Tinubu’s one big mistake

Ogbuagu believes that it is one big mistake on Tinubu’s part to hurriedly discharge APC technocrats he inherited from Buhari.

There is a governance style that marks a clear distinction between President Bola Tinubu and his predecessor, Muhammadu Buhari. Yes, it is too early to begin to compare one administration to another. Nevertheless, one can’t help but notice a distinct Tinubu governance style that tends to ignore institutional knowledge in policy decision making. It is therefore important to draw attention to it, given its implications for getting the country out of its current socioeconomic crises.

By institutional memory, we refer to eight years of documentable facts, concepts, experiences and information held by various Buhari political appointees. President Tinubu appears to be in a hurry to chuck them out and, in doing so, gives the impression that institutional memory is not important. His government is suffering the impact of these hurried discharge of boards and management of critical MDAs.

As strange as this may seem, Buhari is proving to be more of a technocrat than his successor! But is this strange? The Katsina General came into office with federal civil service experience, combined with a two-year foretaste of presidential power. He could not have been more reticent and overly cautious in his approach to decision-making. It could explain why, in the first six months of his administration, Buhari hunkered down over bureaucratic files, in between shuttling world capital cities in search of a cure for an undisclosed ailment.

Buhari’s undue delay in making decisions, including appointing ministers, irritated citizens’ who wanted him to get cracking on his three-point agenda: to provide solutions to economic challenges, use his military experience to end insecurity, and his famed integrity to end endemic corruption. His harassed spokespersons eventually asked Nigerians to read the President’s “body language” to understand that a lot was happening!

Tinubu, on the other hand, came in with guns blazing, peremptorily discharging intractable policy issues in a fit of bravery (his words). The country immediately convulsed under the impact of fuel subsidy removal and abolition of dual exchange rate. On fuel subsidy, he fell into his predecessor’s carefully laid trap. It showed early signs of ongoing disregard for institutional knowledge. It also showed that his aides did not pay attention to what Buhari was doing. And what did Buhari do? After a thorough dissection of the subsidy issues, the wily General stopped short of implementing  subsidy removal until he was safely out of office. Subsidy was the pivot that held the fragile economy and prevented it from tipping over.

Tinubu’s hasty pronouncement provoked an economic whirlwind that suspended citizens in midair where they currently flail in desperate efforts to find a soft landing. Added to the abolition of dual exchange rate, these policies consolidated Nigeria’s runaway inflation and soaring food prices.

The hurried sacking of boards and management of MDAs federal boards will rob the president of a full complement of APC bureaucrats that Buhari put in place and managed for eight years. No one suggests that the President should not have “his own people” in those institutions. What is suggested is that he should have a phased and seamless transition, not the arbitrary actions against his party loyalists who could have guided him on past decisions. Tinubu behaved like someone who was taking over from an opposition party.

Here is another model from the Buhari administration. President Goodluck Jonathan made a number of political appointments on the eve of his departure from office. Citizens expected Buhari to reverse those appointments but he did not. In most cases, he allowed the appointments to reach to term before hitting back with the nepotistic hiring that defined his administration in the end.

What is strange is that this president inherited a bureaucracy that was APC in character, composition and temperament. Tinubu is quickly displacing everyone and constituting new management boards. In other words, he is displacing party members with loyalists who sing on his mandate, often wholesale displacements without regard to institutional memories to guide policy decision making . This practice inevitably prolongs the learning curve for new appointees and it is evident from their delayed publication and implementation of strategic plans.

It also explains why civil servants are successfully selling dummies that make the administration look corrupt and wasteful. Public servants know where the bones are buried and will help new or naïve administrators dig up the bones or bury new ones. Digging up and wasting nearly $500,000 savings from wheat tax on a United Nations junket, and the outsized entourage of sightseers at COP 28 rubbished the image of the government. Add to this the well-executed 2023 supplementary budget heist. Altogether, they give the impression that the president is coming into office without a clear approach to managing an economy in distress.

APC’s eight-year institutional knowledge could have helped Tinubu achieve efficiency, streamline governance processes, and enthrone transparency and accountability as suggested by Peter Obi, his formidable opponent in the last election. So many members of the MDA boards and management that he is hurriedly dispensing with will go away with what he needs the most – facts, concepts, experiences and information. He needs this to avoid reinventing the wheel or falling into a trap. My experience is that only very few departing policy makers will have the grace to leave behind handover notes detailing lessons learned and successful strategies that enable the new administration truly hit the ground running, and avoid mistakes while bounding forward.