Follow Us on Google
By Jerome-Mario Utomi
Public Forum
This piece was inspired by a recent conversation with Onyibe Magnus, former commissioner in the Delta State government, an entrepreneur, public policy analyst, author, development strategist and alumnus of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, Massachusetts, United States of America (USA).
Aside from having to his credit this relevant knowledge necessary for nation-building, Onyibe, all through the conversation in his Lagos home, communicated facts with boldness and objectively x-rayed the state of the nation before and under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s federal government.
Beginning with Tinubu’s first year in office, he responded metaphorically, using the third Mainland Bridge experience:
He said, when the third Mainland Bridge in Lagos was shut down for repairs in 2023, November or thereabouts, everybody was crying. It was inconvenient for motorists, for people, it was terrible. But it was inconvenient that was worth it at the end of the day. When they finished and opened six months after, many people described it as an Eldorado.
So, there is no paen without pain. We have to make sacrifices. What Tinubu has done in the last one year is to lay the foundation. Tinubu spent the last one year planting.
I used the metaphor ‘planting’ and I illustrated it with farming; when a farmer goes to farm, he will till the soil and plant the crops. It will take some time for the crop to sprout. After it has sprouted, it will grow stems. It will create branches and begin to yield fruits. In the case of Tinubu’s administration, it has a four-year gestation period. That’s what the Constitution allows. So, we gave him a mandate and he has four years to mature. People are judging him based on the first year out of four, which is like 25% out of a 100%. Will you go to school and be judged with 25% course work?
No. Let’s be reasonable. He has planted all he needs to plant and we’re waiting for the gestation period. Bureaucracy is not like human beings. People were complaining that he gave an order that forty three thousand or forty three million metric tonnes of grain should be distributed, and It wasn’t distributed till after some time. That’s bureaucracy for you. There are checks and balances. It doesn’t happen immediately. It takes a long time for things to happen. Like you and I now, I asked you to come and you are here. But if it were to be government policy, it would take a longer time to happen.
I am a practical person. Nigerians are giving him this opportunity to say you are planting the policies and in XYZ period of time, we’ll begin to ask you for the fruits. In two years’ time, you can come and ask me about his legacy projects and, if there’s none, I will be asking you even before you ask me. You can go and look at the trend of the things that I do and whatever.
As bad as people thought Buhari was when he was coming, I wasn’t one of those who proposed that he should come. But when he came, I had to begin to encourage him and open his eyes to things that I think he should do for him to be able to grow. And I gave him that time. When it got past that time, I held his feet to the fire. So, that’s how it should be. You must give people the opportunity.
Asked if Mr. President was on the right track, he captured it this way: absolutely. You see, there’s something about leadership. There’s no dictator that starts from day one being a dictator. He charms the people. People like him before he grows in power. You know, when you are climbing a ladder, people hold the ladder for you. When you get to the top, you are now backing the people because you are looking at the sky and elsewhere.
So, a dictator always charms his way. Tinubu is not charming his way. Tinubu came through thunder and fire and he set up more thunder and fire himself. He could have said, Since I came through thunder and fire, subsidy should remain, do this and do that, until when things settle down; he should now show them whatever. But no, he started from day one, telling them, We must brace up for change. Change is going to come with sacrifice. Make these sacrifices. And people are saying, No, we don’t want to. We want to go back to the days of Buhari and this and that.
The truth is that subsidy has not been removed fully but a substantial amount of it has been removed. So, now, people are saying he lied to us that he removed the subsidy. Are you saying he should remove it so we’d all die? The man has been a listening person that he comes out to say, No, if we put these overdose, we’d all die. Let us manage it halfway. They should be commending him for it. I’m commending him for bringing in a bit of human face. He attenuated it. There are things that you do that you don’t make public to everybody. These are nuanced things.
I’ll give you an example. The United States of America has a law that insists the American government cannot give arms and ammunition to governments that are not democratic so that they will not use those arms and ammunition to oppress the citizens of their country. That’s part of why they didn’t give Jonathan arms and ammunition to fight Boko Haram, because people present to America that Boko Haram members are not terrorists.
So, it became difficult. That was why Jonathan put money in the plane and decided to go to South Africa to buy arms and ammunition from the black market. But this same law permits America to give arms and ammunition to Egypt. They’re giving arms and ammunition to Israel. We all know what Israel is doing with it. There are things that even when it is your policy, when you make an exception, you don’t make it public.
