Professor Tukur Muhammed Buba is the Dean Faculty of Social and Management Sciences, Federal University, Birnin- Kebbi and also the spokesman of Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF). In this interview with BABA NEGEDU in Kaduna, the spokesman said President Bola Tinubu was yet to meet the high expectation that many Nigerians placed on him. He also noted that the President should monitor his ministers to ensure that they perform unlike the last administration where there was no coordination and cabinet members were doing whatever they liked.
What is your take on President Bola Tinubu’s Policies since the inception of the administration?
His policies have been very impactful in terms of the dramatic effect it is having on the socio-economic lives of Nigerians. Everyone will talk about the hike in Petroleum products because of the withdrawal of subsidy which has been very dramatic, when fuel rose to over N600 what is there to say? Then the economic policies, the floating of the naira, the impact of these two developments in the economy have affected every Nigerian because we all use petrol on a daily basis.
Whether you are a trader moving goods, a farmer pumping water to his farm, a civil servant going to work, all of us have been impacted. We used to think that if the subsidy was removed only the middle class would suffer, but as it turns out, it is not only the middle class. Is like when Americans say when something is on the ceiling Fan it drops on everybody around. Let me add that unless we begin to see the reward as the president is promising, that after the storm there will be calm, so until the calm comes into our lives, honesty the Tinubu administration so far has been the most shocking in the lives of Nigerians.
Of course, we all wished the President Goodluck Jonathan, we wish to see that the economic policies succeed, if not because of anything, because it will impact on our lives. Nobody will wish him the President evil because that will be like wishing evil on yourself. But some of us think that some of the policies have not been well thought out. There was no plan to cushion the effect on people, no plan to find a way to soften the blow of the policies on the people.
I have already described the so-called N5 billion palliatives to states as very unscientific; you just wake up and say I will give every state N5 billion. There was no assessment of needs, households are not the same, some have four wives, two wives, others one, some do not even have so you cannot give them the same thing. Like the rice, even if you give every resident of Kano, Lagos, Oyo and Kogi a handful of rice it will not go anywhere, it will not pass the state capitals. They did this thing without thinking it through.
Some of the state governors are trying, we see what they are doing, but others unless if care is taken it will be cornered by politicians and the purpose will be defeated. There should have been more thinking and more strategic planning that is what we expected from the Tinubu administration. So far what is happening is different from what we expected from the Tinubu administration.
The palliatives are being distributed and there are complaints all over, how would you have wanted it to be shared?
Let me take you back to history, you know how Sani Abacha handled his own. When Abacha removed some level of subsidy from petrol, he established an agency that worked on roads, worked on health sector, education, and farmers, for example if a farmer goes to the hospital, he knows there will be drugs and he would not have to pay or pay a minimal fee.
If an ordinary Nigerian sends his children to school, the school fees would have been subsidized and so on. These palliatives should have been spent on social and physical infrastructure that would have been a better way of handling the situation.
From your scenario above, are you of the view like many Nigerians that the money for the palliatives should have been used to put the refineries in order?
At the popular level, you can make that argument, but then, these refineries and their repairs have been a mirage for all Nigerians. We have reached a point where we don’t want to believe anybody, so many promises have been made, so much funds have been released and yet no result. So, some of us have begun to think it is all a game, a trick to drain people’s money.
Why do we have refineries if they are not functioning, they are some of the heavy economic investments in the country and that they are not working is a huge disappointment. So, the repairs of the refinery is one. What will be the cost of the PMS to the ordinary user, ordinary farmer who will buy petrol to pump water in his irrigation farm.
Okada riders who will buy fuel to move people around and there is a limit to how much he can charge because if it is too expensive people will not ride. Like I said we have been deceived so much about the refineries, people don’t want to believe anymore. We will just open our eyes and see. Our altitude now is we are waiting to see. For me, there should have been more infrastructures on things that will touch people’s lives; the refinery is a money guzzler, and there is no guarantee.
The President put some of his policies together even when the ministers were not in place. Now that he has a cabinet do you expect anything different?
Everything draws from the leadership, he must have set a goal for himself, but certainly we will not like to see a leader who will appoint people and relax, close his eyes and be picking his teeth with tooth- picks, we want a leader who will lead a team. It is not so much who we select, it is the kind of leadership you give them. Now that he has made some blunders, what I hope to see is more strategic planning, purposeful organization of what the government needs to do.
Policies that are focused and you can follow consistently; we will like to see more monitoring on the activities of the Ministers so that they are not just left alone to do what they like. As we have witnessed during the Buhari administration, they were doing things without coordination, the superintendent was busy asleep.
We hope this president will not be like that, so there is a chance now to recalibrate and provide this strategic oversight, this is more important than even the quality of the people he has selected to work with. The president has the task of providing leadership that will hold people accountable.
The issue of insecurity has not changed, from Goodluck Jonathan to Muhammadu Buhari and the present administration, killings, kidnapping still persist. Why has it become difficult for all these people to curb the insecurity and what do you think is the way forward?
Let me start with why the situation persists. Obviously, because someone, somewhere is benefitting from it. Let us face it, a lot of people are benefiting from the in- security. First, the miscreants, the terrorists themselves are benefiting from it. Secondly, as it is assumed a lot of money is expended on the security agencies, their equipment and so on. So those who supply the equipment if they are making a kill, obviously they will not want this thing to stop. Also, a lot of it is political, everything is political.
If there is a political will, the security agencies, especially the heads of the agencies will be held accountable, we have appointed Service Chiefs again and again, but we have not changed the policy. Our security personnel have continued to perform overseas, they come back with laurels, medals. Let us ask ourselves if they are able to do that outside in Liberia, other countries why have we not been able to do it for ourselves.
These are the kind of questions we should ask ourselves. I think in my opinion if there are no targets, there are no responsibilities, people are not accountable for failure, nobody is demanding success, we keep throwing resources at the situation, we need to ask questions why are we not seeing results. This goes to show that there is no strategic planning and target set for the officials. Also, there is political interference. People who are unable to do things are rewarded politically, that is also a problem.
On what should be done, I think we should go back to strategic planning. When you appoint people and you give them resources to work with, you must demand accountability, result, there must be deliverables, if it is clear that they will be held responsible for failure, in my opinion we will begin to see results.
Then these miscreants themselves this problem will not be solved by might alone, we need a study of who are those insurgents, more importantly, who are their foot soldiers, all what is going on involves youths who have no future, who are unsure of what to do, and they have been doing this for over ten years, we need to find something that will occupy their mind, something that will turn their hearts away from evil towards fruitful engagement, productive activity.
A lot of the estimated 10.9 million children said to be out of school have no business not being in school. There must be a programme to take these people back to school. We need serious social engagement and in our strategic planning we need to engage the traditional rulers, they have information, they know where these people are, they can exert influence. Also, our intelligence gathering and utilization needs a whole new approach.
Obviously, people have a lot of information they want to give the government, but they are afraid of the information being mishandled or exposed and you cannot do all these without actionable intelligence. In some villages people say if the government will not come to our aid let us cooperate with the insurgents. There must not be two governments, non- state actors must not be allowed to dictate the lives of our people. Hopefully this approach should work.
