A Short Agenda for the Next President

Postscript by Waziri Adio

In a day or two, INEC will officially announce the winner of yesterday’s landmark presidential election. It was a gruelling campaign and a hard-fought election. Congratulations in advance to the winner. Commiserations may be in order too. Beyond the poetry of campaigns and the euphoria of victory, the hardest part starts now for both the winner and the country. There is serious work to be done. Lots of it.

The long electioneering period surfaced some of the key issues facing Nigeria at the moment. The work of the next president is thus well cut out. A perceptive headline recently put it this way: the in-coming president of Nigeria has a heavy in-tray. The earlier the in-coming president started fleshing out the concrete steps for addressing our current pressing challenges, and started building public support for some of the necessary and painful trade-offs, the better for him and the rest of us. There is no time to waste.

The campaigns are over, and so are the understandable simplification and heady emotions that go with campaigns. It is time for governance. And governance, as the famous line from Mario Cuomo reminds us, is not poetic. Governance is done in prose—in laborious, tortured and tortuous prose.
There would be temptations to blame the outgoing administration, and most of the blames will be well-earned. But the winner and his competitors asked for the job, and presumably they all knew what they were getting into. The winner triumphed because he convinced a sizeable segment of the voters that he is the best fit for the job. So, as tempting as the blame-game may be when the going gets tough (as it will), excuses won’t cut it. It is time to set to work. And promptly too.
Today, I will highlight some of the issues that I think need urgent and diligent attention.

The first set of issues is economic. Our finances and economy are in a shambles. Debts are mounting. Debt servicing is currently the highest expenditure item in the budget and is projected by the World Bank to hit 160% of revenue by 2027, meaning we will need to borrow to pay interests on and repay our debts. Petrol subsidy gulps more N500 billion monthly, and crowds out expenditures in areas critical to human and national development.

At a time of historically high oil prices, net oil revenue is now lower than in 2020 when global oil prices plummeted due to the worldwide lockdown induced by COVID-19. Nigeria is the only oil-producing country not benefitting from the ongoing oil boom in terms of improvements in revenue flows, savings, balance of payments, and foreign reserves. These are not just abstract numbers or developments. Nigerians are going through it at the moment, buffeted by fuel and Naira scarcity, soaring exchange rate, high inflation rate (especially food inflation), and growing poverty and unemployment.

These economic challenges will not disappear simply because a new sheriff is in the saddle. The challenges will also not be addressed through rhetoric or nifty charts. The next president will need to initiate swift, clear-headed, coordinated and sustained actions across fiscal, monetary, trade, industrial, and social development domains. There are low-hanging fruits in eliminating the counterproductive multiple exchange rates and the ruinous petrol subsidy. There is the need to eliminate other areas of waste and massively boost revenue. And there is the imperative of scaling up investments in education and health and in tackling poverty and unemployment in a more thoughtful, coordinated and sustained manner.

It is important to realise that as desirable as they are, some of these interventions will be resisted or undermined. Removing petrol subsidy or increasing tax rate or improving efficiency of tax collection will not be met with drums and dances. For example, despite that it is well known that petrol subsidy is captured more by the rich at the expense of the poor and that it provides incentives for corruption and smuggling, removing it remains a contentious and politically explosive issue in Nigeria.

This is why the outgoing administration chose to kick the can down the line. This is the same reason why other administrations have struggled with it over time. Yes, the 2023 budget has provision for petrol subsidy only till June. But it is not as simple as that. It is important to develop and aggressively sell a plan on what to do with some of the savings from petrol subsidy removal. There should be no illusion about this: removing petrol subsidy will disproportionately affect the poor, especially through immediate impact on transportation and food, two items that the poor spend most of their incomes on. Also, most Nigerians have a sense of entitlement on petrol subsidy.

There is thus the need for a frank and honest conversation on petrol subsidy and for reasonable and realistic ways to cushion the immediate impact of petrol subsidy removal and give something in return. Similar deliberation and action will be needed on the dysfunctional higher education subsidy and the imperative of expanding funding options and improving governance of public universities that account for more than 90% of undergraduate enrolments in Nigeria. And of course, we need to generate at least three or four times more taxes than we do currently as well as trim excesses and wastes in revenue-generating agencies. Trust building and thoughtful use of the honeymoon period will be key.

The second set of work will be in addressing growing insecurity in the country. Even with recent improvements, insecurity is still widespread. All the six geo-political zones are afflicted by one form of insecurity or the other, from kidnapping to terrorism. No major gains can be made on the economic or human development fronts without tackling our security challenges.

It will be important to understand the nature and drivers of insecurity in each of the six zones and realistically address both the underlying causes and the manifestations of insecurity. No option should be off the table, including the use of dialogue, technology, aggressive policing, and even mercenaries. The first order of business will be to aggressively push back the various enemies of the state and restoring order. The state must regain the monopoly of legitimate violence.

Ultimately, we will need a comprehensive review and a reform of our security architecture. We need to retool, reposition and resource our security and armed forces for the challenges of the moment and those of the future. We need to make them fit-for-purpose.
The last bit of urgent work is about the imperative of national healing and inclusion. At the moment, Nigeria is not working for most Nigerians. One of the issues brought into sharp relief by recent developments, including the presidential election, is the growing sense of alienation in the country. Beyond the regional and religious dimensions, there are expanding fissures along ethnic, gender and generational lines.

The fact that the election was fought along Nigerians old and new fault-lines and that a sizeable segment of the voters did not vote for the next president makes the task of national healing and greater inclusion more urgent. Apart from offering the usual reassurances, it will be important to proactively reach out to the alienated and the disaffected, to run and inclusive government, and to develop and implement a programme for a more inclusive society.
For now, Nigeria looks like a house divided against itself. And as the good book says, a house divided against itself cannot stand.

These are not the only things that the next president needs to focus on. But these are my three top and most urgent priorities. I selected these issues based on my sense of what is needed to stabilise a country fast drifting to the edge. My considered view is that the next president needs to arrest the slide. He has no option but to hit the ground running. His transition committee should get to work quickly, and his cabinet list should be ready before inauguration on May 29th. In words and deeds, he needs to demonstrate that he is ready to tackle our critical challenges headlong from Day One.