OPEN LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT – II

 

The President of the Federal Government of Nigeria,

Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

 

Your Excellency,

OPEN LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT OF NIGERIA, ALHAJI BOLA AHMED TINUBU – II

I hereby congratulate you again for some of the actions taken since your assumption of office as the President. However, the actions of other Government Departments need to be integrated with those of Federal Government to serve as a path of real growth and development without negative distracting forces?

I wish to recall my first open letter then addressed to President-Elect, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu (BAT). It was published by: The Nation Newspaper Online, 12 May, 2023; The Nigerian Tribune Online, 13 May, 2023; The Hope Newspaper in print, 29 May, 2023. Therein I made a few suggestions which I think should help the present administration to move the nation to a level that is better than those of the “Developed Nations” of the third world. The key issues among them are:

1. A SEVEN-YEAR STRATEGIC DEVELOPMENT PLAN: The plan should include long-term projects that are impossible to complete in the three-year plan usually called the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF). The purpose of repeating it and emphasising it here is to remind the president that after the initial rush to create impact in the first one hundred days or a few months of “short-term measures,” without the laid-down goals and strategies as Working Scheme or Road Map, there may be a regress into the common “Business As Usual” attitude.

Monitoring the achievements against the laid-down plans with stated goals and strategies, through the regular reports in data, charts and maps, as reports by the Minister of Strategic Planning, to the President and Ministers themselves, is an excellent reminder of the achievements vis-a-vis the target goals intended as stated in my first letter. A Picture is worth a thousand words. The Ministries will then continually be using them as self-appraisal against the STRATEGIES and the SMART GOALs that they agreed to achieve. The laid-down strategic plan should then serve as effective Road Map to significant achievement for the government and a paradigm progress for the nation. It should serve as “A Road Map to Nation Building.”

From the strategies could also be derived some (not all required) Institutional Frameworks which may transcend tribal and ethnic boundaries.

The actions announced by the president, with the exception of the Palliatives and the attempted war on Niger, are good. The palliatives need to be modified to reach the poor and so that it is not also hijacked by any group, otherwise, it will not alleviate the problem of removal of petroleum subsidy. As I said in my first letter we have always had good plans but lack the HOW and the WILL to implement them well accordingly as planned. A well-thought out plan is only as good as implemented. This is why I still repeat the monitoring stated in my first letter.

2. STRATEGIC PLANNING AND INTEGRATION: To hurry to do quick actions within one hundred days without continuous steady progress is not sustainable development and is not good planning. To take time to plan without being hurried is a nice approach. More haste less speed but steady progress yields sustainable development. The progress made after a year or after four years is more important that ‘the first hundred days’ that people always talk about. An integrated approach is better than short-term measures. There must be integration among the various Government Departments and Agencies.

Already some Government Departments, such as Commercial banks and Immigration, to name a few, recently seized, rather unduly, the opportunity of subsidy removal to increase charges on some of their operations. Do they need fuel to run the ATM machines? All these will, not only remove the effect of any measures that the government puts or intend to put in place to alleviate the effect of subsidy removal. They also have the combined effect of increased inflation. Government Departments and Agencies seem to be working at cross purposes to that of Government. NO integration. Effect is increased Inflation and economic hardship to people which we are witnessing now.

3. BANKING REFORM: We appreciate the presidential action already taken on the restructuring of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). The president must not yield to platitudes and sentiments in the attempt to revisit the previous deliberate, ill-motivated, ill-conceived Naira Re-Design and other CBN policies which led to significant damage to the economy. Nigerians are quick to apply emotions and sentiments to sensitive national issues which do us no good. The action of the CBN Governor was not a mistake but deliberate action. Let everybody reap the reward for his actions. That is the Natural Law.

Please recall that as a result of the CBN Naira re-design policy and the method of its application: (1) The economy nose-dived.

(2) Many people lost their lives in the execution of the policy as a result of the ambition of one man or a few people against the state. Today, where are the new notes printed or colored? The notes should by now be regularly dispensed more than the old notes at the commercial banks if they are readily available.

Could Plea Bargain serve as appropriate reward or compensation for the lives lost as a result of his actions? Could he be prosecuted for Man Slaughter? “Measure for Measure” will serve as deterrent to such future similar actions.

Commercial Banks. The next step in the Reform should be at the commercial banks. Government should ensure that the CBN carries out its responsibilities of controlling the banks, which includes the control of bank unreasonable charges on depositors’ accounts that make depositors to be overcharged. Double charges for transfers for the same transaction; Card maintenance charges three times a year for ATM card already paid for on issue should be eliminated etc. All these have over-burdened depositors. The banks have already increased charges on every withdrawal at ATM as a result of petrol subsidy removal. Nigerians are helpless and tired, being used to impunity every time. The CBN seems to have abandoned its responsibility of checking the excesses of commercial banks.

