidy fraud (fraud is a very mild word to describe what happened with petroleum subsidy in Nigeria) which had sucked out blood and chopped off some flesh from the country for several decades. Unfortunately, the government did not have the patience to wait and see how that singular decision would play out so as to know how to respond effectively to harness the benefits when it came with another bold but albeit negative decision within a shouting distance. As if it was on a 100 metres dash, the government liberalized the foreign exchange market when it was barely a month in office; and all hell broke loose. That thoughtless decision, which could be equated to breaking down a dam during a flood, has made it almost impossible for the government to know what to do to fix the economy. Even the modest achievements of the government have amounted to nothing. Government officials are running around in circles not knowing what to do.
The current untamed inflationary pressures could be traced back to the decision to float the naira. Shamefully, with abundant arable land and lots of rainfall, the nation is still a net importer of food. And it is the food segment that inflation is biting harder. While the April 2024 inflation rate is 33.69 percent, on its own still very high, food inflation is over the top at ~40 percent; this is perhaps the highest since after the civil war in 1970.
Irrespective of what lofty goals this government may have achieved in one year, it pales in the face of acute hunger in the land. Let’s face it, when all is said and done, the question is always about the quality of life of the people. Truth be told, Nigerians are worse off now than they were at the start of this government. Lest we forget, here are some economic indices churned out by federal agencies to compare May 2023 figures with those of this May, which point to how difficult things have been in just 12 months: Petrol price per liter N234 versus N701; food inflation 24.82% vs 40.54%; foreign exchange rates $1/461 vs $1/1,479; diesel price per liter N844 vs N1,415; inflation rate 22.41% vs 33.69%; interest rate (CBN’s monetary policy rate) 18% vs 26.25%. These have combined to push many more millions of Nigerians into the poverty band.
Most of the drugs in our pharmacies and hospitals are imported; and the prices are well above the average income of the middle class. It is now a major project for a family to want to fly locally. Certain kinds of foods have walked out of the dinner tables of many households. This week, while government was busy drumming out its supposed achievements in one year, makers of Huggies pampersbursted the balloons by signifying it was leaving the country after only three years and $100 million investments. The business environment is too harsh, it says. If a company of that size and such essential product for the middle and upper classes could fold up when our population is on the increase, it tells several stories; chief among which is that Nigeria is not ready for foreign direct investments. Virtually all oil majors are abandoning their joint venture investments with the government for the locals!
Many more Nigerians are suffocating under this government. Whether it was intended or not, the devaluation of the currency has made it difficult, if not impossible, to arrest runaway inflation and engender economic growth. Tinubunomics has thrown many a Nigerian under the bus. As my Pastor, Godman Akinlabi penned in his Facebook post yesterday, “Fear, uncertainty, and a sense of helplessness are palpable. These are undeniably difficult times. It’s easy to get caught up in statistics and policy discussions. But those numbers represent families struggling to put food on the table, employees worried about making ends meet. These are real people facing real hardship, and true leadership demands that we see them, understand them, and lead with heart. We can say leaders face challenges, too. “This bad economy touch everybody”, but your position as a leader offers you a unique opportunity to make a difference in people’s lives…don’t be the reason others give up”. True, many Nigerians have given up.
The security situation is not any better. A year later, one cannot say what the security strategy is to curb terror and violence in the land. Many more Nigerians are being needlessly killed daily by non-state actors with very little help coming from our security agencies. In Zamfara, Katsina, Kaduna, Borno, Plateau, Benue, Imo and a few other States, increased killings are rampant. In just one year, over 4000 Nigerians have been killed and about the same number abducted, according to statistics released by a coalition of civil society organizations in the country. Monthly figures by the military of the number of terrorists and militants killed make one think that the terrorists are like soldierants, the more you kill them, the more they come out from their colonies. There is so much that the Tinubu government has to do to arrest the worsening security situation in the country. We should not be made to believe that the situation has defied all solutions.
Epileptic power supply is still a major challenge; the market segmentation and tariff increase have not helped matters. Foreign exchange inflows have not improved nor are government officials behaving in a way that reflects the austere economic environment. Access to credit has tanked, and defaults are building up. Infrastructure is still in short supply and no one seems to know where the country is headed. The restructuring of the country which President Tinubu preached so eloquently about when he was only a chieftain in his party is not to be mentioned again. And the ship continues to drift.
However, as we mark the first anniversary of the Tinubu government, we should not focus solely on the government at the centre. We have a three tier system of governance in Nigeria. But we are always want to look at what the government at the centre is doing or not doing while leaving our governors to run riot against the people at the state level. Hardly anyone or institution holds our governors to account. The statutory authority meant to do this, the state’s houses of assembly, are dead and buried. And the local governments can be said to be nonexistent in Nigeria courtesy of our majestic governors.
Apart from a few state governors such as the men in Zamfara, Abia (the state just had its first real governor since 1999!), many of our governors are liabilities to the states. Were they to carry out half of what they can do, the pressure on the federal government would have been much less. But that is not what we see today. Frivolities, avarice, publicity stunt, resource squandering and wastage are still rampant at the state level. Visionless reign is still the order of the day in many states. Even a few second term governors who showed promise in the first two years of their tenure appear to have lost steam.
Akaninyene Esiere is a former journalist