How to Form a New Government Without Tears

Despite the postponement, intimidation and outright manipulation, the Nigerian people showed great resilience last two Saturdays in coming out en masse to exercise their democratic franchise. This week, by the grace of God, we have known who our president-elect is. A new president must hit the ground running. He would certainly face an in-tray of formidable to-do priorities.

1)           The transition team.

The new administration must begin with a transition team comprising sober-minded technocrats whose job is to put together a viable framework for the incoming administration; serving as a link between the outgoing and incoming. The transition team will process detailed briefings covering all ministries, departments and agencies of government. They will prepare a memo for the president-elect on the state of public finances and progress on implementation of ongoing projects. The team in turn will digest the directives from the president-elect and integrate them into a revised blueprint for operational action. They will also need to prepare an Action Programme detailing (a) immediate priorities; (b) medium-term policies; and (c) long-term policy programmes. They will also draw up the roadmap leading to the swearing-in in May and beyond.

2)        Formation of the Cabinet

A government rises or falls by the quality of its cabinet. The president-elect must avoid what happened to the Buhari administration in 2015, which needed 6 months to form a government, with disastrous consequences. Having a draft ministerial list from day one will send the right signals. A wise leader will seek a healthy balance between “technocrats” and “politicians”. The issue of a binary option between the two is a spurious heresy. We need both. But the most technical ministries must be headed by technocrats of international repute. A leader who has a deep burning desire to succeed must bring in people of high ability, regardless repute, regardless of their political persuasion. Presidents Abraham Lincoln and John Fitzgerald Kennedy both had the guts to bring in their political enemies into the cabinet. This is political wisdom of the highest order. What you need are people who can deliver. What is needed is an inclusive administration, not the nepotistic contraption that we have at present. Our constitution requires that ministers come from all the 36 states of the federation. But it is only be convention that governors are consulted. We would be well advised to steer clear of governors that send buffoons to Abuja.

3)        Administrative Restructuring

The new president must take a careful look at the structure of his administration. Lumping together the three powerful departments of Works, Power and Housing under one super-minister, has been a disastrous mistake. I also do not think it is right to have shifted the Budget Department to the Ministry of Planning. Budget should go back to Finance. We need a reinvigorated Federal Ministry of Finance and the Economy empowered to work on all aspects of public finance and the budget while driving economic development. We must also work towards ensuring that budget appropriation is finalised in December and implementation begins unfailingly in January of the New Year.

This is not to say I favour downgrading the Ministry of Panning. On the contrary, I would love to see that ministry expanded to resume the economic development planning that we were forced to abandon in the 1980s. We need to recruit 300 first-rate PhD economists, architect-planners, engineers and statisticians in that ministry, with a mandate to engage in long-term economic and urban development planning as obtains in China, India, Singapore, Malaysia, Korea, Indonesia and other prosperous emerging economies. We must empower them to design a 5-year economic development plan 2020-2024. Henceforth, the annual budget must derive its framework from the Five Year Economic Development Plan. Integrated into the plan should be a comprehensive urban regional planning for our cities and towns to make them smart urban centres that meet the needs the expectations of our expanding populace. Most of our people will be urban dwellers in the coming decades.

4)        Presidential Strategy Team

In the heart of the Presidency, a Strategy Adviser with a full operational team needs to be created, with responsibility to monitor and ensure implementation of the government’s core programmes. They will have a mandate to produce monthly and quarterly progress reports to ensure targets are being met. Where there are lapses they must report to the president to ensure that remedial action is taken. All cabinet members and heads of agencies and departments must have a performance contract. Those who do not meet their targets must be sent packing.

5)        Tackling the Security Challenge

The biggest challenge facing us as a country today is insecurity. The whole situation is muddled up by the fact that people in government are implicated with Boko Haram and the militia herdsmen. Addressing this challenge requires going back to the drawing board. We must agree that the first duty of government is to secure the common peace. This requires that we confront the insurgency and all forms of criminal violence with renewed focus and determination. We can only do this effectively if we put in place a new security architecture while re-tooling the armed forces, the police and intelligence services. We must reinvent our country as a land of peace and of expanding opportunities for all citizens.

6)        Refocusing on Macroeconomic and Structural Reforms

The success or failure of the incoming administration will largely depend on how it addresses the multifarious challenges of the economy. Today, our country has the dubious prize of being the world capital of poverty. Some estimated 24 million of our people are unemployed while over 13 million children are out of school. Our commitment must be to revive the economy through the agency of a progressive servant developmental state. The private sector must be the driver of economic progress while the state, serving as a servant of the people, has to be the mid-wife. We have to identify those public sector enterprises that are not working and we must decide if liberalisation or outright privatisation is the best way to go.

We must take a fresh look at the power sector while tackling headlong the curse of poverty and unemployment. We must ensure food security while building a mass-based industrial revolution. Equally important is addressing the gross deficits in our public finances. We need to raise the requisite resources needed to finance our ambitious programmes while cutting down on waste and ensuring efficient allocation of scarce resources. We need the CBN to refocus on its core mandate while abolishing the iniquitous multiple exchange rate regime and the high interest rates which make it impossible to finance the real sector that is expected to serve as the engine and locomotive of growth. We must plan for a post-oil economy by diversifying the economic base and investing massively in human, education and skills. We must address issues of welfare, not by throwing good money down the pork-barrel of misguided populism but by strategic interventions that ensure the best outcomes for the poor.

7)        Addressing the Challenge of Nation Building and Political Re-Engineering 

The Swiss historian Jacob Burkhart famously described the state as “a work of art”. By this he meant that a successful state is the handiwork of visionary statesmen who have who have set to work with passion and assiduity to build a flourishing nation. The last few years have, sadly, have seen a heightening of our fault lines. We cannot take our survival as a political community for granted. Our enemies want us to fail. We must disappoint them. We therefore have to launch a dialogue process on re-engineering our federation to ensure that we have a free and prosperous democracy – a New Nigeria that is at peace with itself and with the world.