The president has no other business. He is not doing anything else. This is his life commitment. And he has said this is what he is going to commit his entire life to, towards ensuring that the economic problems are solved, and employment opportunities are created.”
That was how Vice President Yemi Osinbajo (SAN) put it over the previous weekend when he was accosted by reporters in Ikenne. They wanted to know: Will the Buhari presidency fix the economy in the four years of the electoral mandate? But rather than just a question of when, it is more of a question of who and where.
With the emergence of Muhammadu Buhari at the polls earlier this year and his installation on May 29 as president, alongside his vice president, the direction of the ship of Nigerian state has changed.
Direction is destiny. No matter how soon or how long, if you face the right direction, you will always arrive at the right destination. Nigeria has faced the wrong direction for too long and it is ingenious and immoral that we expected to arrive at real socio-economic development for the people.
With the cabinet of President Muhammadu Buhari now fully seated, Nigerians are set to see a signal change in direction of the nation’s economic fortunes. The main outlines of that change have been stated over and again in the last few months by the president and the vice president.
It bears easy recall: The economy would continue to be private sector-driven and now with a responsible infusion of social investments by the government of the day. Why is this important to the Buhari presidency? There are fundamental philosophical underpinnings that centre around the notion that human flourishing ought to be the driver of public policy. Specifically, Nigeria has a huge number of extremely poor people – over 110 million or about a third of the population. Should we continue to define policy as if those people don’t matter? President Buhari and Vice President Osinbajo don’t think so. Indeed, the president is determined to lift such Nigerians out of the pangs of poverty.
In order to do that, this presidency is not going to rehash some of the time-worn economic ideas and myths that have not produced sustained development or any significant lift for the mass of Nigerian people. For instance, as we can all see, the times of rising oil revenues and GDP figures have not produced commensurate lift from unemployment or economic malady.
As the United Nations Development Report once said, “Policymakers are often mesmerized by the quantity of growth. They need to be more concerned with its structure and quality. Unless governments take timely corrective action, economic growth can become lopsided and flawed. Determined efforts are needed to avoid growth that is jobless, ruthless, voiceless, rootless and futureless.”
Parts of this statement summarize the fascination of some of Nigeria’s past economic managers who quoted economic growth figures that a vast number of Nigerians cannot even relate to. The vice president during his interaction with the new ministers at a retreat pointed to this that “growth figures can be deceptive”. Herein lies one of the critical insights that the Buhari economic direction is bringing to bear. Growth is about people, not some fancy figures.
For instance, during the immediate past presidency, oil prices rose from $80 per barrel in 2010 to over $100 in 2014. Yet unemployment got worse in the same period. In 2010 unemployment rate was 21.1 percent and then increased to 24.3 percent in 2014. At the same time, foreign reserves were on the rise and so too were GDP figures. But for the mass of the Nigerian people, it was all ‘fuzzy maths’, as American politicians would say.
For the Buhari economic team, impact is all that matters, and we are talking positive impact in the lives of the mass of our people. So what is this presidency going to do about it? A change in the way we think about economic growth and development.
Vice President Osinbajo spoke about this in his speech in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire in September during the inauguration of the new African Development Bank (AfDB) president, Akinwunmi Adesina. According to him, “There must be a rethinking of some of the time-worn economic ideas and myths that held us bound to only a few options.”
Osinbajo illustrated his argument this way: “In 2008 western economies, faced with what Ben Bernanke described as the ‘deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression’, abandoned conventional free-market thinking and embraced state-bankrolled stimulus plans to forestall the imminent collapse of their economies. This proved once and for all that the monster called the economy cannot be allowed to prowl the streets with its free-wheeling struts without the leash of a trainer.”
It was this kind of understanding that produced the APC manifesto with which the Buhari-Osinbajo presidential ticket campaigned and won the election earlier this year, and this is why this administration is now dutifully and diligently planning for substantial spending in the 2016 budget for social investments and public infrastructure.
