Preamble
By 2023, Nigeria’s Democracy attained the maturity age of 24 years having endured since 1999 when the transition from military to civil democratic came into effect after 16 years of military rule since 1983. In these 24 years, it was a mixed outcome of modest efforts without expected results, unattained aspirations arising from insincerity of purpose, dreams turned into nightmares as a result of broken promises and hope made hopeless by acute political leadership failure. While the Olusegun Obasanjo administration made modest efforts between 1999 and 2007 to reposition the country on a path of sustainable socio-economic development through the instrumentality of well-thought-out and properly guided reforms that yielded such successful outcomes on a scale that left Nigeria better than he met it, a lack of purposeful political reforms that would have made Nigeria’s democracy more democratic through institutional strengthening as well as improved electoral management system rendered Obasanjo’s modest achievements unsustainable.
Obasanjo, a retired army general, former military Head of State and Civil War veteran with a global reputation as a pan-African statesman on whom the lot fell upon to pioneer the political leadership of 4th Republic Nigeria, is a man of many capabilities and multiple competencies none of which is being a liberal democrat. And the old soldier has never made any pretences of being what he is not. In his previous writings, Obasanjo had often recommended a benevolent dictatorship for developing countries of Africa and other parts of the world. Whereas Obasanjo, leveraging on crude oil price of between $17 in 1999 and $70 in 2007, was able to grow Nigeria’s foreign reserves from less than $5 billion to $35 billion, raise the GDP growth rate from 0.8% to 10.4% by 2004, negotiate debt relief by paying $12 billion to get Nigeria off its $30 billion debt burden and left a healthy $9.8 billion in savings [excess crude account], his inability to reform Nigeria’s political culture of identity-driven politics that results in prebendalism was like building a solid economic structure on quicksand.
While Obasanjo took his role as President and Commander-in-Chief with all the seriousness it deserved, his undemocratic disposition impacted negatively on his other role of the leader of his ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Under his stranglehold, the PDP became an imperial behemoth of impunity, lawlessness and corruption on such a scale that it greatly undermined Nigeria’s democracy. If the political party system is supposed to be the brain box of a democracy, then the PDP was a corrupted brain box. In addition, Obasanjo it was who moved Nigeria from a command mixed economy to one that was entirely private-sector driven under an IMF and World Bank-inspired neo-liberal economic reform process.
And whereas subsequent political leadership of the Nigerian democratic state clearly lacked Obasanjo’s purposeful administrative competencies, they nevertheless took advantage of the prevalent undemocratic culture of Nigeria’s democracy that was consolidated by the flawed elections of 2003 and 2007 to hold onto power even when they failed to deliver on basic services to the people because the people no longer had the power to hire and fire their political leadership. Despite a brief respite that saw an improved electoral management system, which resulted in the defeat of then incumbent PDP President Goodluck Jonathan by then opposition APC in 2015 after 16 years in power, the new rulers of Nigeria have refused to follow the Jonathan example, going forward. And by 2023, not only had Obasanjo’s modest achievements been reversed, Nigeria once again became a debt-burdened haven of the world’s most impoverished, pauperized, traumatized and terrorized people, as in addition to socio-economic problems the country became challenged with multi-dimensional security challenges. So, after 24 years of transition from military to civil rule, it has become abundantly clear to Nigerians that democracy as a form of government has failed the much promised dividends in the form of improved welfare and security of lives and properties of the Nigerian people.
The keenly contested presidential election of 2023 was an attempt by the Nigerian people to take back their country from what they considered a corrupt and incompetent establishment as represented by the PDP and its better half, the APC, when they massively rallied behind a fringe Labour Party and Peter Obi, its candidate. That President Ahmed Bola Tinubu of the ruling APC emerged victorious with a minority of the total votes cast while winning in only 12 states out of 36 and the FCT is clearly indicative of the peoples resolve of ‘énough is enough’ of broken promises of the dividends of democracy. But two years after, did President Ahmed Bola Tinubu learn a lesson or more about the historic 2023 election enough to administer a shock therapy on him to make a detour from the status quo that was massively rejected by the Nigerian people?
In my assessment, the two years of the Tinubu administration have been characterised by the Ugly, the Bad and the Good.
The Ugly
Two years after assuming office, it is manifestly clear that President Tinubu has not only been unable to improve the welfare and security of the Nigerian people but has also made it worse through his actions and inactions. His removal of energy subsidies [electricity and petrol] and floatation of the naira had the combined effect of throwing the majority of the Nigerian people into an unprecedented level of cost of existence crisis characterised by mass hunger, misery, deprivation and abject poverty. This is because his elimination of petrol and electricity subsidies shot up the cost of production, food, goods and services through the roof, thereby triggering a devastating form of cost-push inflation that was compounded by a floated national currency that lost more than 300% of its value. For an import-dependent economy with a weak manufacturing base, the removal of energy subsidies and floatation of the naira is a double jeopardy for the Nigerian economy that has left a permanent scar in the socio-economic lives of the people.
