Team Tinubu and the Binding Idea

BY KAYODE KOMOLAFE

KAYODE.KOMOLAFE@THISDAYLIVE.COM

0805 500 1974                   

The  lead story of THISDAY on Monday seemed to encapsulate what could be proposed as a binding idea for  the team put together by President Bola Tinubu for governance : “New Leaders Take Charge of Africa’s Largest Economy Today.”  

Yes, the primary  task  before the Team is to improve the state of the economy. Even the formidable question of physical security cannot be definitely answered without tackling the socio-economic issues at the root of it. 

So, as the new ministers attend the first federal executive council meeting today, their common  thoughts  should, therefore, be on the  direction in which  the Tinubu administration is  steering the ship of Nigeria’s political economy. Every policy steps or execution of projects in the various ministries, departments and agencies should be scrupulously guided by that idea to be  defined for the ministers by the President.

This point should be stressed because of the temptation on the part of those in power  to dismiss the significance of economic thoughts in shaping policies as revelling in  abstraction  or being unduly ideological.

 As the administration takes off in earnest, Tinubu and his team should avoid the error of former American President George H.W. Bush. In the build-up to the  1988 American presidential election Bush, deputy to President Ronald Reagan, emerged  the republican candidate. But  he had a problem. Even supporters  doubted his ability to articulate his broad ideas about governance even though he was good on details of the issues. In that regards, he was the opposite of his boss, Reagan, who was never a man of details, but he was clear about his dream of America. Reagan effectively  inspired his team towards that dream. Perhaps in response to the criticisms, Bush resolved to develop an agenda as a politician. In preparing for the campaigns, Bush asked a friend to work on what should be the issues of his campaign. In response the friend told Bush to go alone on a  retreat in Camp David and reflect  on the big picture of what he would like to do as the United States president. An irritated Bush dismissed the suggestion saying: “Oh, the vision thing.” Since then the phrase has been associated with a politician who despises the suggestion of formulating a grand vision for governance.  The “vision thing” is a metonym from America; but different metonyms could emerge in the Nigerian context depending on the attitude of leaders at all levels of governance  to the emphasis on the force of idea.

The basic idea informing governance should be shared by all members of the team regardless of divergence in perspectives. It should be the defining feature of the administration. Ministers should engage the public in policy articulation on the basis of the binding idea of the team. That would also serve the purpose of engaging the public  in the course of governance as well as mobilising the creative energies of the people for the national purpose.

Ironically,  policy articulation in governance was most pronounced  in the military regime of  President Ibrahim Babangida. The primacy of big ideas to governance was largely demonstrated in the period between 1985 and  1993.   A military regime was in power; yet  ideas flowed freely from the government to the public and vice visa even when Babangida still took very unpopular decisions. The foundation for this collision of ideas was laid in the political personality of the leader, Babangida,  the only soldier who elected to be addressed as president  in the days of military rule. Babangida’s resolve to recast the Nigerian political economy in neo-liberal terms was unmistakable. At the background was the distinguished Presidential Advisory Committee (PAC) headed by eminent development economist Professor Ojetunji Aboyade. The council comprised of scholars and experts of various ideological persuasions.  Hence, elements  of  his administration engaged the public on the fundamentals of the policies of the administration. For instance, Secretary to the Government of the Federation Chief Olu Falae, Finance  Minister Dr. Kalu Idika Kalu  and Economic Planning Minister Dr. Chu Okongwu fiercely  defended the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) of the administration against criticisms from left, right and centre. Components of SAP include privatisation, devaluation, reduction in social spending and the ruthless application of free-market principles. Foreign Minister Professor Bolaji Akinyemi developed thoughts on the “Concert of Medium Powers” in the bid to assert the place of Nigeria in the world. Major-General Ike Nwachukwu,  who later became foreign minister, pursued the policy of  “economic diplomacy.” Even the ill-fated and long-winding political transition programme was built  on a solid theoretical basis with the  professed centrality of ideas to the steps taken. The ideas of the transition  were rigorously articulated by scholars such as Professor Sam Oyovbaire, Dr. Tunji Olagunju and Professor Adele Jinadu. Professor Jerry Gana took the nation’s social space by storm as the head of a novel mobilisation agency, MAMSER, to actualise the Babangida dream. Elevated debates dominated the public sphere in those days. The government organised a month-long public debate  on the propriety of Nigeria taking a loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). For days, the direction of the nation’s foreign policy was debated at a national conference in Kuru, Jos. You might fundamentally disagree with the Babangida vision; but you could not deny that a coherent right-wing strategy of development was formulated and articulated.

