On The Matter of the Politics of Change and the Rings around the Incoming President

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To probe or not to probe – that is not the question for President-to-be Buhari.

Change should be more fundamental than that….within the context of the Citizens of Nigeria as its ultimate beneficiary, and the realization that the Presidency is an elected Dictatorship that must work cooperatively with the Legislature and the Judiciary at various tiers of Governance.

And I have been thinking….and only a little of the thinking will be shared below…much more elsewhere….

So come with me as we take a look first at this diagram:

Figure 1:  Rings around the President and the Politics of Change

I posit that what are most important issues to the Ultimate Change Beneficiary – Nigerian Citizens [L] – are Employment, Energy,  Education, Security, Water, Transportation,  and the Economy (in roughly that order).

That Dividend of Change can only be achieved through proper Governance, with the Presidency [A]  working cooperatively with Federal, State and Local Government entities, as well as the Organized Private Sector (OPS) [D, K], within the context of multi-party politicking [B].  Constitutional, electoral process and party-membership re-engineerings are key to this proper governance.

But separating the President from the Citizens is a spider-web of groups and issues [B to K] that he must cut through with an Anti-Corruption laser-beam, for corruption is the bane of Nigeria’s current problems, reducing the money available to government to perform vital functions, increases inefficiency across the board, and promotes mediocrity and outright incompetence.

In this Anti-Corruption stance, the President must be the Ultimate Exemplar, and keep his family members (wife, children, cousins, uncles, aunties, etc.), long-time friends (former classmates, etc.) and allies [all in Groups A] in close check.  This is no time to “cash in.”   As leader of his party, this stance should be extended to his political associates, Execo members and advisers [Groups B and C].  Particularly in situations where he has a power of choice, he must be able to say “I believe that you are innocent, but go and settle your corruption charge, and we shall talk afterwards,”  Separating Regulatory Agencies [J] such as CBN, NCC, NERC, etc. from incestuous relationships with the Regulated (such as Banks, telecommunication companies, electricity companies, etc.), and putting a spotlight on Civil and Public Servants [G] living way beyond their means, as well on agencies that should be investigating corruption itself (EFCC, AuGF, ICPC, Police, Judiciary, etc. –  Groups F and I] that themselves become corrupt will significantly reduce corruption.  Furthermore, a spotlight must be put on money-making MDAs (eg CBN, NNPC, DPR, Customs, NCC, Immigration, etc  Group E.] with respect to discretionary salaries and allowances allotted to themselves, as well as irrelevant “Corporate Social Responsibility” carried out with public money,   and include money-handling entities [ eg banks, Tetfund, UBEC,, Group H] in the spotlight in order to stem the haemorrhaging of money in our system:  there is enough money for our needs, but not for our greed.

Finally.  there must be a FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE in our approach to budgeting, which, for the past 30 years, has been plug-and-play.  Pick up any of our previous budgets, and you will find the simple arithmetics:

The result of our oil-revenue-based budgeting with four very uncertain parameters  NBO, EDPB, NDEXR and NOP is the very uncertain and leaky budget of a badly-managed oil-merchandizing nation-company,

This brings us to Figure 2, where we spend so much time looking at  Federal Budget, and ignore state and local government budgets, as well as severe leaks in the revenues of statutorily money-making Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs),

Figure 2:  Nigeria’s Budget Flows.

[A is total revenue, with fractions representing typical values of the components shown]

TABLE 1:  NIGERIAN BUDGET – SAMPLE TABLE OF REVENUE AND EXPENDITURES

REVENUE			EXPENDITURES
Item	Revenue		Item	Federal (FGN)		Item	State/LGA
Oil Revenue (Market Price MP)	0.60A		Excess Crude (BP = MP.x)	0.60A(1-x)		13% Derivation	0.078Ax
Customs & Excise (C&E)	0.15A		NCS (7% of C&E)	0.0105A		State/LG from Federation Account (47.32% of FA)	[0.247x+0.1114]A
CIT	0.10A		FIRS (4% of CIT+VAT)	0.006A		State/LG from VAT Pool [85% of VP]	0.0408A
VAT	0.05A		Special Funds (4.18% of FA)	[0.02182x+0.009844]A		–	–
Independent Revenue	0.10A		Federal Budget	[0.2209 + 0.25317x]A		–	–
Total	1.00A		Total	[0.8472 -0.325x]A		Total	[0.1522+0.325x]A
Captured in A

