By Olu Fasan
Recently, Indermit Gill, the World Bank’s chief economist and senior vice-president for development economics, wrote an article in the Financial Times urging Nigerians to embrace the economic reforms of their president, Bola Tinubu. “The country’s elites must forge a political consensus in support of these reforms,” he said.
Like every seasoned policy expert, Gill knows that without a political consensus, no reform, especially a radical one, can succeed. However, what he failed to say is why there is no political consensus in favour of Tinubu’s economic reforms. Yet, addressing that point is, in part, key to understanding why Tinubu is so unpopular, and why few embrace his “reforms”.
First of all, let’s be clear. Tinubu is the most unpopular civilian
president in Nigeria’s political history to date. For a start, his awkward past
and the controversial manner in which he became president – his divisive
Muslim-Muslim ticket, self-serving and ethnocentric ‘emi-lokan/Yoruba-lokan’
calculations and deeply flawed election – gave Tinubu the hardest-ever landing
for a president. No previous Nigerian president emerged under such untoward
circumstances. Second, Tinubu’s utter unpreparedness for power, beyond a
self-entitled claim to it, evidenced by his impulsive and rash approach to
governance, has produced perverse consequences, making him even more
unpopular.
However, one major factor that
is rarely acknowledged in Nigeria is Tinubu’s shallow ‘mandate’ and the
arrogant way he has ruled in spite of it. The Economist and the Financial Times
recognised long ago that Tinubu’s “weak mandate” could be an albatross on how
he governed. But Nigerians hardly talk about Tinubu’s shallow ‘mandate’ and the
constraint it places upon his ability to enact painful reforms. Yet, theory and
empirical evidence tell us that the nature of a government’s mandate matters
hugely.
In the book, The Political
Economy of Policy Reform, edited by the renowned economist John Williamson,
several scholars studied successful economic reforms in many countries and
distilled from those studies key principles about when economic reforms could
or could not succeed. Two of those hypotheses are relevant here: one is the
crisis hypothesis; the other is the mandate hypothesis. So, what do the
hypotheses say?
Well, according to the crisis
hypothesis, only a major crisis can jolt a country out of sclerosis and trigger
fundamental reforms. Thus, when a country faces a major crisis, tough reforms
are easier to push through than when it faces no existential crisis. However,
the mandate hypothesis says that there is greater scope for radical reforms if
a government won a clear and strong electoral mandate for change than if it won
a weak mandate. A government with a strong mandate will, at least initially,
enjoy a honeymoon and face weak oppositions, both conducive for bold reforms,
whereas a government with a weak mandate might run into troubled waters too
soon!
Now, everyone will agree that the crisis hypothesis favours Tinubu. Of course, his party left Nigeria’s economy totally distorted and comatose in its eight years in power from 2015 to 2023. Yet, many analysts would concede that, as president, Tinubu should undertake far-reaching reforms to tackle the crisis. But the mandate hypothesis does not favour him. Tinubu won only 36.6 per cent of the popular vote, meaning that 63.4 per cent of the voters rejected him. Out of the 24m total votes cast in the presidential election, he received only 8.8m, meaning that a whopping 15.2m voters rejected him. Of course, he won the plurality of votes but that’s different from winning the majority of the total votes cast.
That lack of
popular mandate reinforces the political polarisation in Nigeria. Coupled with
the poor handling of the weak mandate, it also explains why there’s no
political consensus and popular support for Tinubu’s economic reforms.
Here’s a simple test. If you carried out an opinion poll across Nigeria today, you would find that most of those who voted for Tinubu in 2023 are making excuses for him. Even though they face economic hardship like most other Nigerians, they blame former President Muhammadu Buhari, not Tinubu, for it.
But ask those who did not vote for Tinubu
in 2023, most of them would blame him squarely for the current situation.
Everything is viewed through a polarised political filter. That’s consistent
with theory. According to the “choice supportive bias” heuristic in behavioural
economics, people think positive about a choice once made even if it has flaws.
Put simply, people don’t have buyer’s remorse easily unless something dramatic
happens that forces them to change their minds.
Which brings us to how Tinubu
has handled his weak mandate. First, let’s be clear: the mandate Tinubu has is
to govern with humility and consensus, not magisterially like an absolute
monarch. Former Governor Kayode Fayemi famously said: “You can’t have 35 per
cent of the vote and take 100 per cent. It won’t work.” But Tinubu governs
arrogantly, taking far-reaching decisions unilaterally as if he won a landslide
victory. Instead of seeking genuine cross-party consensus, he is using Nyesom
Wike to cripple the PDP and using other attack dogs in his government to
undermine the Labour Party. Yet, together, PDP, under Atiku Abubakar, and
Labour Party, under Peter Obi, secured 13m votes or 54.5 per cent in last
year’s presidential election. Those voters can’t be wished away!
Ideally, given the enormity of
the challenges and the need to forge a political consensus for far-reaching
reforms, Nigeria should have had a government of national unity. Neither Atiku
nor Obi opposes, in principle, withdrawing the fuel subsidy or removing the
currency peg, although both said they would have done so differently. Thus,
instead of being “possessed by courage” and blurting out “subsidy is gone” and
abruptly announcing other consequential economic policies on his first day in
office, Tinubu should have forged a political consensus behind those reforms
but in thoughtful, impact-driven ways that would mitigate their adverse
consequences and win public support for them.
Recently, President Cyril
Ramaphosa of South Africa described the unity government that he formed with
the main opposition Democratic Alliance and other parties after his party, ANC,
fell to 40 per cent in May’s elections as his country’s “second miracle”; the
“first miracle” being the unity government formed by Nelson Mandela after the
collapse of apartheid in 1994. The truth is that difficult and far-reaching
reforms are easier under a unity government as it is less difficult to forge a
political consensus and build popular support behind them.
Yet, even without a unity
government, Tinubu could still have mitigated his weak mandate by governing
well. But his first cabinet was woeful, and the much-anticipated recent
“reshuffle” was a damp squib. Tinubu leads a minority government, yet his
governing style is utterly arrogant. Little wonder political consensus and
public support elude his “reforms”!
*Dr.
Fasan is a commentator on public issues
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