So, back to the point, if President Tinubu says the subsidy is gone, then everybody starts clamouring, No, return subsidy. Then, he goes back and says subsidy is back. You can imagine what will happen. Is that not what they did in Kenya? The Kenyan President removed the subsidy and when he was under pressure, he returned the subsidy.
The truth is that we all agreed, you, me, the whole candidates that ran for presidency in 2023, that subsidy is a terrible monster. It is an ogre. They didn’t want it there but how to implement it was different! But people are saying why did Tinubu make that pronouncement without doing his homework?
Let me tell you, there was Strongman Abacha, Strongman Buhari, Strongman IBB, I’m talking about soldiers, who couldn’t remove subsidies. If these people, an autocratic government, couldn’t remove subsidies, you can see what a civilian, a democratic government, has done. Tinubu has the experience. He knows that if he gets into government and creates a timetable to remove subsidies, what happened to the others will happen again.
If he had taken office before he made this pronouncement, people who are benefitting from subsidies would have people they are paying, directly and indirectly. Some of them that they are using don’t even know they’re using them. They would have given advice. They would have said, “Sir! Don’t remove it. If you remove it, this country would burn”. Even in an interview when he went to Paris, he mentioned that his team advised him not to do it. That’s why it’s not in the speech.
President Tinubu identified the fact that that is one of the biggest problems we have that has held this country down so that we haven’t grown, and he decided to do it. Now, the good thing about it and what people are saying is a problem for him is that he makes decisions, tweaks with it and fine-tunes it along the line.
If you ask management people, they’ll tell you it’s a good trait. You are not a dictator. You cannot do things that you cannot reverse. You fine-tune because you don’t see all the variables from afar unless it comes to practice. Practice makes perfect.
Take the education loan fund for instance, when they first passed the law and whatever, before they launched it, they went back and said it won’t work this way. We have not captured everything about it. They went back to the National Assembly. The National Assembly tweaked it and they’ve come up with it now. Who did they put to be the Chairman? Mr. Jim Ovia who is an accomplished banker. He started from nothing and became something. That shows good planning.
You cannot say Mr. Jim Ovia is going to the Education loan fund to enrich himself. He is already over rich. The executive secretary is also an accomplished person too. Jim is the Chairman. So, the fund is in good hands. So also are these other things that are coming. They haven’t started yielding results.
All the challenges you’re seeing right now are like when the new Onitsha Bridge was being knocked into the ground and we were feeling the pain and whatever. And when they finally put the bridge there, it became an Eldorado.
Asked to comment on the state of insecurity and state police, he responded this way; yes, i cited at the beginning of this conversation, instances in the past where we have advocated seriously and government listened. And I also cited instances that government did not listen. If they had listened to our admonition on security, it would not have become this bad.
Let me give you an instance. In 1999, Olusegun Obasanjo proposed the State Police. It did not come through because the states said they couldn’t afford it. Back in those days that democratic government emerged in Nigeria, the biggest weapon then was impeachment. You will be threatened with impeachment. And once you’re threatened with impeachment, you back down. Dapo Sarumi was minister of information at that time. We talked about it. They said they were about to do it but they backed off. And nothing happened.
In 2016, I wrote copiously about it. I can’t remember the full title but that’s what I dwelt on. And they didn’t do anything about it. Do you know that it is the present insecurity in the country that Obasanjo wanted to use state police to address? If this insecurity was nipped in the bud, in 1999 when Obasanjo first mooted it, or 2016 when I stated all the reasons why they should, it would not snowball to this level right now. It is just now, 2024, almost 25 years after it was mooted by Obasanjo that they are now bringing up state police because they have seen that that is what we should have done a long time ago.
Take for instance, in the United States of America, the equivalent of State police, the Sheriff. The Sheriff is a local. He comes up from the people. He lives with the people. Basically, he’s an equivalent of community police, not state police. So, he lives in that community, he knows everybody there. So if a stranger walks into that community, he would know. If there were community police in the rural areas, in the zones where Boko Haram is, they would have known. Boko Haram lives in our society. The local Sheriff would have known who they are. But we didn’t do that. We kept happening on it until they made the decision that they have made now to address it.
Like I said, Kidnapping and insecurity did not start today. If you go and read the story of Brazil, most South American countries, that was obtainable but over time, they dealt with it.
