By Gbenro Olajuyigbe

 

‘An open society that cannot protect many that are poor cannot defend few that are rich’ – JF Kennedy

The point has been made by the president during his maiden Presidential Media Chat that his policies are cast in stone. He is neither going to change them nor reduce the number of his 42-member cabinet, even though the United States, a more economically viable state, with a population twice that of Nigeria is doing better with a 15-member cabinet, a third of Nigeria’s.

In a democracy, absolutism is an aberration, much more so in policy formulation and implementation. Any policy that is incongruous with its environment and harmful by any stretch of its meaning to the people must be reflected on. Policy formulation must be preceded by research. It must answer the question of What? Why? How? Who? When? and most importantly, What if? What if, is about consequences and management, including implications of the desired change.

Hence, a leader that cannot change his mind cannot change anything. In the long run, rigidity is not an attribute of transformational leadership. As a matter of emphasis, democracy was founded on the principle of shared vision, not imperial rigidity.

As it stands today, there is no performance indicator to show that the president’s policies are yielding expected results. People are getting poorer as a new 19 million persons were dragged into the pool of poverty in the first year of the government. Frequent and near-reckless borrowing is still ongoing. A government that prides itself on reducing the cost of debt service continues to increase the burden of debt through compulsive borrowing. Even evidence presented during the chat that more money is getting to the states is a half-truth and does not validate the success of any policy.

Yes, in quantity, more money is getting to the states, but what is the intrinsic value of that money? A state receiving N500 billion under Buhari when the exchange rate was N498 to a dollar was better than a state receiving N1 trillion under Tinubu with an exchange rate of N1,600 to a dollar.

The most pedestrian evidence of policy achievements given during the presidential media chat was that of the president and his Honda car-driving friend. A man was relegated from driving five Rolls Royce to a Honda car due to the policy as declared by the president.

How beautiful would it have been if the president had said that his Royce Rolls friend is now using made-in-Nigerian vehicles and driving on the motor-worthy road he built due to his policies? What the president advertised was the impoverishment ‘value’ of his policies. If a man who was driving five Royce Rolls’ can only drive a Honda car now, you can imagine what has happened to a man who was driving a Honda car, tricycle and even the one trekking with his or her legs.

The president lost the opportunity to showcase how the new lifestyle of his now Honda car-driving friend has positively impacted the poor due to the progressiveness of his tax and tariff policies. Nothing is glorious about poverty and advertising it as a symbol of financial discipline is the basest ridicule of governance. It is worse when the hawker is a man elected to renew hope.

Isn’t it the same president that declared during the campaign that ‘won ni owo epo awon, e lo f’okan bale, a ma gbe w’ale (some people are saying the price of fuel will go up if you vote for us, relax your mind, don’t mind them. We will rather bring the price down)? He made this statement when the price of fuel was N187 per litre. Today, it is N1,030 per litre under his watch.

In politics and governance in Nigeria, integrity is missing. Accountability is a casualty. Little wonder I was happy when I was recently invited to speak on Ethical Dilemmas in Leadership in Nigeria by the leadership of all the registered political parties, including the governing party. I ceased the tide, relying on the words of Martin Luther King Jr, knowing that ‘this is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquillizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy.

To reduce the impudently arrogant ignorance of wearing cloaks of mediocrity with imperial pride, some of my thought lines as presented included the need to anchor ethics on the principle of doing what is right, making choices based on values rather than personal gain; and being honest, transparent and fair about them while respecting the rights of others. Ethics in leadership regulate and guide behaviour, choices and actions in line with values, principles and standards.

Nigeria can no longer afford politics without morality, democracy without democrats, and compromised electoral process and structure. Nigerians elected president to address increasing poverty and inequality, leading to rising intolerance and tensions; to address the problem of poor diversity management, including breakdown in ethnic relationships, bad governance and revisit poor policy choices, not to become emperor of a conquered people.

The country has more problems than a friend driving a Honda car. Physical and other types of violence, including extremist armed groups are challenging our sovereignty as a nation. Obviously, we are dealing with a complex political environment with a complex web of people and factors taking place in complex social, cultural, economic, political and historical contexts with wider implications for development. Hence, ethical leadership requires acting in recognition of this complex system. The Honda car-driving friend’s metaphor does not speak to these existential issues. The challenge of our country today is that we often elect more persons with ambition than those with vision. The lunacy of ambition is that it is ever ready to slaughter the nation for personal gains. The greatest threat to our democracy today is that it is being sold and bought, misused and abused by people of ambition without vision; the relics of its ruins have become the awful state of our state.

There is poverty in the land. It is relentlessly biting and the government’s policy choices are not responding to it. The president must revisit his policies, confront and address the current scandalous cost of politics and governance, tackle corruption and defeat the rampaging terrorist groups and violence hawkers.

If at all anybody should learn from the president’s Honda car-driving friend, definitely, not the poor majority, who have been placed under the yoke of non-performing policies. It is the president and his team, the governors, the legislators and other officials who have demonstrated in the last 18 months that the license for opulence, epicurean prodigality and obscene lifestyle is their reserve while the poor remain the sacrificial goats to the insensitive gods of the land.

Whatever the parameter used, a nation, under any guise of policy, whose people continue to grow and groan in poverty, misery and hunger has no hope. In the words of Robert McNamara, a developing nation that does not develop simply cannot remain “secure”. It cannot remain secure for the intractable reason that its own citizenry cannot shed its human nature.

 

Gbenro  Olajuyigbe is the Executive Director, Emergency & Risk  Alert, Abuja