While the people are reeling from the agonising pains of what the Tinubu administration has dubbed “necessary economic reforms,” the President, rather than reflect on the ruination his policies have caused the Nigerian people and change course, is doubling down on his policy decisions and describing them as “bold and courageous.” Even when different parts of Nigeria erupted in end-hunger protests, President Tinubu could not be bothered because, as far as he was concerned, he has taken the best decision despite it having the worst socio-economic impact on the people in the history of Nigeria. And the misery of the Nigerian people continues as President Tinubu has thrown them into a hell-hole of hopeless helplessness but is still digging.
The Bad
Although the Tinubu administration inherited a hydra-headed monster of insecurity, it appears to have worsened under his watch. Despite his initial efforts at combating insecurity, the situation appears to have degenerated to a level where resurgence of Boko Haram insurgency in the North East, attacks in the farming belt in central Nigerian states like Plateau and Benue and banditry in the North West are now posing existential threats to the Nigerian state while constituted authority appear helpless. This heightening insecurity that has resulted into the mass killings of the Nigerian people while President Tinubu appears to have lost the initiative on how to defeat terror, banditry and general insecurity.
While former President Muhammadu Buhari can be accused of ethnicizing national security, President Tinubu can be accused of politicizing it in order not to offend his predecessor who still holds the key to Nigeria’s largest voting demography; the Hausa speaking, Fulani-ruled Muslim North or so it seems. From the North East to the North West and from central to southern Nigeria, terrorists, bandits and criminals appears to be running the Nigerian state to failure, while our political leaders are behaving like drunken sailors in charge of a sinking ship.
The Good
While President Tinubu can be said to have underperformed in the area of security and welfare, even his worst critic would agree that President Tinubu has been a better diversity manager as clearly seen in his delicate balancing act of inclusion, fairness and equity in the administration of the Nigerian state. In the build up to the 2023 presidential election, President Tinubu a Muslim ran with Kashim Shettima, another Muslim, to the chagrin of Nigeria’s Christian half. The fear of Muslim domination of a multi-religious country like Nigeria resulted in a Christian revolt against the APC Muslim/Muslim ticket.
However, President has proven to be a true Omoluabi and a Yoruba gentleman with the full attributes of religious tolerance, accommodation and love for all irrespective of creed that the Yoruba people are known for. In President Tinubu’s Nigeria, not only has Muslims not dominated the country, his religious fair, equitable and inclusive administration has significantly doused religious tension and the fear of Muslim domination completely dissipated. As a well groomed Omoluabi Yoruba gentleman, President Tinubu is as Muslim as he is Christian and must credited for raising the bar of broad and liberal minded leadership of plural nation state.
Despite been accused of appointing a disproportionate number of his Yoruba kinsmen in positions of authority, a closer look at his total appointments clearly indicate a delicate balancing act that carries along every section of the country. While strengthening his home base in the Yoruba speaking South West, President Tinubu Tinubu is consolidating on his alliances in the north just as he is cultivating new alliances in the South East and South South. Whereas, President Tinubu has compensated and still compensating the North for their massive support for him in the 2023 presidential election, he has extended a hand of friendship to the South East, a region he was totally rejected by appointing one of their own, Admiral Ikechukwu Ogalla as Chief of Naval Staff for the first time in eight years just as he appointed Dave Umahi to the powerful portfolio of Minister of Works.
President Tinubu’s leadership style has forged a broad based elite consensus in a manner that has restoring national unity and social cohesion across ethno-geographic and religious lines. This in itself is a significant achievement because social cohesion and national unity is a necessary condition precedent for national development and security. President may not have delivered yet, but his politics of inclusion is healing Nigeria’s ethno-geographic and religious fault lines allowing for issues based public discourse on the state of the Nigerian state such as we are doing here.
Conclusion
Nigerians must now take advantage of the prevailing atmosphere of fraternal comaraderie to begin to organise a coalition of the willing to chart a way out of our current sorry state of affairs. This coalition of the willing must made of men and women that are Nigerians in mind, body and soul and who are willing to subsume their sectional interest for national interest. The immediate challenge to overcome is move Nigeria away from an Identity driven political culture to one that is motivated by common economic, security and environmental concerns. This has become expedient because the reward system for identity politics is corruption in the mould of state patronage for a privileged few while the reward system broad based politics is good governance for the majority.
This coalition of the willing must also be able to come up with clear cut, ideologically clarified and pragmatic alternatives to the current neo-liberal economic orthodoxy from whose play book, President Tinubu and his predecessors have been reading and adapting but which created out of Nigeria, a country of the richest man in Africa and the poorest people in the world.
Being the text of an address at the Rule of Law Development Foundation on the mid-term assessment of the Tinubu administration.