Those who have attempted to suggest that the government is reneging on its promises just don’t understand the groundwork that is going on even as I am writing this and the unpublicized planning that has been going on in the presidency regarding this and other major interventions designed on behalf of and for the benefit of a vast number of Nigerians. There is a plan to touch the lives of millions with the Conditional Cash Transfer and the School Feeding programmes among such others. There is no relenting or going back.
It is so we could have real development that resonates with the people that the Buhari government is now pursuing a vibrant plan to diversify the economy through an intense pursuit of agricultural policies that will produce self-sufficiency in rice, wheat production, among others, while also developing the entire agriculture value-chain. The federal government is designing a plan with several rice-producing states now along those lines and the new agriculture and rural development minister, the well-regarded Audu Ogbeh, would be speaking more to that as we go.
The planned massive infrastructural impetus for roads, rail and power being organized is also because the masses of our people need and rely on those infrastructures to get ahead. Not only would these policies create jobs as we go, they would spur on an economic growth that the people can feel its impact beyond cute GDP figures.
A look at the ministerial team inspires great confidence. A tested financial expert, Kemi Adeosun, is now at the Finance Ministry figuring out how to fund these laudable plans from the revenue side. A well-versed investment virtuoso, Okey Enelamah, is in the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Investment to mobilize investors for sustainable and bankable projects and the commonsense merger of Budget and Planning as one ministry under an adroit Udoma Udo Udoma as minister.
With that calibre of professionals on the financing, investing and planning side, the complement on the infrastructural implementation side is equally confidently assertive. We have people with successful and significant executive experience in delivering to the public and the people they served beyond statistical claims that are only good on paper. The appointment of former Governors Rotimi Amaechi and Babatunde Fashola, with Senator Hadi Sirika, respectively, to lead in Transportation, Aviation, Power, Works and Housing ministries sends signals that the nation’s economic direction is now turned to producing results for the people with tested hands in the polity. Expectedly, the president is being applauded for forming such a strong cabinet.
It is for the purposes of touching lives that the 2016 budget is going to see a significant rise in capital expenditure. That is why the presidency is not shy to consider the possibility of a total budget of as much as N8 trillion for next year as already reported in the local and international media. It is also the reason the Buhari government is planning a $25bn fund for infrastructure to terminate the era of abandoned projects due to insufficient budgetary allocations. As the vice president has noted, the fund would have a contribution from the federal government but would also consist of bankable projects with huge investor-participations.
What is clear is that an opportunity does exist now for our country not only to change direction, and correct errors of the past, but also to do great things and to do even the commonsense needful things that had been ignored in the past. Great things like raising the funds needed to stimulate the economy and commonsense things like the Treasury Single Account and other measures to cut financial leakages and fraud. That is why we now have a Zero-Based Budgeting that enforces the justification of every kobo meant to be spent as against the incremental spending styles of the past. That was why the president, earlier in the year, decided to package a bailout for the states that could not pay salaries for months. It is the commonsense for the Buhari presidency that if workers have done the work, then they should be paid!
And more great things to touch lives are in the offing, like significantly raising the level of affordable, low-cost financing to the MSMEs to scale up their trades massively, including market women, artisans, technology start-ups, among others, such that the informal sector can begin to contribute more to the GDP.
That is why President Buhari has committed his life to the realization of a better Nigeria, as Osinbajo disclosed. That is why he is determined to clean the system so that these plans won’t be scuttled and Nigerians short-changed by the ‘principalities’ of corruption that have pervaded the land for just too long a time.
As many Nigerians know, it is indeed a new day and based on the signals so far from the Presidential Villa, Nigeria will never remain the same. The president is sure-footed, and his personal integrity and discipline enhance the needed environment for honest and diligent planning to be restored in our governmental and national affairs.
As someone noted recently, “We now have in office a president who no one can have the temerity to approach with a bribe to short-change the fortunes of the people, and that is such a huge blessing!” And he has the cerebral Osinbajo, a man of integrity, as a sound vice president by his side, working silently but intensely with a clear-headed pursuit of impactful results. The compliment of the ministers sworn in this past week is a significant step in the composition of the new Nigeria management team. Nigerians, expect great things! That is the commitment from President Buhari.
Peter A. Babatunde
