Because the government of President Bola Tinubu is slow in responding to the frightening insecurity and spiraling economy of Nigeria, suggestions on how to turn things around should be offered without worrying if they will be rebuffed or even ignored.
As kidnapping, murder and (somewhat reduced) insurgency fuel insecurity, the sputtering economy is accompanied by naira depreciation, inflation and stratospheric prices of strategic consumer goods.
Hitherto relatively safe South West Nigeria is now swarming with native and alien kidnappers, some of whom are octogenarian society figures that no one would ever think was capable of hurting a fly.
The team assembled by President Tinubu, reputed turnaround experts with a nose for astute headhunting, does not seem to know exactly what remedies to apply to the rapidly deteriorating situation.
As Atiku Abubakar, the umpteenth presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party in the 2023 election, does an unprofessional job of being an opposition leader, while Peter Obi, presidential candidate of the Labour Party, is stumbling at it, Nigeria’s “poor-mekunu” are justifiably taking to the streets against the harsh economic conditions.
One must admit that the revelation by Governor Yemi Cardoso that false claims of $2.4 billion were presented for payment against the Central Bank of Nigeria under Godwin Emefiele, his predecessor, tells how much Nigerians work against themselves.
Incidentally, drafters of Nigeria’s 1999 Constitution identified security and the economy (which they described as the welfare of the people) as the two major responsibilities of all tiers of government in Nigeria.
Section 14(2b) of the Constitution says, without equivocation, that, “It is hereby accordingly declared that: the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government.”
Now to the low-hanging solutions to the insecurity and unstable economy of Nigeria: The security architecture must be decentralised and devolved to local government and state, or at least, regional levels.
Think of how secure everyone would be when the Divisional Police Officer is a local. Such security officers who collude with criminal elements to breach the security of the rural areas of Nigeria will be swiftly detected and dealt with by their local compatriots.
A media report indicates that local vigilantes of some sort exist within at least 16 states of Nigeria. This suggests that the current security architecture is inadequate, despite additional military input.
“The team assembled by President Tinubu, reputed turnaround experts with a nose for astute headhunting, does not seem to know exactly what remedies to apply to the rapidly deteriorating situation.”
You wonder why the military that sanitised West Africa with the ECOMOG intervention force and came back to nearly wipe out recalcitrant Zaki Biam and Odi communities from the face of the earth is now acting like pussyfoot.
In any case, the military’s professional training is geared toward handling breaches by external aggressors against the country’s territorial integrity, while policing is for internal security, and it is essentially local.
One must admit, though, that the security agencies are recently getting better at taking out some of the criminals, though it’s also looking too little too late for actions that should have been taken proactively.
The next step is for the government to urgently employ highly articulate persons into the police force and give them high-tech equipment to work with. Insecurity can no longer be tackled by brute force; you need swift minds with appropriate technology to do the job.
Imagine if Unmanned Airborne Vehicles or drones are available to intelligent police officers at all divisional police stations. Remember the ease with which America traced the lair of terrorist Osama bin Laden through an ordinary phone call made by his chief security officer somewhere in the boondocks of Pakistan.
Imagine how secure the farmers and their farms would be, especially if intelligent officers of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps and foresters, whom the Yoruba call “asogbo,” were manning the entire rural Nigeria.
Some, however, allege that geo-locational equipment already in the hands of the police is deployed to protect only state actors, those connected to them and the rich, while the masses that need protection are neglected.
Even if his language is opaque, the admission by CBN Governor Cardoso that those who run both the fiscal (or macroeconomic) and monetary policy machines of the Tinubu Presidency recognise the need to work as a team is gratifying.
Those on that schedule must ensure that the crude petroleum production consistently matches the 2.3 million barrels per day approved for Nigeria by the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
If the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Heineken Lokpobiri, is unable to guarantee the simple task of preventing further pilfering of Nigeria’s petroleum, he may have to be asked to go, together with the security contractors, Tantita, owned by former Niger Delta militant, Government “Tompolo” Ekpemupolo.
By the way, those members of the elite group who seem to have a sense of exclusive entitlement to the commonwealth of all Nigerians should be asked to bug off by Mr President himself.
Minister of Minerals Development, Dele Alake, should be encouraged by Mr President to rapidly grow the export capacity of the other mineral resources in the mining sector, to help augment the rapid inflow of forex.
These should raise the Gross Domestic Products and accelerate the inflow of foreign exchange into the economy, strengthen the naira, and thereby combat both imported and domestic inflation. Price control is not the way to moderate prices in an import-dependent economy. It will fail.
Only a good understanding and tweaking of the supply and demand of every product and the foreign exchange will do the job. You must also bear in mind the suggestion by British economist John Keynes that the government must actively intervene in the economy by deliberately adjusting supply and demand in the marketplace.
Keynes says the government could ask some citizens to dig a hole in order to put some money in their hands and turn around to ask another set of citizens to refill the dug holes and also put some money in their hands.
That way, all those citizens willing to work will have money to spend and thus jump-start the economy. This template probably also assumes that the infrastructure and production capacity is available within the country.
And, it is not enough to simply sanction those Nigerians who use the American dollar as a store of value for their liquid wealth; the government must take action to increase the productivity of the brick-and-mortar sector. And to achieve that, the government must declare a state-of-emergency in the power industry.
The idea is to produce strategic consumer goods, like petroleum products, foodstuffs and manufacturing raw materials, within the Nigerian borders and thus significantly reduce demand for foreign exchange.
The second is to raise the level of primary economic activities, like crude petroleum, that can immediately generate more foreign exchange liquidity. Both activities should effectively reduce the pressure on the naira.
One more thing: the President should set up a Presidential Committee of Economic Advisers, to work with the Coordinating Minister of the Economy.
The job of this committee is to think up radical, but workable, solutions to the nation’s immediate and long-term economic problems.
But please, do not load the committee with theoreticians. Create a mix of academics, entrepreneurs, technocrats, and men with hands-on experience on the shop floor of factories, marketing firms and the service industry.
If this government fails with these short-term measures, that may confirm the argument that Nigeria’s political elite are a bunch of incompetents.