The intellectual climate of the public sphere of the Babangida regime  could be contrasted with what  has happened in the last 25 years. For instance,  the power sector reform that was started by the administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo has not achieved the purpose 18 years after the making the enabling law for the policy direction. It’s clear that privatisation in the electricity sector has failed. The buyers of the public assets  simply lack the capacity to be effective players in the industry. Mr. Babatunde Fashola was minister of power in the first term of President Muhammadu Buhari. He publicly made criticisms of the players in the sector. Their corporate governance  is hardly better than what prevailed  when the electricity supply was  in the public sector. Similarly, Fashola also raised fundamental  questions about the efficacy of Public – Private Partnerships  (PPP) in the construction of roads and bridges. For  instance, after many years PPP could not deliver the Second Niger Bridge and  PPP made no progress on the Lagos- Ibadan Express Way. At the end of the day, the federal government had to source funds to complete these projects. No productive debate has been generated by Fashola’s critical and fundamental  observations. Meanwhile, our neo-liberal experts are still waxing lyrical about the magic wand of privatisation. They talk of privatisation, deregulation and commercialisation as if  they are  new concepts in  policy-making in Nigeria. To them, every socio-economic problem has a free-market solution.

Watching the direction  of economic management by the Tinubu administration, it may not be premature to caution  against neo-liberal excesses. The symptoms are already visible in the policy pronouncements on fuel subsidy and exchange rate for the naira. With Messrs Wale Edun, Abubakar Bagudu and other convinced neo-liberals in the team, it may be a tall order to expect a radical transformation of the political economy. But is possible to achieve  honest socio-economic reforms in the interest of the people and  to a great extent. That’s if the faith of policymakers in market forces is tempered as they seek to build  the Nigerian variety of capitalism.

In this respect, the view of a South Korean development economist at the University of London, Ha-Joon Chang,  is worth reflecting upon at this time. A liberal, Chang is not fundamentally  anti-capitalist; but he is critical of the free-market capitalism. In his book entitled “23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism,” Chang puts the matter like this:  “… The market is an exceptionally effective mechanism for coordinating complex economic activities across numerous economic agents, but it is no more than that – a mechanism, a machine. And like all machines, it needs careful regulation and steering. In the same way that a car can be used to kill people when driven by a drunken driver, or to save lives when it helps us deliver an emergency patient to hospital in time, the market can do wonderful things but also deplorable ones. The same car can be made better by putting in improved brakes, more powerful engines or more efficient fuel, and the same market can be made to perform better through appropriate changes to the attitudes of the participants, their motives and the rules that govern it.

“There are different ways to organize capitalism. Free-market capitalism is only one of them – and not a very good one at that.

“The last three decades have shown that, contrary to the claims of its proponents, it slows down the economy, increases inequality and insecurity, and leads to more frequent (and sometimes massive) financial crashes.

“There is no one ideal model. American capitalism is very different from Scandinavian capitalism, which in turn differs from the German or French varieties, not to speak of the Japanese form.”

At least, a  binding idea that could be suggested  to  the Team Tinubu is to wage war against poverty and inequality in the land. Here is a proposed vision:  poverty should be significantly reduced in the land if not eradicated at the end of Tinubu’s tenure. The anti-poverty war should be fought with  the weapons of well-articulated policies executed  in the genuine interest of the people. The tactics necessary for accomplishing the war strategy should  include prudent management of resources and should exclude making mass delivery of public goods in the policy arena a trade-off. The  barometer for gauging the success of the war would not be the verdict of  rating agencies or the  analysis of foreign  investment  banks, which are essentially working for their clients. The proof of success  should be  the millions of people exiting the poverty trap. Those should be the most important numbers to focus upon in policy formulation.   

In any case,  the 1999 Constitution embodies what should be the vision of any government in power. According to the Chapter II Section 14 (2B)  of the constitution, “the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government.”

The challenge of Nigeria’s political economy is how to achieve this purpose that is well  defined by the constitution. All the previous administrations since 1999 faced the challenge. The fact that the land is plagued by poverty and socio-economic injustice is a measure of how far this vision has been realised in the country. 

Ultimately, the success of  the Team Tinubu will also  be measured by how far this vision compelled by the constitution is realised.