Mr. President, Mind the Gaps
ENGAGEMENTS by Chidi Amuta
Between an inaugural speech full of quotable nuggets and his reflex actions in just one week of presidential power, Mr. Bola Tinubu may have sketched the footprints of his presidency.
A casual off script remark on the removal of fuel subsidy (‘Fuel subsidy is gone!’) has set off a labour skirmish that could degenerate into labour unrest and popular protest. The incendiary aftermaths of that remark were instantly self-evident. Fuel queues resurfaced all over the country. Petrol was widely hoarded across board. Prices of gasoline jumped 300-400%. Other price spirals may be in the offing. Many questions immediately began asking and answering themselves. Why insert a far reaching policy measure with implications for many ordinary lives as a casual aside right on inauguration ground? Why make an imperial pronouncement on such a matter when no government has been formed? Which government officials will handle the aftermath of such a serious decision let alone institute the palliative measures that should cushion people from an abrupt removal of petroleum subsidy? While street side speculations rage on these concerns, the new president has gone ahead to inspire further consternations in other areas of national life. Are we heading for an era of government by shock therapy?
The president’s approach on the communication of his decision on the fuel subsidy matter in particular is a breach of the informal code of power in the presidential system. As a rule, a president must not be a bearer of ‘bad news’. He should ordinarily have a battery of officials who hint at the bad news, announce it to the public and possibly carry the burden of deniability. It is only when the government has considered the worst and best options on the bad news that the president could weigh in with the ‘good news’ of palliatives or phasing of the subsidy withdrawal for instance. Now without any government in place, without a National Assembly to mediate and without ministers to lead negotiations with labour and interest groups, the president will have to go face to face with angry unionists to negotiate the subsidy removal. That strategy could from the outset diminish the aura of the presidency as an institution and the gravity of the president as the highest priest of the deity of government.
In quick succession, the president has appeared at a briefing session with the Governor of the Central Bank alongside his wife with the Vice President in attendance. As soon as that photo showed up on the social media, Nigerians expressed concern as to whether this was going to be the pattern going forward. Would the Vice President be sidelined? Would Mrs. Tinubu be an active part of the executive business of government? What is going on?
In far away Lagos, one of the president’s daughters has changed her designation from “Iya loja of Lagos” to “Iya loja of Nigeria” as well as informally created and ascribed to herself the nonsensical office of “First Daughter of the Federal Republic of Nigeria” on social media at least. Here again, many Nigerians are trying to get used to what might be signals of a fledgling personality cult and family oligarchy.
Beyond these initial excusable procedural slip ups, it is refreshing, however, that President Bola Tinubu has indicated, quite early, an awareness of the enormous burden of his exalted office. In his inaugural address, he indicates a clear historic awareness of the burden of apex power in a country like ours: “Our burdens may make us bend at times, but they shall never break us…” Implicit in that courageous assertion is an underlying faith in the resilience of the Nigerian ideal. : “as long as this world exists, Nigeria shall exist”. There is therefore a sense in which Tinubu’s direct reach for power ‘Emilokan’ resonates with a sense of personal preparedness for the ultimate responsibility and historic burden of power. That at least is reassuring.
However, the routine issues of presidential learning steps will not diminish the heavy burdens that confront the Tinubu presidency. First, Mr. Tinubu has to deal with the issues of his general legitimacy and credibility. The legitimacy of his presidency is still tied to the general reservations among the public about the integrity of the election that gave birth to his ascendancy. As a measure of the popularity of his mandate, a popular vote score of less than 36% in a presidential election has not quite convinced many Nigerians that Mr. Tinubu is as yet their president. There are segments of the populace that continue to hope that the proceedings at the election tribunal and the various courts could reverse the declaration of Mr. Tinubu as president. While it remains unlikely that any such outcome will materialize, the reservations remain deep seated and could deny the new president of the support of a significant segment of the populace. The peculiarities of the Nigerian political and judicial ecosystem make it unlikely that Mr. Tinubu’s incumbency could be upturned.
Yet, Mr. Tinubu and his handlers must accord priority to an active engineering of his legitimacy in the post tribunal period. It is good that both in his inaugural address and afterwards, Mr. Tinubu has himself relentlessly harped on the broad national nature of his mandate. He has even extended a hand of fellowship to both Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party and Peter Obi of the Labour Party respectively. But this remakns valid as a manner of political speak.
What is even more worrisome is that there is as yet an absence of an elite consensus on the Tinubu presidency. There is broad elite consensus on the issues that were at stake in the election that brought him to power, but on him as the carrier of that consensus. But Up to this point, the national elite remains fractured along ethnic, geo-political and general interest lines about this presidency. There are too many reservations about Mr. Tinubu as a person and the entire electoral process that produced his presidency across the spectrum of our national elite.
