The public perception that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu may not be a listening leader grows by the day. With the legislature playing the role of a lapdog to the Presidency, citizens have cause to worry that their existential concerns may no longer be of concern to the current government. This growing negative perception – of a government that does not listen to its citizens – should worry the Tinubu administration. It does not matter that citizens’ fears over the impact of government policies may prove unfounded in the long run. What matters is that there are concerns about empathy that are not being addressed right now. They should.
The way to address these concerns is not by abusing those who express them or attempting to use security agents to intimidate or shut citizens up. Propaganda, gaslighting or other props will not cut it either. One way to address the concerns is to practically demonstrate that the administration respects, admits and uses citizen feedback in the formulation, implementation and review of its policies. The administration cannot admit prospective feedback at this stage. It is, however, not late to urgently consider retrospective feedback which I shall come to shortly.
Citizens are by nature reluctant to accept radical changes that affect their quality of life in the short run. We know that most leaders promote good policies. It however takes educated and expert citizens to understand the medium to long-term benefits of such policies. It also takes skillful communicators to meaningfully engage citizens in order to establish buy in on difficult policies, programmes and projects. In the absence of both, good leaders often resort to paying deaf ears to the cries of citizens against what may turn out to be short-term consequences of their policies. They do this in the hope that time and impact will ultimately turn the tide of public opinion in their favour. Time and impact will therefore tell whether this is the case with Tinubu because of one major failure – inability to allow prospective and retrospective feedback to guide the formulation and execution of policies.
In policy design, prospective feedback is usually – or ought to be – accommodated at the design stage. We constantly see prospective feedback in action in the legislature during the process of making bills. When a sponsor formulates and presents a bill, it is shared among members who use their staff experts and consultants to dissect its benefits and drawbacks, long before it is introduced to the floor for debate. The bill goes through two debates and a public hearing before reaching the desk of a relevant committee for final review and recommendation. The Committee recommendation is presented along with the bill for a third and final debate before it is passed or voted down. Even after its passage and signing into law, future controversy on interpretations will move the law to the judiciary or back to the legislature for further amendment. Prospective feedback also rules the judiciary process, which is even more rigorous and cumbersome on matters that come before a court of law. The issues and conflicts are not only vigorously canvassed but primary judgements become the subject of further appeals, up to the Supreme Court.
My experience is that the Nigerian executive branch is usually the most impatient with regards to this rigorous process that should guide government policy and decision-making. Good policies ought to pass through five critical processes in the two stages of formulation and implementation. The first stage comprises agenda setting, formulation, and adoption while the second includes implementation and review processes. Policymakers need quality feedback at every stage of the five processes. Without robust prospective feedback, the first stage is doomed. Without seeking and admitting retrospective feedback, the second stage process is also doomed. Let’s just say that succeeding presidents and governors inadvertently ensure that both stages fail.
Unlike the legislature, cabinet members in most authorities are inundated with policy documents either the evening before or the morning of executive council meeting days. This is intentionally designed to leave the members with no time to digest and reflect on the full implications and consequences of policy memos before them. The hapless honourables therefore invariably vote yes or no based on their general knowledge of the issue or on what they read of the governor’s body language. This approach to policy approvals creates room not only for poor design but also for poor implementation.
We have hitherto accepted as truth the claim that Nigeria is good in policy design but poor in policy implementation. My experience in government, both at national and subnational levels, leads me to differ. I will start by saying that the goal of public policy is to equitably allocate resources, promote social justice, and address societal challenges. In short, public policies aim at positively impacting people’s lives. What this implies is that every policy is considered, should be considered, from the point of view of how they positively impact the life of the people.
Regrettably, two problems dodge policy design in Nigeria. One is the selfish and self-serving nature of the policies that our presidents and governors implement after getting into office. Those policies reflect a disconnect between the fraud they sell to voters as policies during their campaigns and the new policies they formulate and implement after they take over power. This disconnect makes most critical public policies appear elegantly and expertly crafted on the surface while they are in fact deceptive and sometimes downrightly dubious documents.
This disconnect is the key to understanding underdevelopment in Nigeria, from a policy analyst’s point of view. Ordinarily, a politician’s agenda setting should begin with a campaign manifesto. This could be a personal manifesto or a party platform. In Nigeria, most politicians do not sell the agenda during electioneering. They immediately dump the document as soon as they are elected. It is however not a problem as long as the new leader is serious with the second stage of agenda setting which occurs after taking an oath of office.
The second stage of agenda setting is where the governor thoughtfully assembles a team of experts – or a team of equals – to help them formulate and implement new policies. The difference between success and failure often resides in what the new chief executive makes of a mix of this task of assembling a good team, digesting and understanding handover notes, getting further briefing from top level bureaucrats, and a willingness to admit other prospective feedback. In announcing his first set of policies that put the economy on a tailspin, President Tinubu, it can be argued, had no recourse to any of the four feedback options. He could not have consulted the handover notes from the previous administration to, for instance, deal with fuel subsidy removal issues that were not so apparent during the campaigns. Neither did he consult top level bureaucrats who are the secondary sources of feedback nor was a cabinet in place.
When a leader at the point of taking office begins to dish out policy announcements, the nation may resort to prayers for the good intentions of such a leader to manifest positively in their lives.
Is Tinubu a listening President? From the point of view of a policy analyst, he is clearly not. A listening leader is one who, before announcing new policies, would have accommodated the fears and concerns of potential beneficiaries and those that will bear the brunt of each policy.
Next, we examine the implications and consequences of a Tinubu Presidency that refuses to change this mindset.