Tinubu’s New Govt and Old Challenges

Now that Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu has been inaugurated as the 16th President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, transforming the federation from its grievously ailing conditions to an increasingly enduring polity remains the greatest task before the new government, Gboyega Akinsanmi writes

On May 29, Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu formally took up the mantle of leadership as Nigeria’s 16th President amid mixed feelings. For the opposition, his election was so heavily flawed that he should not be sworn in until all legal contests are resolved. For his allies, Tinubu’s inauguration signals the beginning of a new dawn for all Nigerians without prejudice to their political leanings. 

Irrespective of feelings or perceptions Nigerians may now share, Tinubu’s inauguration presents another opportunity to chart a new path for Nigeria after eight years of socio-economic doldrums that punctuated the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari. But is Tinubu really prepared for the task of rebuilding a new Nigeria, which according to former US Ambassador to Nigeria, Amb. John Campbell, is already faltering on the brink?

 This question is pertinent not because Tinubu’s capacity for national transformation is in doubt, but because his immediate predecessor left behind the legacies of ill performance that diverse development indicators attested to. In 2015, for instance, Nigeria’s unemployment rate was as low as 10.44 percent according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). But the figure has astronomically risen to 40.6 percent based on KPMG’s 2023 global economic outlook.

Also, the country’s unstable consumer price index, which periodically measures inflation, is another testament to Buhari’s abysmal performance. In 2015, the inflation rate was 9.01 percent as indicated in the records of the NBS. By April 2023, only 29 days before Buhari’s tenure ended, it rose to 22.22 percent. 

Poverty index too, which now stands at 63 percent, remains the worst nightmare for all Nigerians. In its 2022 multidimensional poverty index, the World Bank Group claimed that at least 11.9 percent of the world’s extremely poor people live in Nigeria. By implication, no fewer than 133 million Nigerians are classified “multidimensionally poverty-stricken” under the Buhari regime.

For eight consecutive years, the economy grew sub-optimally, even slumped into recession twice, first in 2016 and later in 2020. Its sub-optimal performance compounded the country’s acute fiscal crises that crippled governance at all levels and practically stifled investment flows that whetted Nigeria’s thirst for domestic and external debts, which according to the Debt Management Office, now value N46.25 trillion ( $103.11 billion).

Under Buhari, Nigeria’s development indicators were not only the issues that affected people’s livelihoods and survival. Also, the federation heavily divided along its ethno-religious fault lines, triggering self-determination agitations in the South-east (Biafra) and South-west (Yoruba Nation); extremist violence in the North-east, farmer-pastoralist conflicts in the Middle Belt and subtle ethnic cleansing in Southern Kaduna.

These are, at least minimally, gnawing socio-economic and political legacies, which Buhari bequeathed upon the new government. Now, as prophetically proclaimed on June 2, 2022, it is Tinubu’s turn to provide transformative leadership, which Senator Shehu Sani argued, is critical to terminating the era of socio-economic stagnation and pulling the federation from the brink of outright collapse.

With his promise “to serve with prejudice toward none but compassion and amity towards all,” Tinubu largely expressed readiness to address the roots of social ills, economic doldrums and political contradictions in his inaugural speech. In the two decades, however, Nigeria has witnessed dispensations of numerous promises accompanied with little action. Now is the time for Tinubu to transform all his promises from mere undertakings to effective implementation now that all these challenges evidently place Nigeria under existential threat.

At the core of these challenges is the fear of Islamising Nigeria that the Muslim-Muslim ticket stoked across the federation, especially among non-Muslim communities in the North. Such fear, according to Secretary, Northern Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Elder Sunday Oibe, is evident in structural marginalisation that indigenous non-Muslims have been suffering in the north for decades. 

Undoubtedly, this is a thorny issue, which a global mission leader, Rev. Gideon Para-Mallam challenged the president to decisively address. Already, as analysts nationwide have observed, subsequent appointments and decisions should ultimately reflect Nigeria’s diversity and deepen socio-economic and political inclusion, around which Tinubu promised to structure his administration.

The fragility of Nigeria as a nation is an issue of grave concern, not just for its citizenry, but also for the international community. This condition is reinforced in serial global terrorism indexes that depict Nigeria as a home to violent religious extremists and a poorly governed territory where terrorist insurgencies  such as Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) operate almost without let or hindrance. And their activities, as extrapolated in the Nigeria Security Tracker, cost at least 19,129 lives between June 2015 to May 2023.

Again, transforming Nigeria from a conflict-ridden nation to a stable polity will be a major test of Tinubu’s transformative leadership competence. This is so at a time when rogue non-state actors, mainly Chinese corporations and their domestic allies, are allegedly behind resource conflict escalation in the North-west arising from illicit gold exploitation, an ugly trend that the Buhari administration failed to arrest. 

Perhaps, unlike all his predecessors, Tinubu fully acknowledged the enormity of the country’s internal instability that spared no geo-political zone nor state of the federation. This perhaps defines his pledge “to reform both security doctrine and its architecture.” But the president must understand what issues are; analyse approaches previously adopted; reassess the country’s security capability and understudy reasons for conflict escalation despite improved defence and security spendings. 

More essentially, as former Chief of Training, Operations and Plans, Nigerian Army, Maj.-Gen. Ishola Williams succinctly pit it, Tinubu must learn from Buhari’s strategic error for over-dependence on military response to achieving a stable polity rather than embracing an eclectic approach that emphasises the significance of addressing the roots, trunks and branches of a conflict simultaneously.

Tinubu campaigned for the presidency on the records of his performance as the governor of Lagos State. For his critics, however, this claim has been an issue of national debate. But what is not contestable is the enviable outcome of the state’s public finance reforms his administration implemented between 1999 and 2007. 

The reforms resulted in an unprecedented boost in the state’s internally generated revenue (IGR). From N600 million in 1999, as revealed in the records of Lagos State Internal Revenue Service, the state’s IGR rose to N4.3 billion in 2003; N8.2 billion 2007; N15 billion in 2011; N18 billion in 2015; N32 billion in 2019 and N51 billion in 2023. Under 25 years, the state’s IGR recorded a 1,078 percent boost, a revenue growth no state of the federation has ever recorded.  

Can Tinubu reform the country’s dysfunctional public finance system at the federal level? Obviously, as his supporters have claimed, he can. But what will be in contest this time is the approach he adopted in Lagos State. Till date, the decision of his administration to engage tax consultants still elicits public ire, especially during the electioneering. But the efficiency of the fiscal strategy, as shown in the state’s steady revenue growth, remains credible evidence that Tinubu’s capacity for functional public finance re-engineering signals an end to the country’s sub-optimal revenue performance. 

The Lagos example still stokes despicable questions about the transparency of Tinubu’s tax reforms. But now as the president, he owes Nigerians the onus of anchoring every of his reforms, whether in public finance or public governance at large, to two critical democratic principles – accountability and transparency. The principles are central to attaining Tinubu’s six percent growth rate target, action plan to create one million millions annually and enduring public trust that the previous administrations could bolster.