Of Technocrats and Governance

The Horizon

By Kayode Komolafe

0805 500 1974

Two current events seem to bring to the fore the false dichotomy between the roles of politicians and technocrats in governance.

The first is the largely well-received broadcast of President Bola Tinubu to the nation on Monday amidst the plans of labour and its allies to protest the socio-economic hardship in the land. The second is the screening of ministerial nominees as the President gears up to put a government in place. The combined import of the two events is that while those in power need a lot of technocratic skills, they should be politically literate enough to drive policies in the public interest. In other words, both technical capacity and political dexterity are compulsory for governance.

The President spoke directly to the grave situation on ground in clear terms. He spoke as a politician with a technocratic background, who was on the hustings only a few months to seek the mandate of the people. Those who are enamoured of narrow technocratic language might not be impressed with the statement. It was, however, appropriate that the President admittedly avoided crunching of figures and espousing abstract models as our experts are wont to do in the face of a growing humanitarian situation on the streets.

Yet, a lot of technocratic input is unmistakeable in the statement. Tinubu said things were hard especially for the poor and also sketched the preliminary steps being taken to alleviate their condition. He said the pains would be temporary while the gains would later justify the sacrifice being made at the present. Such a verbal balm on the pains of the people are useful because the stoppage of fuel subsidy has aggravated the socio-economic crisis inherited by the Tinubu administration.

This spirit of engagement with the Nigerian people in general should continue to inform the negotiations with the labour centres – the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) – in their legitimate demands on behalf of their members. In fact, this constant engagement in a sober tone and tenor should be the golden rule of the Tinubu Team in terms of policy articulation. Those in power should display sufficient humility while giving account of the actions they have taken in the name of the people. After all, it is now little remembered that in this civil dispensation a President once accused a labour leader in a national broadcast of treason. Without giving any iota of evidence, the President alleged that the labour leader was planning “an alternative government.” The occasion was a national convulsion triggered by the mass protests led by the NLC against increase in fuel price. Arrests and tear-gassing of labour activists were among the high-handed responses of the Nigerian state at the time.

A new approach that is socially and politically responsive should be the order of the day on issues directly affecting the people. As it is, the government team should demonstrate sincerity of purpose about the provision stopgaps for the people’s welfare. Beyond that, it is important to articulate policies that would be executed with the savings from the subsidy removal on a long- term and concrete basis. The real problem is that the people have not seen concrete evidence of what impact previous removals of subsidy had on financing education, healthcare, infrastructure, mass transit, social housing, boosting agriculture etc. This lack of transparency on the part of successive administrations has engendered widespread cynicism on the part of the public. Any talk of “palliative” or the long- term investment of the savings in the social sector is often taken a joke. As a matter of fact, since the regime of the maximum ruler, General Sanni Abacha, created the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF) in 1994, no other administration has shown to the public in concrete and coherent terms what happened to the savings from the intermittent removals of subsidy. Today, despite the valid criticisms and some unproved allegations against the Fund, at least some pieces of evidence abound of what the PTF did with the money that accrued from the subsidy removal of the Abacha years. Given the odious imagery that comes to mind whenever Abacha’s name is mentioned, this might sound unpleasant to many people. But that is a fact of the nation’s economic history.

The point at issue, therefore, is how to convince the public in words and action about the economic wisdom of the action already taken by Tinubu.

So, the Tinubu administration would require a good combination of political wisdom and technocratic capacity to weather the storms that would be generated in the Nigerian political economy by the removal of fuel subsidy. It would certainly require more than technocratic arguments to wean off consumers from the consumption of subsidised fuel in a regime of poor revenues available to government. For instance, as the President rightly said in the broadcast, occasions could arise that government might have to intervene in the pricing of energy. No socially responsible government can afford to be indifferent unduly to the burden of energy costs on consumers in extreme situations. In United States foreign relations with the Middle East, the cost of energy to American consumers is one of the cornerstones of policy. Since the breakout of the Russo-Ukraine war, the British government has assisted households in energy cost. But in the specific case of Nigeria, the subsidy regime in the last quarter of a century has become unsustainable. It is not benefitting the majority of the people. It is counter-productive to the political economy and, therefore, indefensible. Since there is no proof that the government could manage the subsidy regime more productively in the nearest future, a national consensus should be forged with all sectors and interests in the economy to accept a definite end to fuel subsidy while the savings from it are channelled to verifiable public goods. This, of course, would be hinged on the hope that local refineries would be in operation soon and the national shame of fuel importation would also end.

