Osinbajo as An Exemplar in Public Service

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo after failing early in the year to secure the presidential ticket of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has remained calm, collected and focused on his job, Gabriel Emameh writes

Beyond his urbanity and erudition, the Vice President Yemi Osinbajo’s profound attributes and leadership peculiarities have endeared him to many Nigerians, home and abroad.

Despite his presidential primary election loss, many of his scattered supporters across the country have never wavered to sing his praises. Many of them still believe that the special providence that has kept him till this time will someday define his political future. Osinbajo represents the face of hope for the country.

Osinbajo as Nigeria’s second-in-command is an astute administrator, who one can conveniently say has successfully conquered many grounds, and still on the battlefield, blazing the trail as the country’s best and finest Vice President in history with verifiable achievements compared with his predecessors.

With the quality of his outputs in office, it shows that before coming to power over seven years ago, he had taken a long and hard look at governance plus the challenges therein, and today, as a Vice President with bounded executive functions he has done exceedingly well by bringing brilliance, finesse and precision to governance, even to the fact that, wherever he went, for the period he acted as President, he drew free-willing, everyday people who were unsparing with displays of affection and benediction for him. The actions of the government within the intervening periods he held executive power, still remain part of the sunny sides of the present government.

He was Acting President in June 2016, January 2017, May 2017 and August 2018. In that capacity, he for the first time since at least 1999, started the idea of Presidential Executive Orders when he signed the Presidential Executive Order on Ease of Doing Business,  aimed at eliminating the stifling constraints on both setting up and doing business in the country, enhancing the same and attracting Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) to Nigeria. That Executive Order in one stroke removed all bureaucratic encumbrances that over the years, confined the processes of doing business in the country to the slow lane.

Part of the specifics is that it removed many barriers to registering businesses with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC). The Order wasn’t a brain wave but a tedious outcome of brain work that flowed from the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC), which was set up in July 2016 by President Muhammadu Buhari to remove bureaucratic constraints to doing business in Nigeria, and make the country a progressively easier place to start and grow businesses, which the Vice President chairs.

In outcome, PEBEC ensured that Nigeria rose 39 rungs up the World Bank’s ladder of Ease of Doing Business, while the FDI curve has also been on a progressive ascent with Microsoft, Google, and other foreign entities opening offices in the country. The Google Africa Development Centre in Nigeria targets 10 million trainees in Africa by 2022.

So far, it has trained more than five million people out of which three million are Nigerians. Before the Executive Order on Ease of Doing Business, Nigeria, had, in 2014, sunk to an abject 169th position on the globe in this criterion but shot to 131 position in 2020 with the Order.

In addition to Microsoft and Google, Nigeria today has 55 active technology hubs that raise over US$94m, trumping the US$60m, raised by 59 South African start-ups. Six unicorns: Opay, Paystack, Flutterwave, Andela, Piggyvest, and Jumia have emerged in the financial space. Also the country’s technology sector total start-up funding, which was US$178.3m in 2016, grew to US$337m in 2018. It dropped in 2020 due to the COVID-19 scourge and rose again to US$219.02m within the 2021 first quarter.

In collaboration with NITDA, Microsft trained several Nigerians across the nation. According to the records of the software giant, six per cent of the trainees got new employment, 15 per cent established new businesses and it helped 54.4 per cent grow their businesses, while about 35.5 per cent saved costs and 20 per cent improved customer reach.

As Acting President, Osinbajo made some significant recruitments that struck the bull’s eye in terms of how they resonated with people and more importantly, performance outcomes.

Justice was not just served with his swearing-in of Justice Walter Onnoghen as the 17th Chief Justice of Nigeria, it was seen to have been served. Also remarkable was the appointment of Prof. Bolaji Owasanoye as chair of the Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission (ICPC); Dikko Aliyu AbdulRahman as Chair of the Governing Board of the Bank of Industry (BoI) and Mr Olukayode Pitan as Managing Director, BoI and Funsho Doherty as Director-General, National Pension Commission (PENCOM).

Osinbajo as Acting President also ensured the appointment of Ekpo Nta as full-time Commissioner for the National Salaries, Incomes and Wages Commission; Siaka Isaiah Idoko as Chairman/CEO, Investment and Security Tribunal; and that of 21 new federal permanent secretaries.