That is what Boko Haram, Isis, Iswan are doing to us right now. People don’t tend to think very fast. That is why I say there is nothing that is happening that has never happened before. If we were smart enough to look at the experience, or if we do a lot of critical thinking, go back to what happened in those days, how they took care of those things, maybe pick one or two things from them, we’ll be able to deal with these issues. He concluded.
From insecurity to job creation, he was emphatic in his submissions.
Again, let’s listen to him; It’s not the government responsibility to create jobs. Government creating jobs is a centralized government. Change has happened. You know America is the richest country in the world right? Do you know the biggest hero in my evaluation of the world? Microsoft! It’s not the government. The second one is Nvidia; the one that created AI., it’s not the government. Caterpillars are not governments. Facebook is not the government. Tesla is not a government. Government creates an enabling environment for these things to happen.
Back here in Nigeria, Zenith Bank is creating employment, it is not the government. Government that creates employment. It creates an enabling environment. It is the level playing field. There was a time in Nigeria; the government was at the commanding height of business. But that’s gone. Government creates an enabling environment.
But there’s something else that the government does. Like in Korea, the government looks at industrial sectors that they need to have mega investments. So, they identified aggressive successful businesses that were able to do things and the government put in money for them to expand. When they expanded and became robust, they became international icons. That’s why Samsung is selling here and so many others. The Korean government put money inside. That is why I was laughing at people when they were complaining that the government under Godwin Emefiele, immediate past governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, took a 20 percent stake in Dangote refinery.
In Korea, the government put in money and when the companies grow, they start to generate income for the government. What that means is that anytime you and I buy Samsung, LG or whatever, we’re supporting the Korean economy.
So, if they didn’t support them when they were small to become big, they wouldn’t have reached like this.
The business people are innocent but people in government are seeing them as enemies. Somebody that speaks for the National Assembly, when they asked him why did the National Assembly not buy vehicles from Innoson for Senators, he said the roads are not good so they need Toyota Land Cruiser, to be able to pass through the roads. Chicken and egg, which comes first? Is it not them that are responsible for making good roads? So, we must come out with this patriotic approach to things and not our personal interest.
We know the difference between selfishness and patriotism. They’re opposite. They’re both different. What they’re doing is selfishness. They’re looking at themselves only. Looking at it, they would have said let us adopt a Nigerian make. That is what they did in India. Can you go to the United States and see an American government official driving an official vehicle that’s not an American vehicle? It can’t happen. Even in India, it doesn’t happen. In the U.K, you cannot. But we’re not doing that. We sit down here and we spend a hundred and Sixty million naira each to buy a jeep for whatever. So, we’re exporting Capital. But if we were to do those things, use our own things, we would be building capital and building wealth. That’s the philosophy. Those are the mindsets that we’ll have to change; that we’ll have to adopt.
Moving away from analysis to finding a solution, he stated thus; Nigerians should exercise patience. I said the president spent the first year planting. I’m not saying they should allow him to do what he wants to do; we’re giving him time to plant these seeds. And we know how long it will take for seeds to germinate and bear fruits. If that doesn’t happen, we will hold his feet to the fire. But for now, from my perspective, I’m looking at everything from my perspective.
Fortunately, I have multi-dimensional training. I’m not just a journalist that I went to study mass communication. I also read economics. I also read business administration. I also did law and diplomacy and it is high level training for people who become leaders of the world. So, I read finance, I read accounting, I read philosophy, I read arts. It’s all encompassing. So, I can see everything from every perspective. That’s why when I write and I take these postures, people are wondering whether the CBN governor talked to me or the Finance Minister talk to me. No, I can analyze. I can understand these things. I was trained. I’m an analyst. That’s my job. I pick a situation and analyze it. These situations I’m giving you, nobody in government has done so. So, the government is not talking. They’re not communicating with the people.
Lack of proper communication on the part of those in government is a challenge. It’s in my article. If Nigerians are carried along, they’ll buy into it. If they believe that they are part of the process, that the policy formulation is coming from them, this book is called leading from the streets. And I say that we all should lead in our own small areas. And by the time you aggregate everything, it will become a force. But, we’re not doing so. This time, I’m talking to the government directly. You are not communicating enough with the masses. He submitted.
For me, I think there is good number of lessons that government of the day can draw from this conversation.
•Utomi writes via [email protected].
