Tinubu’s July 31 Speech: One step forward, two steps backward

BY OLAJIDE OLAGUNJU, PhD

Olajide Olagunju, PhD, an anthropologist, lawyer, peace scholar, arbitrator, mediator, government, education and business leader, is a multilingual and multidisciplinary professor of conflict resolution, organisational and business dispute resolution, peacebuilding, law and ethics at Bakke University, Dallas; professor of dialogue, negotiation and mediation at the Université de l’Alliance Chrétienne, Abidjan; he is the author of three books in 25 languages, including How to Resolve a Conflict (2021), editor of Journal of Conflict Studies in 9 languages, and President of the International Mediators Association – publishers of Journal of Conflict Studies (JOCS) (2021) and can be reached at olajide.olagunju@bgu.edu

I read Nigeria’s President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu (BAT)’s July 31, 2023, speech, “After Darkness Comes the Glorious Dawn”, in the context of my research on the macroeconomic legal framework that is singularly and directly responsible for mass poverty in Nigeria, which is the destruction of mass-scale productivity, triggered by General Gowon’s 1969 Petroleum Decree, which was institutionalised by General Obasanjo’s 1979 and General Abdulsalami 1999 Constitutions as epitomised by Section 44(3) of the 1999 Constitution. For details of my findings, conclusions, and macroeconomic prognosis, see my book – Legal Theft – Making Law for Underdevelopment: the Problem with Nigeria at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09KFCSG1F.

Importantly, in the summer of 2008, as I came out of the beautiful Niger Delta creeks, which was my research fieldwork site, I predicted that the violence from the militancy that I had witnessed there would spread to the whole country if my prognosis, which is the subject of this writeup, was ignored. The accuracy of that prediction amazes me in the depth and hydra-headedness of its manifestation all over Nigeria in the last fifteen years. I do not doubt that this critique of BAT’s speech, especially my prognosis for macroeconomic reform would be equally validated soon. Indeed, the labour protests that erupted on August 2, 2023, a day after I first voiced my opinion, teased out here, on BAT’s approach to the economy, those protests show that I read the macroeconomic malaise of the nation accurately. In any event, as I said in 2008, my diagnosis and prognosis about Nigeria’s macroeconomic self-inflicted nightmares, are a no-brainer. The macroeconomic pains can be summarised as clear markers of Nigeria’s irresponsive political elite approach to the macroeconomics of the Black World’s two hundred million epitome population. You would probably recall that in 2015, I told General Muhammadu Buhari and Professor Yemi Osinbajo, as they assumed office, precisely the same thing that I am now telling BAT. They did not heed the call. I could therefore tell after some time that they would fail. Like all Nigerian leaders before them, they failed, beyond imagination. See what I told them in 2015 at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/nigeria-pivotal-task-incoming-government-restoration-fiscal-olagunju/.

   The part of BAT’s speech that I found interesting for critical analysis is the following:

“25. It is in light of this that I approved the Infrastructure Support Fund for the States. This new Infrastructure Fund will enable States to intervene and invest in critical areas and bring relief to many of the pain points, as well as revamp our decaying healthcare and educational Infrastructure. 26. The fund will also bring improvements to rural access roads to ease the evacuation of farm produce to markets. With the fund, our states will become more competitive and on a stronger financial footing to deliver economic prosperity to Nigerians.”

When he argued that, “With the [Infrastructure Support] fund, our states will become more competitive and on a stronger financial footing to deliver economic prosperity to Nigerians”, I concluded that he has written a failure script for himself, just like all his predecessors from 1969 to date who, like he just did, played the ostrich by thinking that the problems of Nigeria are solved by throwing money at them, which trend I had noticed and criticised in earlier research where I studied the management of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Nigeria. That research is reported by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) at https://cis.mit.edu/sites/default/files/documents/ManagementOfInternalDisplacementInNigeria.pdf.

BAT, more than anyone else and given all he suffered in the hands of President Olusegun Obasanjo between 2005 and 2007 when BAT was governor of Lagos State, ought to know that the poverty of Nigeria is systemic and crafted through bad law-making, which had nationalised the economy through the above-cited bad laws. Therefore, the only commonsensical solution, which BAT himself had seen as far back as 2007, is to denationalise the economy and return it to what we agreed at Independence, notably, full fiscal federalism. Making our thirty-six states TRULY “become more competitive and on a stronger financial footing to deliver economic prosperity to Nigerians.” is rooted only in that fiscal federalism solution. Therefore, failure to make that return to full fiscal federalism, especially now that we are thinking of durable and sustainable economic foundations, is a failure of leadership.

