On May 29, 2024, the first anniversary of President Ahmed Bola Tinubu, a day that coincided with 25 years of unbroken democracy in Nigeria since the transition from military to civil democratic rule in 1999, the prevailing socio-economic condition of Africa’s largest democracy remains indicative of both the President’s service record in one year and the state of Nigeria’s democracy in 25 years. That Nigeria’s workforce across the public and private sectors embarked on a paralysing industrial action about the time of the first anniversary of President Tinubu’s tenure due to his inability to raise minimum wage of workers that was due for upward review in April underscores the verdict of Nigerians on his performance in the one year he has been in office.
A combination of toxic economic policy decisions, chief among which are the removal of subsidy on petrol and floating of the naira against major currencies such as the dollar, pounds and euro by the Tinubu administration, has resulted in an unprecedented deterioration in the socio-economic conditions of Nigerians in a way and manner never experienced in the 63-year history of Nigeria. So devastating were the effects of this twin policy decision that it’s socio-economic destabilization effect was instantaneous as soon as President Tinubu made his now infamous “subsidy is gone” pronouncement in his May 29, 2023, inauguration address, the pump price of petrol, Nigeria’s most utilized energy product, nearly quadrupled from less than N200 to about N700 a litre. The floating of the naira a few weeks later sent the national currency tumbling against major world currencies and crossing the N1,000 mark against the greenback for the first time in history. From a value of N650 to the dollar, the national currency took a deep plunge and exchanged as high as N1,950 to a dollar before steadying at between N1,400 and N1,500.
For an import-dependent economy that equally depends on petrol to power its small and medium enterprises, which dominate its gross domestic production of goods and services, the steep rise in the prices of price of this important energy product and the steep decline of the value of the naira plunged Nigerians into a bottomless pit of economic misery where there can be no light at its uncertain end. The consequential manifestation of the wrongheaded economic choices of the Tinubu administration has been the out-of-control cost of existence crisis that has left most Nigerians existing and not really living, hence requiring an upward review of the national minimum wage to living wages for the Nigerian people.
Despite the reintroduction of the old National Anthem of “Nigeria We Hail Thee” one year after his assumption of office, the failure of the Tinubu administration to put in place measures to mitigate the socio-economic problems his policies caused meant that Nigerians are not hailing but rather wailing Tinubu’s Nigeria, where they have been pushed to the fringes of mere existence. In a country where destitution, hunger, poverty and misery are widespread, wailing, frustration and a helpless form of hopelessness pervade the air while its ruling elite are still behaving like drunken sailors in charge of a sinking ship. This has transformed Tinubu’s renewed hope mantra into a rhetoric of renewed hopelessness.
However, it must be said that Nigeria’s rough road to socio-economic coma amid heightening insecurity of lives and properties has come a long way since 1999 as a result of a combination of factors. An ethnic and religious identity-based politics of democratic leadership recruitment process has instituted a corrupt patronage culture as reward system through state capture. This unique form of state capture that international scholars have described as prebendalism has given rise to a ruling political elite whose primary purpose in power is self-service and not public service. Petro-dollars flowing into the coffers of government from rents accruable from Nigeria’s oil wells through monthly allocations has incentivised the preponderance of prebendalism in Nigeria. And the fact that elected political leaders need not lift a finger to raise a hoe and till the soil before receiving huge amounts of money as monthly allocation has induced creative leadership lethargy and governance inertia, making neo-liberal economic practices that enable the abdication of the role of government in the means of economic production under the guise of ‘government has no business in business’ attractive to Nigeria’s incompetent, corrupt and kleptocratic ruling elite.
The current multifaceted challenges confronting the Nigerian nation 63 years after independence, 25 years after advent of the fourth democratic republic and one year into the Tinubu administration is a cumulative effect of many years of toxic neoliberal economic practices by Nigeria’s corrupt, inept and incompetent ruling political class whose misrule has reduced Nigeria from a giant to an impoverished, pauperized, traumatized and indebted dwarf that is gradually inching towards a failed state increasingly unable to meet the primary responsibility of providing welfare and security for its citizens. And nothing has underscored this failure of the Nigerian state than the current stand-off between organized labour and the government of Nigeria over wage increase. The government lacks both the capacity to generate enough wealth to go round and the political will to develop such a capacity. And neither is the ruling elite willing to let go of their profligate and corrupt ways to allow for the re-distribution of available resources equitably.
The way out of the current socio-economic crisis and other existential challenges that confront Nigeria will be for Tinubu to lead the way in committing class suicide as the prevailing condition in the country requires such for the purpose of national rebirth. And towards the right direction of socio-economic redemption, Nigeria must take a left turn.