I wish to repeat here that the banking sector should be restructured with appropriate guidelines to be monitored and offending banks given appropriate sanctions which serve as deterrent to future similar actions.

4. Reflating the Economy: We need to reflate the economy to stimulate production. The President’s action to modify the stated palliatives demonstrated that the president listened to the voice of people. Efforts should be made to prevent any arm of government from hijacking future plans meant for poor people to themselves. Palliatives are short-term measures. Please note that the economy cannot grow without removal of economic impunity inflicted on Nigerians by Nigerians. Justice is the first essential condition for a developed society. Those who have plunged Nigeria into debt and hardship including especially the NNPCL through looting and impunity should be probed. This is economic justice. The economy cannot improve without removal and prevention of economic injustice inflicted on Nigerians by Nigerians. This is what can serve as deterrent to future similar actions and what can make Nigerians and the entire world have implicit confidence in this administration.

5. Security is the most urgent problem to be addressed if the country should be developed. Security should be tackled first. Agriculture should be the next. My advice on security as stated in my first Open Letter to the President-Elect refers. Without security of life and properties there can be no increase in food production. Without solving the problem of security, so that farmers can freely go to their farms, whatever economic efforts are made to enhance agriculture, cannot guarantee food security. There are no police assistance in the rural areas, so bandits, herders and criminal elements always have unfettered access to launch attack on farmers.

Boko haram and banditry: We have the wars on Boko haram and Banditry to contend with. We should as a matter of compulsion, not just necessity, exercise our energies to face these wars first. Until we have successfully exterminated these wars in Nigeria, we cannot have food security or peace.

6. Agriculture and agricultural processing should be the next sector after security to receive the boost of government efforts. Just as it is bad that farmers abandon their farms because of insecurity, it is equally bad to rely on importation of food whether partially or fully. It means that we are at the mercy of those exporting countries which may export poor or dangerous food items into the country. No responsible government relies on importation of food for her citizens. Another danger is that it kills the morale and business of indigenous farmers. It cripples the economy of the country. The country should be safe for every Nigerian to do honest business.

Loans to Agriculture and Agricultural Processing should not be more than 2%, otherwise payback may be impossible. Agriculture and Agricultural Processing should be given a boost through grants or less than 2% loan interest. Developed countries such as Britain and US understand the dynamics of food production and availability vis-a-vis the health of the nation. Britain sometimes gives loan for agriculture at 0.2% while US gives subsidies on agriculture. They know that a nation that cannot feed her citizens is a poor nation. It may lead to ill-health and other accompanying problems.  Many years ago, Japan started producing rice at a cost which was four times the cost of importing it from Thailand. They subsidized the cost to make it available to their people. Their desire was for their farmers to develop and master the technology of rice production. Instruction to banks, which prefer high interests, to merely give single digit loan interest may only yield 9% interest which is too high for agriculture.

7. Foreign Affairs: Nigeria should not saddle itself with resolution of the coup in Niger Republic. I am repeating it here that we should avoid directives from Developed Countries – China, Western World and their agencies such as IMF and World Bank etc. without confrontation. Please note that their diplomatic moves may come through Nigerians here or Nigerians abroad pretending to advance the help of government. No developed country is ready to help Nigeria, or indeed any third world country to achieve development. We should not accept their dictations which come by way of subtle advice. The approach by all African countries should be to view them as competitors for the world’s resources. Indeed, we all, are!

Nigeria should not saddle itself with resolution of the coup in Niger. Africa and African nations should come together to remove the yoke of Western imperialism, which is what the coupists in Niger and the other Francophone countries seem to be agitating for. There should be no war against Niger Republic. Must we add another problem to those we are currently facing: the wars against Boko haram and Banditry? There should be no war on any African country by any African nation. Dialogue should be the approach to any regional problem. There should be Non-alignment with either the West or Eastern Block. We need economic freedom not alignment.

8. Institutional frameworks: We should automate processes of getting things done in every Ministry and Government Agency as part of efforts to install institutional frameworks and integration of Government policies and actions.

9. May your tenure experience excellent development, peace and progress for the country.

 

Akin Akinfe.

Araromi-Obu, Odigbo Local Government.

Phone: 07063617155.

Email: samakinfe@yahoo.com

Published at: https://thenationonlineng.net/open-letter-to-president-tinubu/amp/

15 September, 2023.

Also published at: https://tribuneonlineng.com/open-letter-to-the-president-bola-ahmed-tinubu-ii.

19 September, 2023.