On February 8, 2017, as Acting President, he approved contracts for Ilorin-Omu Aran Kaaba Road to the tune of N21 billion. Seven days after, February 15, 2017, a sum of N126 billion for road projects spread across Kano, Bauchi, Adamawa, Kwara, Gombe, Enugu, and Kaduna states was approved by FEC under his chairmanship.

The Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting he chaired on February 22, 2017, also approved N32 billion for the resuscitation and completion of the 50 km dual carriage Kaduna Eastern Bypass, the council also approved $39.9 million for the construction of the Cameroon-Nigeria Border-line Bridge at Ikot –Efiem. Some of these projects are still ongoing but when they are completed, there is no doubt that they will usher in considerable succour to the people by reducing travel time, lessening existential dangers on routes lives and enhancing the ease of doing business.

As Acting President, Osinbajo in 2017, signed seven bills into law that touch at the core of good governance. These include The oaths (Amendment) Act 2017, which enlists courts that were not in existence at the time the Oaths Act were made and which came into being upon the Amendment of the constitution, creating such courts such as the Federal High Court, F.C.T High Court, National Industrial Court, among others named in the Amendment Act; Defence Space Administration Act 2017 for the development of satellite technology and ensuring the security of the nation’s cyber activities; Veterinary  Surgeons (Amendment)Act 2017, which right-sized the membership of the Veterinary Council.

Others are The National Film and Video Censor Board (Amendment)Act 2017, which trimmed the membership of the Governing Board and empowers the Board to regulate the import and export of movies; Pension Rights of Judges (Amendment) Act 2017, which elaborated the definition of a judicial officer to cover the offices of the Chief Judge or judge of the Federal High Court, president or judges of the National Industrial Court and Chief Judge or judges of the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory; the Nigeria  Institute of Soil Science (Establishment) Act 2017, which brought the Nigeria Institute of Soil Science which is charged with the responsibility of regulating the profession of Soil Science into being and the  Mortgage Institutions (Amendment) Act 2016, which reviewed the prescribed penalties.

With terrorism and insurgency spiralling out of control, Osinbajo as Acting President in a July 2017 National Security Council meeting,  directed General Tukur Buratai, then Chief of Army Staff and Sadique Abubakar, then Chief of Air Staff to relocate pronto to Maiduguri, the Borno state capital and the epicentre of the terrorists’ activities to heighten the tempo of counter-terrorism from the frontlines.

The move, among others, provided a psychological boost to the troops and left a clear message of “no more business as usual” from the government to the terrorists.

To complement the reconstruction efforts in the North-east, Osinbajo acted as a person given to philanthropy by the establishment of the North East Children’sTrust (NECT) in 2017 to provide educational and welfare support to thousands of children orphaned by the activities of the insurgents and terrorists in the region. The trust recently celebrated five years of the formation of the Learning Centres where students are given top-notch, cutting-edge education.

Before NECT’s intervention, schools in the region suffered a massive dearth of infrastructure, and low enrolment, with a backlog of unpaid staff salaries. Since the commencement of its operations, NECT has trained vulnerable children and orphans in their numbers from the three states of Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe States in the nursery, primary, and secondary schools.

Osinbajo’s drive for the establishment of the interventionist agency was compelling with the realization that children and women victims of terrorists’ activities have desperate needs for the support they need to recover lost businesses, properties and humanity.

This was in response to the pressure for the government to pursue a developmental initiative alongside the military’s kinetic efforts in the besieged North-east, Osinbajo as Acting President passed the North-East Development Commission (NEDC) Act in 2018.

The reconstruction of the region, which NEDC birthed has been significant in confidence-building, human and infrastructural development; rehabilitation, reintegration of the victims into society and enhancement of school enrolment in the region.

As Vice President, most of his duties are strictly the president’s call. With uncanny support he received from President Mihammadu Buhari, Osinbajo superintends the National Economic Council (NEC) as chairman, the same with the National Social Investment Programme (NSIP), which is a social welfare initiative of the Federal Government, instituted in 2015.

