Courting anarchy: To avoid descent into anarchy, ego tripping, haphazard policies, pain-inducing directives, and self-aggrandizing leadership must give way to pro-poor policies, holistic solutions, and empathetic governance.
Nigeria is facing significant economic difficulties at this time, to put it mildly.
At 29.9%, inflation is at an all-time high and the cost of living has quadrupled between May 2023 and February 2024 while wages remain stagnant or unpaid. The Naira is on a high-speed slide, depreciating by over 300% in 9 months with no end in sight.
The already endemic insecurity has worsened with increased banditry, kidnapping, robbery and murder across the country. Life is very hard for Nigerians across regions, creed and political affiliations in a way that is evident and undebatable.
Protests on account of hunger and the pervasive hardship are being recorded in different parts of the country. Nigerians have been captured on video scrambling to scoop rice mixed with sand due to poorly planned palliative distribution efforts. The most desperate citizens have been trampled upon in epic struggles for bread at distribution centers in some state capitals. A recent effort by the customs service to sell confiscated rice at an ‘affordable’ price resulted in a stampede, with reported fatalities. News reports from a state in Middle Belt Nigeria indicate that security agents may be guarding major markets to avoid it being raided.
A time like this requires public officials and governments to be more thoughtful about policy interventions in both the monetary and fiscal spaces with an emphasis on programs and initiatives that will bring relief and succor to the cost of living crisis faced by citizens.
It is however regrettable that despite the obvious difficulties and suffering that families are daily going through, some State governments carry on as though Nigeria were in a period of boom, luxuriating in interminably long convoys of ultra-expensive vehicles occupied by lone drivers, in some cases, among other indulgent behaviors, oblivious of the hunger and desperate efforts by citizens to survive.
The FGN had disbursed the sum of N5 billion to each of the 36 states of the federation in 2023 to cushion the effects of the removal of fuel subsidy on households with limited impact.
The monthly FAAC allocation to States and local governments has increased by between 12-70% following the removal of the subsidy on petrol with limited positive impact on the quality of life of the average citizen in states and local governments.
The timing, adoption and execution of some policy measures make discerning people cringe at their base instincts.
How can it be, that under the prevalent dire economic conditions, market stalls and other places of business and even homes are regularly demolished in different parts of the country, sometimes with little or no notification to the owners?
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Businesses are disrupted or shut down in some states for failure to remit daily taxes, situations which are beyond their control due to low patronage in an economy in which purchasing power is severely constrained. Operators of motorcycle transport services – Okadas, have their bikes confiscated and destroyed for allegedly operating outside designated areas. Policy makers ought to consider that these individuals have no other means of livelihood and may in desperation resort to criminality to survive and cater for their families.
Given the restiveness of the general populace and increased criminality, occasioned by the hardship in the country, it will be pragmatic for the government to wear a decidedly human face as it discharges its responsibility of catering to the welfare and well-being of society.
This is not the time for excessive and multiple taxations. This is not the time to extort, bully or humiliate citizens, especially young Nigerians, who are already down and out in large numbers. This is not the time to confiscate the wares of poor men and women, several of them are aged, and struggling to make ends meet. This is not the time to destroy capital, however small, belonging to the poor, mostly acquired through credit, thereby plunging them into debt and compounding their already precarious plight.
Governments must of necessity uphold and enforce the law, but this must be done only in accordance with the law in a compassionate and non-discriminatory manner, the focus being to correct and protect not to humiliate or oppress.
Governments across our nation must now make deliberate and conscious efforts to help citizens navigate this difficult period by urgently undertaking wage review, massive procurement of grains and staples to force down the prices of food and implementing a family support program of cash transfers to the most vulnerable citizens using a verifiable social register. While investments in economic infrastructure are necessary to facilitate trade and development, the most important investments, at this time, ought to be those that will help put food on the tables of Nigerian families. This is critical to maintain social and economic stability.
The overall attitude of the FGN and State governments and the regime of harsh economic policies that are churned out daily is reminiscent of the reign of King Rehoboam of Israel as narrated in 1 Kings 12:1-19 NKJV.
The people of Israel had approached Rehoboam who had succeeded his father, King Solomon and requested that he should consider introducing new measures to ameliorate the considerable hardship they suffered under his father.
Rehoboam sought and received counsel from his peers who had become his new advisers and subsequently returned to inform his citizens that rather than ameliorate their suffering, he would scourge them with scorpions in place of whips deployed under his late father, Solomon.
The response by the people was swift – a rebellion, leading to anarchy and a division of the kingdom as the Israelites chose to ‘return to their tents’.
The hardship under the previous administration pales in comparison to the suffering of Nigerians today – a case of scorpions in place of whips. The President and Governors, political kings of the country must realize the danger of Nigerians ‘returning to their tents’. Anarchy sits patiently at the end of foolish counsel, ill-informed policy choices and misgovernance.
To avoid descent into anarchy, ego tripping, haphazard policies, pain-inducing directives, and self-aggrandizing leadership must give way to pro-poor policies, holistic solutions, and empathetic governance.
- Frank Nweke II is a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Lagos Business School and member, Nigeria’s Federal Cabinet (2003-2007).