The Subsidy Tinubu Must Address

Obed Awowede

There is no clearer evidence of what the Nigerian politician and ruler thinks of the citizens than that of a conquered people when they communicate. It is with a sense of entitlement which, laid beside the glaring lack and poverty in the land, evokes an imagery of Nigeria as a pimp’s paradise.

I write this particularly because in the last few weeks since President Bola Tinubu embarked on what we may call his birth-pangs (not my metaphor, the president’s) economic reforms, the so-called sacrifice that the mass of the people are compelled to make seem lost on the leadership beyond platitudinal expressions of pain and understanding. The President himself has missed no opportunity to tell us that he feels our pain. He again expressed this understanding when he told his classmates from the 1999-2007 Class of State Governors: “On the subsidy removal, thank you for the support. And I understand people are suffering. Yet, there can be no childbirth without pain.” He has deployed the metaphor of birth-pangs on more than one occasion in the last two months, perhaps to tell us what extreme pain we must bear to birth the economy of our dreams.

On this occasion it did not matter that his audience, all well-fed and manicured politicians maintained generously, rather excessively, from meagre state resources, understood or cared about the message and the imagery. President Tinubu was speaking to a comfortable audience who in appreciation returned a generous clap offering to the President. After all, they didn’t come for gynaecological lessons in economic management but to rekindle the Old-Boy political network with one of their own in charge, perhaps with eyes on the gravy that will flow.

These were Governors who over the last 24 years have, along with their successors, legislated a lifestyle subsidy from the public purse that has built for them furnished retirement homes and still pays them, their spouses and families generous salaries and allowances, along with luxury vehicles on a regular basis for life. President Tinubu was Governor of Lagos State from 1999 to 2007 and was one of those who benefited and is still benefiting. It was only two years ago in what was obviously a PR stunt that the Lagos State Government varied the allowances. The new law now provided that new vehicles will be bought for the ex-governors every four years rather than three years previously and their allowances will be cut in half.

Tinubu, interestingly, is one of the first set of governors to sign the retirement law, which was gazetted in 2007 just before he left office. Just an idea of this package:The original legislation is titled ‘Public Office Holder (Payment of Pension) Law.’ It provided former Lagos State governors who served for two terms in office a house each in preferred locations in Lagos and Abuja. In addition it provided for six new cars every three years, 100 percent of the basic salary of the incumbent governor, free health care for the beneficiary and family members, humongous furniture and maintenance allowances and staff all paid by the state. If Lagos State retirement provision is high, consider that of Zamfara State where former Governor Abdulaziz Yari, currently a first term Senator who contested the recent Senate Presidency, adamantly demanded payment of a monthly upkeep allowance of N10 million, based on a pension law which was amended and assented to by him on March 23, 2019, just before the end of his second term. While Lagos State is seen as a rich state, Zamfara is the exact opposite. Yet, this is not about the capacity of the state to pay but the fact that our Government treasuries have been captured in what approximates banditry. Whatever gives political office holders the gumption to legislate such obscene pensions for self if not a sense of entitlement, a subsidy complex? No subsidy can be worse than this.

It was, therefore, not difficult to see why, despite the sufferings Nigerians are going through, members of the National Assembly did not understand why the gravy train must stop. Nigerians are justifiably aghast that at a time the Government complains of limited resources on which basis it is raising fees and prices and withdrawing social protection mechanisms such as the subsidy on petrol and leaving in its wake high prices, lawmakers have not found it fit to cut their cravings for luxury. Else, what is the urgency in an approval to buy bulletproof vehicles and SUVs for principal officers and the lawmakers? For that, a princely sum of N40 billion was speedily appropriated. Or, how do we explain the approval of another N70 billion for the lawmakers, all less than 500 persons, to settle into their offices.

As Nigerians woke up to the latest approvals, the lawmakers have stuttered a string of incomprehensible excuses for their new allowances. While we were initially told that the allowances was to enable the new lawmakers get funds to get ‘suitable’ residential accommodation, we were thereafter told that it was to renovate and furnish legislative offices because many of the previous occupants literally took the furniture away. Is it not laughable that a people who take home fat unearned allowances still cannot do without stealing official property? Because that is what the argument reduces to. This culture of stealing even when you have more than enough is a psychiatric disorder. It doesn’t need a doctor, it needs a new orientation. But, since the evidence is that the apples are so rotten that a moral regeneration is almost impossible, then, perhaps, we must engineer by force!

What the governors take as pension and what the National Assembly lawmakers take as entitlement is part of a culture that will be re-enacted over the next few weeks when ministers and boards of Government agencies will be appointed. You will not hear of it because the expenditure will come tucked into layers and layers of budget paper under headings you never thought existed. Heads of MDAs will take for themselves billions of naira in allowances, many unknown to law, and buy for themselves exotic vehicles whose only commute will be to convey them to and from the office and social occasions. Most of the vehicles will not go on project inspection because their bosses may never inspect projects. And when they are ‘retired’ the bosses will take the vehicles home as entitlement as part of their deserved subsidy as Government appointees. It is part of the collective waste in the public sector which at other times we may call bloated cost of governance. In my opinion, it is bloating that comes from a mindset of entitlement!

In the two months of his presidency so far, President Tinubu has not indicated an interest in addressing the subsidy Nigerians pay which makes their political leaders among the best remunerated and cared for in the world. This welfare plan guarantees that rulers must live like lords above their subjects but it has to be addressed. And no one is better placed to do that than a man who said he desires to take nothing out of Government at this time. After all, First Lady Senator Remi Tinubu has assured us that the president’s family is so blessed it doesn’t have its eyes on the public till.

Speaking elegantly to high values, Mrs Tinubu said at a church service ahead of her husband’s inauguration: “Nigeria’s wealth is the commonwealth of all. It belongs to everyone. God has blessed my family. We don’t need the wealth of Nigeria to survive but to do the right thing. And I promise you on this altar, that with your help, with the help of God, we will set this nation on the right path.” Madam Tinubu is not the one we elected. Yet, we can take that message from the First Lady as another promise with renewed hope. Our prayer is: may our hope not turn to despair.

Though, I cannot see the correlation between moral rectitude and wealth which the first lady tried to convey by saying that her family is blessed (a common euphemism for material comfort) and needs nothing more. We can name names of the very wealthy (or blessed) in Politics in Nigeria who are worse than the common thief and will still steal at the slightest chance. After all, those who take the annual pension for eight years of work as Governors are not necessarily poor and un-blessed. And, ask yourself, is it the un-blessed man that receives 6 brand new cars every three years, keeps them along with the old ones and turns his home into a car garage?

People say the Presidency needs courage to clean the Augean stable. Tinubu has courage and has it aplenty. After all, he told us in Paris that his actions in removing the fuel subsidy came from this courage even when his advisers thought otherwise. He has repeatedly said that he will rule with courage. However, if all the courage is about decisions that cut subsidy, bring in revenue but does not address ostentation in Government, then it is of a dubious value.

These are early days for President Tinubu and I hope he can be as courageous as he was in announcing the end of fuel subsidy and ending the naira Forex arbitrage to end this obscene salaries and luxury of government officials at the public expense. President Tinubu must place the obscene pensions and waste in Government on the table as an issue for him and NEC to address and take action. And that action cannot wait till tomorrow, it should have started yesterday.