NIGERIA DECIDES: NEW PRESIDENT, OLD PROBLEMS

We need a President who can address the country’s problems, writes Joshua J. Omojuwa

Nigerians have a therapeutic relationship with elections. We generally believe that elections – especially the presidential ones – offer the dawn of change. It’d be interesting to explore our obsession with the presidency, considering the more consequential effects of the National Assembly, state assemblies, governors and the local government executives and legislature. We will get a new president as President Muhammadu Buhari is finally eased off a job that he obsessively sought for over a decade, got it and made it look like it was forced on him. The man said he has done his best, for the sake of Nigeria, we’d need a president who can do more than their best, we’d need one who would address some of our wicked problems and design the measures to advance our progress against them.

Whilst issues like insecurity and poverty cannot be addressed with an ‘either or’ decision, the fuel subsidy question is more direct. You either do away with it or retain it. I know the government has played around the middle line for years but there is now an apparent consensus to let go. The main point of difference has been how to moderate the effects of that decision on the lives of Nigerians. You cannot feed a population a cheap meal for over two generations then suddenly decide you are done with it. That would cause chaos. Often with government, it is not as much about the introduction of the change that causes the chaos, it is the change management system put in place to introduce the change, the naira re-colouring is a case in point.

No matter how deep the consensus on the removal of fuel subsidy, if you for instance decide to hand it over like a New Year gift to Nigerians without warning, it’d be like breaking a dam. You could get overwhelmed by the outcomes. If you design a solid change management system for the removal without an apparent change in the choices and lifestyle of the ruling class, again, you would have messed up that change. You cannot be having a conversation about increasing the already misaligned salaries and allowances of political appointees and lawmakers and in the same breath say on account of limited government revenue, you are looking to remove subsidy. That is a situation set up for discontent.

Government is poor and can no longer afford the fuel subsidy? You must show that by making apparent sacrifices. If the people see reduced convoys, reduced salaries and allowances and other unnecessary privileges of public service, they will find it quicker and easier to not just believe, but to know that government is indeed poor. With the fuel subsidy, it is swim or sink really for Nigeria. But expecting the masses to believe, let alone know that, when there is no apparent change in the lifestyle and choices of their leaders is to expect too much. I hope enough has been made of this point for those who would be responsible for the decisions to do the right thing.

On insecurity, Nigeria currently has a design that ensures the current insecurity challenges – as bad as they already are – will be nowhere near those of the future. That is quite easy to deduce; there are more people in the potential pool of tomorrow’s crimes. These out of school children will not suddenly grow into responsible adults in the society.

The same way you can largely predict that a well-educated and skilled population of children and young people will largely grow into a group of responsible adults, you can make an inverted deduction for a population of children abandoned to the dangers and vagaries of the streets and the gripping hold of illiteracy and the attendant anger at those who left them to rot – all of us, even if you feel you had no hand in it. We’d all be at their mercy. Or you think those children are not aware of how they ended up without luck on the street? This challenge is an issue for individual states, but it can be led by the central government because it is a matter of emergency. You either address it now or pay for the more costly multi-dimensional outcomes tomorrow.

The nature of power, especially the power that comes with being president, is to start out looking to fix every problem. That was the pit of delusion that sucked many governments into their journey of ignominy. It may feel counter-intuitive to the trappings of the office but the very first thing to note as an administration is that you are incapable of fixing all the problems. That clarity will lead to the point where you start to appreciate what then it is you can address within the timeframe permitted by your mandate, not forgetting the pressure of seeking re-election less than three years into that mandate.

New administrations often come with their alliterative or sweet-sounding agenda. If they committed to them, Nigeria would be in a much better place today. Nigeria’s old problems remain because from one administration to the other, they scratch the surface of most of the country’s challenges without getting to the root of any. That is why, 62 years on, our problems are yet to evolve from the same ones we were handed at Independence. You could even say things got worse.

Every country has its challenges, but the fundamental difference between a country making progress and one that appears to be roving around the comfort of stagnation – assuming oscillation to be progress – is that whilst the countries making progress address their old challenges and then end up with new but relatively better challenges, the country making oscillatory movements continues to pretend to solve its old problems without really solving them. This is why the same problems MKO Abiola and Bashir Tofa campaigned on in 1993 are the same ones our candidates in 2023 are promising to address. What could be more tragic?

 Omojuwa is Chief Strategist, Alpha Reach and Author, Digital Wealth Book