Labour should , therefore, be receptive to the engagement by government on the immediate measures to alleviate the pains. More important, labour and the general public should be vigilant about how the three tiers of government spend the savings accruing from the stoppage of fuel subsidy. The real oversight on the use of these funds should be done by the people and their organisations and not only the legislatures at all levels.

This is a more realistic thing to do than for labour to nurse the illusion of a return to the old subsidy regime.

In fact, what Tinubu did on May 29 ought to have been done eight years earlier given the developments with the subsidy regime. This was the position taken by this reporter on this page on May 9, 2015, that was 20 days to the inauguration of President Muhammadu Buhari.

In a piece entitled “Fuel Subsidy as Buhari’s First Baptism of Fire” this reporter made an attempt to argue in favour of an end to fuel subsidy inter alia: “This is not a policy step that could wait for eternity. To start with, Buhari will urgently need to free the huge funds trapped in the subsidy regime to finance his proposed social sector and infrastructural programmes to bring about the promised change. With greater illumination, the leakages could be reduced before eventually blocking it. At least, Buhari should aspire to be the President to block the fuel subsidy leakage. To achieve this, the fuel subsidy debate will have to be reframed with a greater honesty of purpose. Labour, employers and other economic players should come up with workable ideas on how to solve the fuel subsidy question, which is central to the economy. It is no more enough to kick against subsidy removal. It is also important to prevent leakages associated with the management of subsidy through a wholesale policy review.

The question of the moment is not if the opaque subsidy regime should be stopped; the point at issue is when and how the failed policy should end. This is one of the great challenges before Buhari.… “

By the way, the May 9, 2015 column was partly inspired by President Buhari. During his campaigns, the former President said as a petroleum minister in the late 1970s he was sure that the idea of a subsidy as it was put on display in 2015 was a “fraud.”

Now, back to the false distinction between a technocrat and a politician. It has almost become a ritual to counsel a newly elected president or governor to go for technocrats instead of politicians in making appointments into his cabinet. The advice to the President or a governor, which often comes immediately after elections, usually goes like this: if you want to succeed in the implementation of your programmes, you should appoint technocrats to the job of governance while you find something else for the politicians to do. The proposition is often made as if politicians and technocrats come different planets. And it is often made in such a derogatory manner to the politicians. By this unfair logic, politicians are only good for breaking their limbs for the President or governor to win elections while another species from a different planet called technocrats are the ones to govern. The politician who went to the constituencies on behalf of the President or governor is no more fit to be in government by this logic. Yet, this theory of governance-by-technocrats is not justified by the facts of Nigeria’s recent political history.

To be sure, what distinguishes a technocrat from other persons in the public space is the specialised skill which could make him or her wield some power in government or industry. By their backgrounds, the technocrats are experts in their field of training as lawyers, doctors, soldiers , policemen, intelligence operatives, engineers, journalists, accountants, architects, businessmen, administrators, economists, teachers, bankers etc. Meanwhile, if you check the list of the presidents and governors elected since 1999, they are mostly politicians with backgrounds in the same professions mentioned in the foregoing.

As an aside, some of those technocrats who got to elective or appointive political positions in the last 24 years have become rugged, if not ruthless, politicians!

In any case, this false distinction between politicians and technocrats arises because Nigeria is practising the presidential system. No one makes a suggestion of a government of technocrats in a parliamentary democracy. In a parliamentary system, a technocrat who is interested in being in power would have to first win an election to the parliament from his constituency. When the leader of his party becomes prime minister, he could then appoint him a minister so as to put his technocratic skill into use in an assigned portfolio. In fact, instead of the presidential broadcasts in the Nigerian system, the president would be answering questions in parliament on his policies and programmes daily. The ministers would also be part of the daily debate in the parliament to articulate their party policies and defend their programmes.

As indicated in the introduction of this column today, the process of the confirmation of the ladies and gentlemen nominated by the President to be ministers should also compel a reflection on the artificial line drawn between technocrats and politicians. Virtually all the nominees are, by the textbook definition, technocrats. It was great that the nominees also displayed their backgrounds not only in private business or public service, but also in the stormy waters of politics. If they are confirmed as ministers, they would need a combination of both political wisdom and technocratic capacity.

In the condition of Nigeria today, a super technocrat without adequate political literacy would be unable to function in a government that aims to deliver public goods.