Some feel that Mr. Tinubu’s resume contains too many inconsistencies , dark spots, unresolved scandals and murky controversies for him to carry the moral and political weight of our national leadership. There are segments of the elite that tend to see him as a product of an unfair and emergent Yoruba domination of the political space after a Fulani hegemonic prevalence. Such people point to Obasanjo’s eight years in office and Osinbajo’s eight years a deputy to Mr. Buhari. Even within his ruling APC party, there are clear divisions between those who supported Tinubu’s emergence at the presidential convention and an elite corps of party people who preferred differently. Throughout the campaign season, this faction of the party elite either avoided Tinubu’s campaigns or quietly distanced themselves from his prospects.
The more religiously inclined segments of the elite point at his Muslim-Muslim presidential ticket and see the outlines of simmering sectarian pre-eminence. Taken together, we are dealing with a presidency that could be assaulted from all sides by a lingering elite disapproval unless it actively and consciously addresses the matter of forging an elite consensus. And to have all this factionalism in a nation that is already badly divided increases the burden of power at the apex of our national leadership.
Beyond the headache of our fractious elite, Mr. Tinubu could be haunted by the specter of his immediate predecessor. For this moment in time, the Buhari legacy is undeniably a burden around Tinubu’s neck. It is more importantly a nightmare in our collective memory as a nation. It may be politically convenient for Tinubu to reiterate his allegiance to continue with Mr. Buhari’s tradition.
The president is tied to the Buhari umbilical cord by their common party heritage. In an ordinary situation, a party that has just been re-elected into power should have little or no problem continuing with its programmes and policies. After all, an electoral victory means a popular endorsement of the programmes and policies of a winning party. But it remains doubtful whether the majority of Nigerians could have in all sanity reelected a party to subjected them to an eight year nightmare.
If it is in the area of infrastructure development, there may be no arguments about the necessity for Tinubu to vote for better federal highways and railroads. But of course Mr. Tinubu knows all too well that the Buhari legacy is dripping with infamy in virtually every area. It impoverished most Nigerians, creating a sea of abject poverty. It made the nation unsafe and dangerous, leaving too many orphans widows and widowers. It gave a free pass to all manner of crooks and mega corrupt officials. It devastated the economy and created enclaves of a dark economy that made the nation accumulate humongous debts beyond imagination. There is therefore no way in which Mr. Tinubu could possibly emulate or continue with these disgraceful legacies.
The choice that confronts the new president in this regard is self evident. While it is politically convenient to pay lip service to party policy and programme continuity, Mr. Tinubu will sooner than later have to drop anything resembling Buhari like hot coal. He has already disowned the Naira re-design calamity.
For the new president, there are ways out of what looks like a bind alley. An elite consensus can be engineered through a conscious effort to institute an enlightened governance. The starting point is perhaps in the quality of persons that Mr. Tinubu selects to run his administration. For political leaders after an election, the choice is usually a tricky one: to run with a cabinet of politicians or one of technocrats and intellectuals. In most recent Nigerian instances, the tendency has been to populate the cabinet with politicians. After all, they are the ones who worked to secure political victory at the polls. But the experience with governments run mostly by politicians is that they achieve little in terms of governance and national leadership. Such governments tend to end up producing conflicting political successes but fail disastrously on governance.
On the contrary, governments run mostly by technocrats and intellectuals succeed better in terms of policy and governance. In our recent past, President Obasanjo achieved better results in his second term when he inundated his cabinet with technocrats and intellectuals than in his first term when he had mostly politicians. Under the military, easily the most successful regime in terms of governance, innovation, institution building and originality was the regime of Ibrahim Babangida whose cabinet and advisory committees were run by intellectuals, technocrats and seasoned bureaucrats.
For Tinubu, this hour is auspicious for him to have the right mix of technocrats and some politicians. One hopes that he does not succumb to the menacing temptation to fill his cabinet with the hawkish politicians and political jobbers now hovering around him. If he is to be faithful to his legacy in Lagos state, he should dominate his government with highly accomplished Nigerian technocrats and intellectuals from across the world and the nation. That remains the heart of his Lagos achievement which is what brought him this far. This is one of the best ways to engineer a legitimacy that would neutralize his personal background shortcomings and help blur his political liabilities. It would also give him the national clout that he desperately needs.
As everyone who visits metropolitan London for the first time knows, the best advice that every wise commuter on the London Underground knows by reflex is a simple one: “Mind the Gap!” It saves lives and enhances the joy of the ride.
In the business of presidential power as well, Mr. Tinubu will do well to mind the present yawning gaps that threaten his path to a significant presidency.