It is geared towards ensuring a more equitable use of resources on behalf of the country’s vulnerable population, with emphasis on children, youths, and women. At the moment, the NSIP is the largest and most ambitious social safety net programme in the annals of the country, with a N400 to 500 billion expenditure portfolio annually and more than nine million direct beneficiaries.

For inclusiveness and administrative efficiency,  the programme runs on four fields, namely: N-Power; GEEP loans (Market Moni, Farmer Moni, and Trader Moni); Home Grown School Feeding Programme (HGSFP) and the National CashTransfer Programme/ Conditional Cash Transfer and Household Uplifting Programme.

The N-Power has expanded from the initial engagement of 500,000 graduates with a monthly stipend of N30,000 to one million beneficiaries. The GEEP Loans (Market Moni, Farmer Moni, and Trader Moni) are documented to have provided credit to over three million Nigerian traders, artisans, and businessmen, with N15 billion so far disbursed in interest-free loans, ranging from N50,000 to N350,000 to 303,420 market women, traders, artisans, and farmers across all 36 states of the country and the FCT.

The Home Grown School Feeding Programme (HGSFP) currently caters for approximately 10 million pupils with free meals daily in 45,394 public primary schools across 26 states.

The National Cash Transfer Programme/ Conditional Cash Transfer and Household Uplifting Programme targets one million households with 80 beneficiaries coming from each ward of the 774 Local Government Areas of the country. So far 300,000 households are on its net with monthly stipends of N5,000.

As the head of the National Economic Council, the National Livestock Transformation Plan (NLTP) is another of Osinbajo’s gallant contribution. The goals of the initiative are to address the recurring farmers/pastoralists crisis and to improve livestock farming by providing grazing real estate for pastoralists.

The intervention mechanisms of NLTP have been codified into a comprehensive framework for modernizing and transforming animal husbandry into a critical instrument for Nigeria’s economic growth and diversification. The mechanisms run on five pillars, consisting of conflict resolution; improvement of access to justice; attention to the needs of conflict-impacted people and human resources development. Adjunct is the cross-cutting issues of gender and youth research and information and strategic communication.

Osinbajo was one of the unsung heroes of Nigeria’s exit from economic recession. While the impacts of COVID-19 in 2020 were cruel to the global economy, it led to the contraction of that of Nigeria, which manifested by way of sharp declines in key sectors such as transportation, agriculture, hospitality, education, trade and construction.

In seeking solutions to the downturn and bringing relief to the people, President Buhari in June 2020 placed Osinbajo at the head of the Economic Sustainability Committee (ESC), which it tasked with a blueprint for post-Covid-19 economic recovery.

The critical objectives of ESC were to improve health care and lower the COVID-19 caseload; restore growth; create jobs and safeguard existing ones; increase local production, and reduce social vulnerabilities.

With the approval of an Economic Sustainability Plan (ESP), drawn up by the committee in June 2020 by the  Federal Executive Council, N2.3 trillion was committed to its implementation by the Federal Government. The plan included MSME Survival Fund, Social Housing Programmes, Agriculture Plan, and Solar Power installations, among others. Apart from overseeing drawing up the plan, Osinbajo supervised its implementation.

Under the ESP, 6.39 million farmers were enumerated with their farmlands geo-tagged for government support. For the first time in the nation’s history, farmers’ biodata was captured and linked with the geographical information of their farmlands, crops, and the volumes of production in the country.  About 2.1million jobs have been created and retained through the implementation of different other components of the ESP.

Furthermore, with the ESP, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reported that the agricultural sector grew 3.42 per cent in real terms in the fourth quarter of 2020, when measured against the same quarter in 2019.

According to Bismarck Rewane, of Financial Derivatives, an economist of repute, Nigeria’s exit from recession could be attributed to four-interrelated factors which included the fact that the Osinbajo-driven Economic Sustainability Plan (ESP) was more successful than it was initially thought it would be.

Any wonder President Buhari, a man he has worked closely with for over seven years described him as “a reliable deputy and a problem solver?”

So while the APC Presidential primaries earlier in June turned out disappointing many by not picking the VP, he is today still perceived as the best attraction in the party and one of the core issues in Nigeria’s politics and governance as of today. His service, courage, competence and character remain a shining example and outstanding. It is for this reason that many still believe that the last has not been seen nor heard about this pastor-professor-politician.