Note: Federation Account FA = 0.87*0.60Ax + 0.93*0.15A + 0.96*0.10A =  [0.522x + 0.2355]A

Vat Pool VP = 0.96*0.05A

 Federal Budget = 0.485*[0.522x + 0.2355]A + 0.14*0.96*0.05A + 0.10A = [0.2209 + 0.25317x]A

——

Part of what a regime of Change must do should be to move the country away from plug-and-play budgeting into a Company- and Property-TAX-BASED budgeting, coupled with MAXIMUM money recovery from money-making MDAs.  I believe that even with our present low oil sales and dollar cost and by plugging leaks, we can INCREASE the money available to government to perform by seven- to ten-fold, PROVIDED the money is not again leaked.

I will be expatiating on this elsewhere, but let me end with an extensive quotation which I find  relevant to where Nigeria finds itself at the moment

QUOTE

All organised societies depend on a power system; and politics is the business of power, its acquisitioin and its use.  Observation of history suggests that there have been three approaches to the use of power.  There are men, perhaps in the majority, who see power as something to be acquired for its own sake. There are there are those who see power as something to be used for the purpsoes of minor adjustments,  Finally, there are the idealists who seek to arrange fundamental change.

In the first case, men who pursue power for its own sake usually do so, either because it satisfies something in their own egotism or because they want for themselves the fruits of power; and of course, it is in this stream that the greatest tyrants of history are to be found.

The second group does not necessarily want power for its own sake so mus as for the achievement of some immediate adjustment in the society.  It see society as an amoral phenomenon to be accepted in all fundamental respects and adjusted in terms of obvious points of inefficiency or its response to the particular pressures of discontent………..this type of politician is conscious of points of pressure, seeming to require change, that arise from discontent and seeks in response to that pressure, marginal adjustments in the organisation of society for the purpose of relieving the discontent and removing the points of pressure.

Finally, there are the idealists who begin by rejecting existing social relationships and proceed to construct a model of how they think society should be ordered.  Tey are concerned with the basic changes that are necessary to effect the transformation from the one state to the other.

Our second group are the pragmatists of political history.  They probably spend more time in power than any other kind of politician because, obviously, societies discover in the end that tyrants exercise power at the expense of everybody else.  Sour our first category is liable to sudden and violent eliminations.

On the other hand, idealists, the third category, are vulnerable because they are concerned with change. Change and oppression both breed fear, and therefore, the pragmatic politician who is content to tinker is the one who societies feel most comfortable. Tyranny, as a method has no place….[with me].  On the other hand [Nigerian] society is disfigured by inequities that go too deep for tinkering.  Our concern, therefore, must be with the politics of change.

Idealistic politicians seek first a moral foundation for political action…..at the root of all idealistic political thinking is the question:  What is the purpose of political organization?  Some answer with the notion of stability…others take the contrary view and see individual freedom as their first order of priorities…Where the first will  make obedience, conformity and “law and order” the dominant consideration, the second group will seek a system that minimizes these considerations and prefers rather to walk as close to the edge of anarchy as social survival will allow…..

The more I have thought, therefore, about social organisation, the more I have concluded that here is only one supreme, moral imperative that cannot be affected by time, by circumstance, by the seasons, by man’s moods or intellectual distractions, by the injunctions of philosophers or the sermons of pastors, and it is the notion that social organization exists to serve EVERYBODY or has no moral foundation.

UNQUOTE

That was late Jamaican Prime Minister Michael Manley writing in the Introductory section of his book “The Politics of Change: A Jamaican Testament” [Andre Deutsch, 1974.]

And there you have it.

Bolaji Aluko