Let me now go on to expatiate my position about ways and means of restoring fiscal federalism. Let me anchor my counsel on the fundamental point and reality that FISCAL FEDERALISM IS THE GLUE OF THE NIGERIAN NATION as agreed and ratified via Sections 130 to 139 of the 1960 Constitution. We are currently socio-politically and economically unhinged as a nation because of the dearth of fiscal federalism via the military laws that I referred to above, which are still laws even under the current civilian regime. And even though one would prefer the American fiscal federalism model, which I call full fiscal federalism, I would be satisfied if all we get is the Canadian model, which Nigeria practised circa mid-1950s to late 1960s. If you want to understand the giant industries that existed when many adult Nigerians were still kids between the 1950s and 1980s all over the country including our own Northern Nigeria, for example, the Kakuri textile mills, Kano groundnut pyramids, and tanners, etc., and of course, the industrial layouts in the Midwest, Western Nigeria, and Eastern Nigeria, THOSE MANY HUNDREDS OF INDUSTRIES, ALL NOW DEAD, were grown by fiscal federalism, as BAT weakly echoed in the 26th paragraph of his speech above.

Fiscal federalism is a legal/constitutional framework that protects the patrimonies of constituent peoples and sub-nationalities by entrusting them wholly to local, state, regional, or provincial governments as we had in Nigeria at Independence and as operated in Canada over the last one hundred and fifty years, long before Nigeria adopted it at Independence in 1960 and long after we jettisoned it in the late 1960s, first by General Aguiyi Ironsi, and, consequently, by General Yakubu Gowon. Fiscal federalism could also include the protection of individual patrimonies, which I believe is the situation in the USA. Fiscal federalism is a legal STRATEGY, especially for multiethnic and multiracial polities like Nigeria, because it drives development from those peripheries and groups of peripheries aka states/regions/provinces, upwards, which, again, is what BAT’s speech hinted at without pushing the concept to its logical conclusion: BAT wants to eat his cake and have it: you cannot have a centralised economy and expect growth from the peripheral regions/states/grassroots. Fiscal federalism is a sine qua non for Nigeria. For further clarification and understanding on the critical place of fiscal federalism in the survival of Nigeria, kindly see my earlier article at https://dailytimesng.com/sections-44-3-and-163-nigerias-constitutional-socio-econimic-albatross/.

On ways and means for restoring fiscal federalism in Nigeria today, first, let me correct the impression that a number of our people seem to have, that one is calling for a precipitous or fire-brigade approach. Far from it. I do fully endorse pragmatism as long as it does not entail damaging compromises. Yes, we do need time to restore fiscal federalism so that we can breathe economically again as a nation. No one can deny the need for time. But we must not take forever or drag things. Yoruba wisdom teaches that “The child that would be named Ashamu, watch the mouth: s/he eats sham-sham from birth!” Or, put more universally, “The morning determines the night!” In other words, if BAT wants to succeed economically, especially since he knows the problem, which is the insensitive and illegal nationalisation of the economy from the mid-1960s to date, he cannot play a waiting game over it, especially since he has already shocked the polity into readiness for economic reform through his twin policies of subsidy removal and forex price flotation. He reported in his speech under reference that he has saved N1 trillion in about 30 days from fuel subsidy removal; and that he wants to spend hundreds of billions, directly, and through tax breaks. This means he has the money to negotiate and push through fiscal federalism, which GEJ’s constitutional conference laid the foundation for in 2014. In other words, we already have the potential legal document to use to do what we have to do. As a wise leader, what to do, ESPECIALLY for starters, is to PUSH through the adoption by the requisite number of legislative houses across Nigeria or, better still, through a referendum, the 2014 Constitutional Conference consensus, which adopted the restoration of fiscal federalism, if my history of the outcome of that conference is correct. That is what BAT should use the money and the leverage of Aso Rock to do.

I say the removal of fiscal federalism from our laws and constitution is fundamentally illegal because, apart from the fact that the removal was a wrong move, having been done by military fiat, we formed the nation of Nigeria on pillars of fiscal federalism via carefully crafted political agreements and constitutions, as I mentioned above, which, because they are foundational arrangements, agreements and consensus between our over 500 ethnicities, could not have been changed by ANYONE, except via a referendum. We have never had a referendum in Nigeria! Therefore, legally, at fundamental political union levels, fiscal federalism is still the only legitimate basis for our federation and union.

Finally, even though we may be in denial, several sections of the federation, while enjoying the financial benefits of nationalisation, have already gone their political ways since 1999 by taking anti-1999 Constitutional steps, especially by truncating the rights of citizens guaranteed by the Abdusalami 1999 Constitution. Let us complete the process peacefully and mutually, especially via the re-legitimization of full fiscal federalism as agreed at Independence.

I do hope BAT can quickly correct himself.