A rapprochement for fiscal renaissance

29th August 2022

Nigeria’s present fiscal crisis and challenges offer opportunities for tremendous reforms. It is in times of adversity and necessity that inventiveness and innovation are mainstreamed in governance, economic and social life. It is the time for radical departures from norms that have dragged society backwards and for taking steps to learn from obvious failures. This discourse highlights the need for the leadership and the led to come to a new understanding for the commencement of targeted and concrete steps towards national fiscal rebirth.

There are a couple of steps that could lead to this national fiscal renaissance. The first is the need for a national consensus and understanding that leadership leads. This will lead the followership to the appreciation of the need to select the best of our best, the finest of the finest into leadership positions at all levels, from the presidency to the councillor. As a person sows, shall she reap. The quality, capacity, honesty and credibility of elected officials will directly manifest in the quality of economic and fiscal governance and the ensuing outcomes from their outputs. In selecting the best of the best, empirical evidence will be the guide; primordial considerations will be kicked out of the equation and characters, who divide rather than unite, will not be given high consideration. Understanding the nuances of a modern state and not the ways of a master strategist of the old decadent political order becomes a plus. This is in recognition of the electoral period which will provide an opportunity to elect a new government in 2023.

The extant leadership or new leaders that will emerge after the elections, through high-level government officials at all levels, must stop living in denial. The reality of economic meltdown is already with us. Things are not the way they used to be and may not revert to how they used to be in a few years’ time. Therefore, political leaders must come clean to the people by clearly explaining to the people the depth and level of the rot in terms of the fiscal bankruptcy—and our inability to pay our bills. For instance, the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), should address Nigerians, explaining the fiscal challenges. During this explanation, he must also come clean with the identification of leakages, wastes and frivolities in the system and propose steps to block them. The steps must start from his office at the state house, to the legislature and other government agencies. He must be seen to be contrite, acknowledge the misdeeds of his administration without shifting blames to any other persons and firmly promise to retrace the steps that led us to this dark alley. This procedure should also be replicated at various state governments and local governments.

Definitely, it will come down to the leadership asking for sacrifice and belt-tightening from the populace because we cannot get out of this virtual bankruptcy without hardship and sacrifice. This will resonate with the population if the majority are convinced that there is utmost good faith and transparency in the new ways fiscal decisions and commitments will be managed. Nigerians will need to see their president leading the sacrifice, not through “assuring” speeches but in real-life practice. The scenario of a bankrupt country where high-level public officials drive convoys of SUVs numbering between five and eleven is not only insane but an outright display of idiocy. Nigerians will not agree to make sacrifices where the leaders will simply ask the followers to do what they say and not what they do.
This openness, quality communication and reversing the steps of profligacy are imperative because as of today, even with all the challenges, a good number of Nigerians still believe we are still a rich country and see no need for any adjustments. They tease out their position from the lifestyle and quantum of money being spent by the leadership and even aspiring leaders. Clearly, when the leadership and led understand each other and the leadership take transparent steps in the national interest, there will be a galvanisation of the followership; a re-awakening of the community spirit that is fundamental to the building of a great nation.

Openness and transparency will lead to accountability even in matters of appointment to public offices. The idea that a president or governor can appoint anyone to assist him as minister or commissioner is not open-ended. It is about the ability of such appointee to deliver on the mandate of his office, especially if such office is related to the fundamental objectives and directive principles of state policy. Contrary to the present approach of the Buhari regime, round pegs must be put in round holes. In respect of the rot in education, what is the qualification and background experience of Adamu Adamu that positions him to be Education Minister beyond parochialism? For him to tease the Academic Staff Union of Universities by asking students to sue them shows ignorance of the fundamental duties of the state in education. Nigerians do not pay tax to ASUU and ASUU cannot be the duty bearer. ASUU did not ask for votes and they are not the government. A minister abdicates ministerial responsibility and has zero ideas on how to advance education. Instead of resigning, he stirs unnecessary controversy. Pray, can Adamu or any other minister please tell Nigerians what qualifies him to earn more than a university professor?

The lingering strike of the ASUU presents a case study. It would have been easy for the government to plead lack of resources and ask the ASUU to go back to work if elected and appointed public officials were receiving emoluments and perks of office that were reasonable and somehow relative to the emoluments and perks of the ASUU members. To insist on paying a university professor less than 10 per cent of what a legislator, minister, etc., who has no verifiable school certificate earns is the crux of the matter and no matter the appeal, no reasonable academician is expected to listen to such demeaning position. The insistence of political office holders sending their children overseas to school, flash the pictures of their graduation in the media, while paying starvation wages to professors is insane and cannot be the basis of national fiscal renaissance. Such pictures only reinforce the will of ASUU members to continue the struggle against the “elected government of emperors.” To pay doctors peanuts, pretend to build world-class hospitals and use same as opportunity to madly inflate contracts, while jetting out to treat headaches and malaria in foreign hospitals is not only insane but amounts to economic sabotage. And when doctors demand reasonable wages, they are insulted by the same irresponsible political class.
The leadership must come down from their old-fashioned high horse and come back to their senses. They need to renounce their wasteful lifestyle and packages which they approved for themselves, give other citizens the chance to earn decent livelihoods through transparency and accountability of public expenditure. This would lay the basis for coordinated action between the leadership and the led and sacrifices and belt-tightening on both sides to get Nigeria out of the fiscal woods.