Three Years to Go!

By next week, the Yar’adua Presidency will have spent one quarter of its term, and will have three quarters (i.e. three years out of the initial four year term) left. In real life politics however the mathematics is really different. The last eighteen months to one year of any presidential term is often not available for any serious work of governance. If a sitting president is running for re-election, he naturally devotes that time to securing his party’s re-nomination, and most importantly to his re-election campaign for the general elections. If on the other hand, the sitting president is either not interested or not eligible for a further term, he becomes as they say, a “lame duck” president-still in office, but already in the process of being overrun by the momentum of history.

So in political terms, rather than the three years which this column says is left for the Yar’adua Presidency, there is only about one and a half to two years, all things being equal! That means the next few months will be critical in determining what history will say about the regime. Will it be recorded as a government that actually positively affected the nation’s course or will this time be defined as a missed opportunity? As the regime marks its first anniversary in office, there can be little controversy over the fact that today, there is little to celebrate.

The regime can of course claim as achievements its acclaimed adherence to the rule of law and “due process”, the lowered political tension in the country, the on-going effort to reform our electoral system, and some level of separation of powers (between the executive, legislature and judiciary) and institution-building and strengthening that may result thereby. However each of these claims can be fairly tenuous. As I have argued before, the rule of law while desirable, indeed required for an economy to attract and retain both domestic and foreign investments, and to function in an orderly manner, does not exist in an ideological or policy vacuum. A regime will first have to determine what vision of society it has, before designing the rules and laws to protect and entrench that vision, and ensuring that all authorities and persons abide with that “rule of law”.

We can also argue that while the president’s political profile and personality has indeed lowered political tension, there are yet no substantive actions of the regime which contribute towards institutionalising long term political stability in Nigeria. A good example are the elections (whether re-run state governorship/legislative elections that have been organised by INEC or more scandalously, the local government elections) that have been organised in all the states. Those elections in spite of the rhetoric about electoral reform have not been different, in some cases actually worse than the 2007 elections. For those of us who found Ahmadu Ali’s postulations about democracy as a “military garrison” objectionable, the loud boasts of the new PDP Chairman, Vincent Ogbulafor that his party will rule for the next 60 years (irrespective it seems of whether the administrations elected to office under the party banner perform or not) were an unpleasant surprise, and remind us sadly that the more things appear to change, the more they remain the same! It was also quite disappointing that in spite of the president’s earlier posturing, the PDP eventually shied away from elections (in favour of selection of so-called “consensus” candidates) to select its current party executives.

Lastly, it may appear that the president’s non-aggressive style in his relationship with the legislature and judiciary has allowed these other institutions, particularly the National Assembly to find their feet and begin to play the proper role of the legislature in a democratic society. The enhanced functioning and profile of the federal legislature could indeed have something to do with the president’s hands-off approach, and may indeed have the side-effect of enhancing legislative vibrancy and allowing other institutions to develop, (as nature abhors a vacuum), but it is doubtful if the president can truly claim this as an achievement.

On the other side of the balance sheet, the biggest problem remains the lack of policy clarity in the regime’s first full year in office. The government inherited a NEEDS and NEEDS 2 framework from the preceding government. The government campaigned on the basis of a seven point agenda and also articulated a Vision 20 20 objective of making Nigeria one of the top twenty economies in the world by 2020. And the president explicitly committed to treating the power sector (which was also one of the 7 point agenda priorities) as an emergency sector. Moreover there could not have been any doubt about the nation’s priorities at the time the President was elected into office. However if there was any doubt at all about what our nation’s priorities, this column in a series of “Memos to Yar’adua” defined and communicated those priorities to the then incoming president-electoral reform, Niger-Delta, power and infrastructure (particularly transportation), social sector (meaning education, health, urban mass transportation and rural infrastructure) etc.

The fact that I believe it was, and remains very clear what the nation’s priorities are then makes it somewhat inexplicable why this government has taken up the first full year of its tenure trying to chart a policy direction for Nigeria. There appears to be so much tentativeness about policy direction since May 2007 that appears inconsistent with the weight of evidence which appears compelling in relation to what Nigeria should be doing. The power sector illustrates this bewildering situation in which we appear to be searching vigorously for a new policy for the sector. This as this column has written before is curious given that there exists a Power Sector Reform Act, passed since 2005 that clearly articulates a framework for power sector reform. I find it difficult given my knowledge of the contents of the Act to imagine that this search will lead to a better framework for the sector.

There are other areas in which a policy stagnancy and drift appears to be unfolding. Why for instance has there been no single privatisation since May 2007, while on the other hand several concluded by the former regime have been reversed. For instance, we recall that the privatisation of the refineries was reversed soon after the president’s inauguration. It was significant that no alternative process of privatisation was embarked upon when those privatisations were reversed or in any other case. However the best news one has heard in the policy arena in recent times is the suggestion that a draft Vision 2020 document and a harmonisation draft of NEEDS 2 and the 7 point agenda are now been debated in Abuja. It would be useful if those drafts are urgently finalised so that implementation can commence in the time remaining.

Agbaje is Senior Consultant/CEO of Resources and Trust Company (RTC) a strategy, consultancy and business advisory firm. RTC POLICY is the policy, government and political consultancy arm of the firm.