Without a cultural reset, nothing will change
By Emma Nwosu
Nigeria has to undergo a cultural reset, in the way of government – from the rascality of the old guard to a new order of accountability, prudence and transparency – before it can thrive. Otherwise, the country of youths (more than 70 percent of the population), abundant resources and limitless opportunities will, regrettably, perish with time. Unfortunately, President Tinubu is not looking in that direction!
Culture refers to the way of life of a people; their way of doing things. It is the greater determinant of prosperity than gross human and material resources and policies. Compare Nigeria or the Democratic Republic of Congo with Japan, for example. Empires are built on virtue but destroyed by vice.
The first law in culture – as in heaven – is order, in the manner summed up in the Holy Book: “a servant cannot be greater than his master; neither one that is sent greater than he that sent him” (John 13: 6) Where this responsive and productive order is habitually violated, things will fall apart and anarchy would be let loose. Normally, the servant would be replaced. Similarly, in democracy, all over the progressive world, citizens are the masters while political office holders are the servants who must be responsive to their needs or be changed – by parliament and by free and fair elections.
But the case is different in Nigeria. We are saddled with a bizarre culture where political office has become a place of lordship and aggrandizement rather than service; where mostly unpatriotic and clueless office holders and collaborating businessmen have formed a predatory oligarchy and operate like gods, eating up the country’s resources and living in opulence while the people who, technically, hired them languish in penury, yet would not have the freedom to change them by free and fair elections.
Many countries had found themselves in that quagmire. But every one of them that made it – from France to China to Singapore, e. t. c – had to undergo a cultural reset, with a selfless leader in front. Nigeria can never arise to positive change without someone to lead the imperative cultural reset.
President Tinubu (a captain of the oligarchy) with all due respect, lacks the character and moral authority to lead the desired cultural change in governance, given his questionable election and record of greed and criminal allegations. “He who comes to equity must come with clean hands”.
He carries himself as an insensitive master to the people rather than a servant leader. He is not curbing financial corruption, leakages and wastages in public finance and cashflows and in the debilitating cost of governance. Even his motorcade – like those of the Senate President and other principal officers of this government – is nauseating. They are living pompously in a world of their own.
President Tinubu could not even cut his entitlements, to motivate others to follow suit or to have the moral authority to institute a review of compensation for political office, to identify with the deprivations of the people. Instead, political office holders were to get a 114 percent raise recently.
When the proposal was put on hold, due to popular outrage, the National Assembly turned round to appropriate N40 Billion for sports utility vehicles and another N70 Billion for onboarding new members – despite Nigeria’s dire cashflow constraints and the abject poverty, despair and anguish ravaging the land, which calls for austerity measures. From President to governor to legislator, there is no sense of humility, empathy, sacrifice, prudence, patriotism or hope for the people.
Perhaps, because he is also liable, President Tinubu has failed to censure governors who fleece the states, in the name of severance package, after serving for just eight years (or even only one term of four years) while retired civil servants (many of who served for 35 years) in most cases, do not get the meagre pension and the minimum wage remains N30,000 per month. Many of these predatory governors retire to the legislature or ministerial departments and agencies to also draw equally obscene remuneration while still keeping the loot from their states.
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Conversely, President Tinubu has, precipitately, descended on the populace with devastating policies. The so-called fuel subsidy was hastily withdrawn, without authentic countervailing measures. Even the dreaded General Sani Abacha put the Petroleum Trust Fund and concrete reliefs in place before daring. Dr. Goodluck Jonathan also did, yet was not allowed to proceed – by the camp of the same man who has, now, taken the people to the cleaners, in a chilling volte face.
The paltry palliative of N8,000 per household, per month, was intended to be dissipated by opaque cash transfer, to only 12 million households, instead of investing in the more productive public transportation, basic education, primary health care and agricultural (food) value chain, in collaboration with states, local governments and communities, for greater multiplier effects. The Naira exchange rate has been floated – in an unproductive economy also dogged by inelastic demand for foreign currencies – whereas, like fuel subsidy, dual exchange rate was not the problem but its bastardization.
Perhaps, unknowingly, the seed of hyperinflation and destruction of the currency and economy is being sown. Since the Second Republic, Nigeria’s leaders have failed to adapt textbook, IMF and World Bank sociology and economics to the country’s peculiarities. It is the same walk to perdition, today.
The leadership of the 10th National Assembly was imposed in the same wily manner in which party primary tickets and votes were bought. We are saddled again with a servile, quid pro quo, legislature incapable of overseeing the executive. Everything the President presented has been passively and speedily passed while the legislators got everything they wanted. The Senate President now wears the Asiwaju trademark cap to office as a mark of submission to President Tinubu. But, by the President’s impetuosity, the prospect of growing our institutions and the Rule of Law will die.
His hasty activities and policies manifest a desperation to appropriate the Presidency by selling himself as a man of action (while the last word is yet to be heard, from the judiciary, on his controverted election) cannot lead to macro-economic stability. Without that stability, there cannot be economic growth, nor abatement in insecurity nor improvement in the conditions of the people.
President Tinubu’s “Renewed Hope” agenda is bound to fail, contrary to the optimism of some people. He may be the smartest Nigerian politician, today, but, with all due respect, lacks the attributes for the cultural reset imperative to the transformation of the country, given his antecedents and trajectory. Something cannot stand on nothing.
