Yar’adua: Status Report

President Umaru Yar’adua has been in office for over seven months now. Initially the intention of this column was to present an assessment of the government after three months-that would have necessitated a report card by the end of August 2007-but for a variety of reasons, we deferred that till year end. We now feel impelled to assess the government’s initial actions and directions given that the regime has already spent approximately 15 percent of the forty-eight months it has to shape Nigeria’s destiny. At the end of former President Obasanjo’s eight-year tenure, I evaluated him based on five dimensions of a ‘balanced scorecard’- political, economic, international relations, impact on people and corruption and transparency.

When the Yar’adua regime was about to be inaugurated, I presented some series of ‘Memos to Yar’adua’ which attempted to set an agenda for the then incoming president. Those memos suggested three broad categories of priorities-governance (electoral reform/entrenching democracy; anti-corruption; rule of law and constitutionalism), policy (Niger-Delta; power sector; and social sector reforms and investments-education, health, rural development, urban mass transportation, access to credit, housing development and unemployment). In terms of economic priorities, I suggested that the government focus on transparent privatisations, land reform, strengthening regulatory capacity, competition and anti-trust policy, and improving capital markets, accounting standards and corporate governance.

President Yar’adua himself put forward a ‘7-Point Agenda’ as his contract with the Nigerian voters and citizens encompassing real sector development; physical infrastructure (power, energy and transportation); agricultural development; human capital development (education and health); security, law and order; zero tolerance for corruption; and Niger-Delta. I have also recently seen a report which includes electoral reform, regional development and some cross-cutting issues as part of the seven-point agenda. Clearly we have enough objective and subjective criteria including self-imposed ones on which we can evaluate the government of President Yar’adua so far.

On the positive side, the President has lived up to his promise of a state based on the rule of law and constitutionalism. He has indeed elevated the notion of the rule of law to a cardinal principle of state policy that can override any other consideration. This in itself is good. However we have made the point previously that the concept of the rule of law is not an end in itself, but a means to an end-the end being defined based on the ideology, values and principles which the state seeks to uphold. As we have recently seen, the rule of law can be used to fight corruption, or to truncate the fight against corruption. President Yar’adua will yet have to define the ideology and principles which his conception of the rule of law is meant to protect and advance.

But the President’s focus on rule of law is helping institutions to develop. The House of Representatives for instance, benefited from Yar’adua’s refusal to interfere in the ‘Etteh Affair’. The Legislature in general-the Senate and the House-at the federal level has been allowed to strengthen their institutional capacity and to carry out their constitutional responsibilities without pressure from an overbearing President. The President has also somehow defused political tension with his low-keyed approach to politics which has allowed some level of improvement in inter-party relations. The participation of the ANPP and PPA in the so-called ‘Government of National Unity’ has also been a significant factor in this regard. I must add however that I am one of those who feel that politics should be driven more by ideas in which different groups freely contend, rather than a notion of patronage-driven consensus that eliminates opposition parties and the critical element of an alternative viewpoint which they offer. The President’s promise of electoral reform and the constitution of a high-powered electoral reform committee is also to be commended.

But the negatives are many also. The regime has shown ambivalence in many areas and Nigerians are increasingly wondering what exactly the regime stands for. Is the government committed to its ‘zero tolerance against corruption’ or will the demands of real politik override anti-corruption where necessary? Is the government committed to electoral reform or will the government look the other way while its state governments rig local government elections and then issue a statement after the fact? Is the government’s commitment to rule of law total, or will it waive that when it comes to implementing FIRS autonomy, National Procurement Commission Act or the Fiscal Responsibility Act or indeed any other cases it is unhappy with?

Much has been written about the government’s penchant for reversals of policies and actions undertaken by the former regime. The list of reversals is getting longer and longer, with a list of threatened reversals also lengthening. The government has reversed sales of refineries, tax increases, monetisation of ministers and special advisers transportation, Federal Unity Schools PPP policy, Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) decentralisation, suspended funding for National Integrated Power Projects, Railway Projects, primary health centres and there are hints that people are unhappy with FIRS autonomy, NITEL privatisation, (as well as Ajaokuta and Delta Steel) and probably other privatisations as well. The problem really is not the policy reversals, as it is a cardinal principle of constitutional law that no government or parliament can be bound by its predecessor. The real problem is the refusal to suggest an alternative policy framework.

This illustrates the fundamental problem with the regime-the policy vacuum in which it operates. Before the regime, there was NEEDS and NEEDS 2. The regime seems to have disavowed these policy frameworks and sought to replace them with its own seven point agenda and perhaps a VISION 2020 which seeks to make Nigeria one of the top 20 economies in the world by 2020. The problem is that neither of these has been articulated in terms of specific policies, strategies, plans, objectives and milestones and remain at the level of a broad agenda or vision. Some even detect a nostalgia for the 1970s type state-owned enterprises led economy as been the government’s unspoken preference contrary to the policies of liberalisation, deregulation and privatisation that it inherited from the Obasanjo regime and that its international partners in the World Bank, IMF and bilateral partners expect the regime to implement under its Policy Support Instrument (PSI) with the IMF.

Even in terms of specific commitments which the government outlined in its own seven-point agenda such as the power emergency, there is no strategic action beyond some committees to re-examine and recreate policy. This is in spite of the existence of a law-the Electric Power Sector Reform Act of 2005 which in my view presents a comprehensive reform agenda for the power sector. By the way doesn’t adherence to the rule of law compel execution of this law? The regime will have to quickly present its economic strategy to Nigerians and move rapidly to implement it.