It is important that President Buhari should not squander his
political goodwill early in his administration. He will need that goodwill to
manage and navigate through complex and difficult economic conditions ahead.
This is one of the governance lessons from the failure of former President
Jonathan. The President clearly by the lack of clear fiscal action on the
economy, his attempt to revamp the national airline, revamp the NNPC refineries
rather than privatizing them seem to be economically oriented to big and
populist government in a period of constrained fiscal resources. Inevitable painful decisions are ahead on
petroleum subsidy because they are not sustainable at least at present levels.
We consume petroleum products far less as a nation than what we import. It has
been estimated that at least thirty to percent of petroleum products get
smuggled across into neighbouring countries due wide cross boarder price
differentials. Yet, the Nigerian government pays for these huge subsidy. We are
essentially subsidizing significantly fuel consumption in neighbouring
countries at huge cost to the national treasury. The other collateral effect is that the naira
is perpetually under pressure as a very significant portion of foreign exchange
available is used to support importation of petroleum products. The naira will
positively appreciate to the dollar with positive collateral economic effects
if we import less petroleum products or if we could keep our petroleum products
at the level of our actual national consumption.
We support and commend the new transparency and
anticorruption stance of government. Resources previously unavailable such as
the LNG dividends are now being discovered to be made available to the people. These
liberated resources are however meager compared to what is required to fix the
infrastructure challenge and the rotten decay in social sectors like education,
health and create jobs. The President will need to ask the nation to sacrifice
at a point and negotiate the reordering of government fiscal commitments given
meagre resources. It is in this context that the President would need all the
political goodwill when he would have to take inevitable difficult economic
decisions. The outcry against the President’s perceived or real sectionally
lopsided appointments, which could potentially squander his political goodwill
should therefore alarm or give the President serious concern. President Buhari
needs to ensure that he does not by commission or omission confirm the
fear-mongering by opposition during the Presidential elections that he would be
a provincial President. This is another lesson to learn from the failure of
former President Jonathan. He failed to remember consistently his national
mandate and largely governed as a provincial President with “it is our turn” mentality screaming
boldly out of his actions and inactions.
Wise kings surrounds themselves with wise counsellors. They
know what wise counsel is and know where and how to find it. President Obama
surrounded himself with the very best of political and economic brains in the
United States taking a leaf from Abraham Lincoln by appointing even his rivals
like Hilary Clinton. His executive team had strong public, private or academic
sector pedigree. The only thing you could disagree with was the ideological
orientation of his appointments and that is if you are republican. President
Obama even appointed his mentor in John Kerry, who gave him his first national
speaking platform at the Democratic convention, as his Secretary of State. Obviously,
President Buhari is justifiably concerned with widespread integrity and character
issues in our national leadership cadre. He is putting integrity and character
as key qualifying criteria for his political appointments. The President should
however recognize that he needs women and men with a combination of character
and competence and not just character alone in his government. Despite the
public relations script of the Presidency especially on his latest
appointments, the merit or technical competence in those appointments are
largely debatable. Character and competence are not mutually exclusive in
leadership or public service. They should not be a substitute for each other.
President Buhari must find people who combine both and appoint them into his
government. Public servants or leaders with competence and no character will
steal us dry while those with character and low competence will largely run a
confused government with technically competent but corrupt elites and civil
servants running rings around them. Good intentions does not guarantee good
governance. A public servant must know and understand policy issues and know
what to do to perform.
The President also must show political savviness to hold
together the “coalition of good” that brought him to power. He will need that
coalition to govern in a democracy of plural interests where he does not hold
absolute powers. This will call for being
politically pragmatic without compromising his core values of integrity. Political
pragmatism combined with good values is equivalent to political wisdom, that
which is necessary to build contingent pro-active coalitions and consensus and
also knowing when to exert uncompromising executive authority in order to move
the nation forward. While the President must “belong to nobody” so that he is
not held captive by vested interests, he must build a broad level of trust with
the “coalition of good” that has brought him to power by sheer political
pragmatism and savviness. This trust is critical to hold his political
coalition together. President Buhari must
develop personal and emotional touch with his various constituencies while
keeping them publicly and privately focused on the larger ideals of “greater good
of the nation”, selflessness and good governance. The national assembly crisis of the
President’s political party suggests that he must raise his ante significantly
in this area.
Finally, we address the subject of defeating corruption on
an enduring basis. Values set at the top matters and we commend the President
on this. Suddenly, the anti-corruption agencies woke up from a deep slumber and
electricity is now more available without an additional dime of investment. Beyond
values however, we must strengthen the institutions meant to fight corruption
to ensure they continue to live up to their purpose after President Buhari’s
tenure. The first task in this regard is
to prevent the institutions from being captured by narrow and corrupt elite
through the appointment of their lackeys into the leadership of those
anti-corruption and law enforcement institutions including the regulators, the
judiciary and the police. The President must be vigilant about nominees into
his government, their nominators and their motives to ensure that these vested
and narrow interests do not capture his government and critical state
institutions even at policy level. The
second task is to strengthen our electoral process and institutions to ensure
free and fair elections and ensure that people’s vote truly count. There is a
clear correlation between corruption in a country and its level of free and
fair elections. Every round of free and fair election purifies our national leadership
and purge dishonest men and women from governance. Good and evil produce after their own kind. We
must elect good people who are likely to appoint their own kind to lead
critical state institutions and set the right values in those institutions
which over time may ossify into an enduring institutional culture fit for their
institutional purpose. President Buhari
must therefore revisit the Uwais Electoral Reform Panel recommendations to
strengthen INEC, criminalize electoral offences, promote internal democracy in
political parties and reform political party financing. The third task is to
review the enabling laws of the anti-corruption and law enforcement
institutions to make them more transparent, publicly accountable and less
susceptible to political interference. The Presidential Advisory Committee on
Corruption should note this and take forward. We wish President Buhari well.
Olu Akanmu (Twitter @OluAkanmu) publishes a blog on Strategy and Public
Policy on http://olusfile.blogspot.com
