By Abraham Ogbodo
I listened to the independence message of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. His struggle to assembly plausible statistics to push across a credible message of achievements and hope was palpable. Like a spent swimmer, he was stretching in all directions for a lifeline. I also have this feeling that the speech must have been researched and written by some fellow who studied English or any of the liberal arts in the university. The writer appears low in quantitative reasoning. At best, the speech was a narrative essay on Efforts Without Results. The most that it conveyed was equating growth or sheer addition of numbers with real value or development.
Put differently, the President was campaigning instead of presenting a score sheet of purposeful leadership in 29 months. He needed to be specific with descriptions of what had been achieved within the time under review. He was not expected to dwell on aspirations. He had taken an oath of office on May 29, 2023 to achieve and by reason of which he was forbidden from endless aspiration that puts Nigerians in endless anticipation. To say the least, his speech fell short of a National Day outing. He spoke to the challenges facing the nation as if he was not the President but a candidate for the 2027 presidential election. He was talking of things to come and not things that had come.
Maybe it wasn’t his fault. The speech writer could have searched for some ingenious means to marry the metrics to make the celebrated growth under President Tinubu look like real development. He didn’t do that. In physics, there is a difference between size and mass. In mathematics, also, an ordinal number is a world different from a cardinal number. One and first may invoke preeminence but attract different interpretations if driven down. Next time, the President should do more to bounce his speech off an expert on the subject matter on parade before showing up on national television to reel out statistics that do not add up to an expectant nation.
An economist or a development expert would have approached the task differently. He would have understood, for instance, that a mere increase in the number of universities, polytechnics, monotechnics, colleges of education and other tertiary institutions, does not translate to real development in the higher education sector in the country. The high numbers of universities and other higher institutions have not meant breakthroughs in research and development to service industries and help real socio-economic growth. It has been sheer addition of numbers without corresponding value. You may wish to ask ASUU if you are in doubt. The much needed collaboration between the Gown and Town to touch off development is still an elusive pursuit in the country.
President Tinubu also talked gleefully of more money for the three tiers of government to spend as they like. This is cheap talk. It is like saying that bank notes and not their intrinsic value define wealth. In real terms, the national budget of N17 billion presented to the National Assembly by President Shehu Shagari in 1982, or thereabout, when the naira was stronger than the dollar, held much more value than the N55 trillion budget that Tinubu took to the National Assembly in 2025. The current minimum wage is N70 thousand. This does not mean the least paid worker in Nigeria today is richer than his counterpart in 2015 who received N18 thousand.
Talking like this diminishes the president. He must be made to understand that for the impact of a changing variable to be measured, all consequential variables must be held constant. This is why all value declarations in economics must contain the proviso: all other things being equal. The problem is that all other things are never equal in intricate processes. They remain an ever changing kaleidoscope that creates the hard issues in micro and macroeconomic planning. The economics of national planning entails, essentially, the balancing of three contending rates. These are the interest rate, exchange rate, and inflation rate. Real leaders are measured by their dexterity in juggling these variables to achieve development. They are not measured by their audacity to offset an existing equilibrium for an adventure without consideration of the attendant risks.
Tinubu has not been doing any serious balancing. He is a reckless driver on the highway of taxation. The more money celebrated in the presidential speech was occasioned by the removal of subsidy on petroleum products and floating of the exchange rate on May 29 2023. No President before him had had the courage to deliver that depth of monetary and fiscal dislocations without due consultation. Therefore, part of the achievements he counted for himself on Independence Day was the raw courage to act alone, and perhaps, the subsequent to suppress arising dissension to force an impression of acceptability and peaceful order. He acknowledged the suffering induced by his tax policies but also said Nigerians should be consoled by the fact that their leaders now have more money to build roads, improve public electricity, health care, education and security among other social services. He was just talking.
The duties of the President are outlined in various sections in the 1999 Constitution. No section specifically compels him to give speeches on special occasions. I am saying that President Tinubu doesn’t have to talk when there is nothing reasonable to say. He can decide to remain silent in Aso Rock Villa or fly to Lagos to see his people or even go to France for a working visit. Why should he take more than half an hour of our hard-pressed time to tell us things that are in the pipeline? While the routes from Benin to Abuja, to Asaba and to Warri remain like portions in the Amazon jungle, President Tinubu felt justified to aim high at new deliveries. He spoke with gusto of a coastal road from Lagos to Calabar, railroads from Southwest to Northwest and Southeast to Northeast, international airports and seaports, etc. I am here to remind him that the state of existing roads in Nigeria constrains the free movement of citizens. In fact, the badness of the roads constitutes a breach of Section 41 of the Constitution which guarantees free movement of citizens.
Let me also add that the Brentwood Institutions have never proved to be reliable healers of developing and bruised economies. Their free market and non-subsidy prescriptions are not blindly followed even in the capitalist West. They hold rigid positions regarding the developing nations as if the economics of Adam Smith do not have compelling alternatives in the economics of Carl Max. And so, to crow about the national GDP growing by 4.23 percent to surpass IMF’s projection of 3.4 percent, is not a super endorsement. In all circumstances, statistics remain mere claims against objective realities. They do not add up specific performance that can be taken to the bank. This expanded GDP has not translated to enhanced purchasing power of citizens or a measurable momentum in the real sector. Factories are closing down everyday due to rising cost amid challenges like non availability of public electricity, insecurity, excessive taxation and regulations that seek to stifle rather than support investment and production.
Notwithstanding, President Tinubu did a lot of chest thumping on October 1. Like the lizard that survived a fall from top of the iroko tree, he proclaimed his own prowess when not too many people outside his clan of special men and women seemed ready to give it to him. For effect, his claims of super performance in all the sectors of the economy were distilled into 12 milestones. It was Josef Goebbels, the Nazi’s minister of propaganda who noted that, for a lie to displace truth, its misleading elements must be consistently and persistently maintained in all arising narrations. In other words, it remains a task to tell a credible lie and still remain unruffled. In the 12-point summation, there was a significant alignment with the main body of the narration. Disbursement of N330 billion to eight million households at N25,000.00 per household was part of the achievements. PBAT was cool proclaiming that.
I should not forget this. There was something nice in the presidential speech for Alhaji Aliko Dangote and his refinery to take home. President Tinubu proudly proclaimed that Nigeria is now a leading exporter of aviation fuel. Hear him: “…the country has made notable advancements by refining PMS (Premium Motor Spirit) domestically for the first time in four decades. It has also established itself as the continent’s leading exporter of aviation fuel. Apparently, grandstanding to look and sound real is part of statecraft. Tinubu, by that declaration, reaped bountifully in where he did not sow and then walked away with the confidence of the real farmer.
While saying it, the President maintained a straight face as if he was describing a feat achieved by the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation through the nation’s four refineries in Port Harcourt, Kaduna and Warri. His speech did not mention Dangote Refinery anywhere as the actual miracle worker.
But coming, albeit indirectly, from the President after the many battles to stay afloat with powers and principalities in the mid and down streams sectors of the petroleum industry, Dangote should gladly accept this as enough compensation and endorsement. Whatever takes the load home is called the head pad. A good listener does not search beyond the radio message to see who is talking inside the radio box. He would end up destroying the happiness.
The Independence Day’s edition has come and gone. Ahead is the New Year Day’s version. We cannot comment on what it holds in stock. It is too early. A lot can still happen between now and then to lift up the presidential speech from the doldrums to high grounds. It is possible to witness a transition from endless aspirations to beautiful descriptions of concrete and measurable achievements in governance. We pray O God!
