The judgment of the Supreme Court which affirmed the election of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu (PBAT) should concern even the most optimistic opposition political elite in the southeast as regards the region’s geopolitical interests. In the 2023 presidential election, the electorate from the region, feeling disenchanted with the Buhari-led All Progressive Congress (APC) and cheated by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) which despite years of support, gave the party’s ticket to former vice president, Atiku Abubakar, formed the bulwark of the strident Labour Party supporters which took the nation by storm.
Tapping into that disenchantment, the political elite which felt robbed of the right of first refusal with respect to the presidency urged the region to put nearly all their eggs in the Labour Party basket. Well, while that basket has not fallen on a concrete paved road, the skilled labour put into the nurturing and hatching of the eggs have yielded a few chicks, most of them unhealthy and dying at infancy. Considering that patience is not a virtue of the political elite and their people, how would they deal with their political miscalculations?
With PBAT, an ardent political strategist in the saddle, it is fair to assume that the opposition parties would be in the lurch for some years to come, all things being equal. And since the ruling party did not harvest plenty of votes from the zone in the last presidential election, will PBAT apply President Muhammadu Buhari’s incongruous mathematical equation of 97/5 percent of those who voted for and against, in sharing the economic resources of the country? Hopefully, PBAT will prove a more gifted mathematical prognosticator than his predecessor.
Many are wont to believe that some of the economic policies of the past regime, like the border closure, banning of the importation of certain items, the poorly thought out import substitution policies and the manipulative foreign exchange policies were aimed at punishing the businesses done by people from the southeast region. While some of the claims are debatable, there is no doubt that considering the mutual political animosity between majority of the people and elites of the region and the Buhari government, some of the policies were aimed at curbing the economic flourish, some will call it excesses, of the business men from the region.
But as that regime may have found out, the economic regulation policies while encouraging minimal import substitution and artificial foreign exchange control, left the economy so hollow that they had to borrow money to pay salaries and engage in infrastructure development. The result is the stagflation which the PBAT regime inherited. The Buhari policy on rice for example, while creating significant local production, could not tame the run-away inflationary pressure which also affected the price of that staple food. And for an average Nigerian, what worries him/her is the price of rice, not whether they are locally produced parboiled rice in the market.
Again, the border closure which was initially hailed by many, worsened the economic situation, even with the foreign exchange control policies targeted at discouraging certain types of import. Without local substitutes, and with no effective control at the national borders and ports, those determined to import such items soon found a way around the control measures. One glaring outcome was the booming of the parallel foreign exchange market, also referred to as the black market.
As happens with unbridled regulation in a corrupt environment, unprecedented distortion soon set in, as many of the privileged members of the Buhari regime got ensnared into using influence to appropriate foreign exchange from the Central Bank, which they sell through their agents in the black market, to the same marketers who import what the regime sought to substitute. When those imports land at the national border or the ports, the corrupt custom officials appropriate the remnant of what should come to the national coffers, while the goods are delivered to the buyers at excessively exorbitant prices.
So, while the privileged members of the regime, the customs and other regulatory agency officials and the unscrupulous importers smile to the bank, the ordinary people and their national treasury haemorrhage uncontrollably. The multiple whammy of economic stagnation, high unemployment rate, run-away inflation, weakened local currency, scarce foreign exchange and a nation threatened by socio-economic disillusionment of the people, is now the lot of PBAT and his team to manage. Even for the most optimistic person, this is definitely not the best of times for the country, as the nation is like a tinderbox.
Glaringly, for this regime, the first step is to build what the famous Tatalo Alamu, of this newspaper calls, building elite consensus to govern. PBAT must resist the temptation of the Buhari style of surrounding himself with only familiar faces, in the forlorn hope that what is only needed is loyalty and presumed competence. While those two are important, he also needs to hear outsider opinions, not accustomed to his economic worldview, since his emergence in 1999 as a political leader.
As is self-evident, the sinned-against, and the sinners are all suffering the consequences of the poor economic policies of the Buhari regime. Godwin Emefiele, the lightening rod of the economic team of the past regime, appears flummoxed, and must be wondering what came over him, to agree to preside over the gross mismanagement of the national economy. While the presidential apple he was offered is tempting enough, from hindsight he would know that it was a fruitless mirage. As we mourn the economic tragedy, those now saddled with responsibilities under PBAT must learn from what Emefiele and his cohorts brought on all Nigerians, including themselves.
No doubt, the disillusioned electorate and the disaffected elites from the southeast region can be harvested for good or for bad, depending on the poaching skills. While the cause of the political disease afflicting the southeast may be different, their economic afflictions are not different from that of the rest of Nigerians. As political pundits are wont to say, there is no different rice price tag for those who supported the past government from those who didn’t. The costs for transportation, health, education, security and all other needs have no discriminatory tags.
As the Tinubu era starts in earnest following the Supreme Court verdict, the southeast political elite should engage in strategic analysis of the short and long term geopolitical interests of the region. They do not need any lecture to understand that what should guide them should be the paramount interest of the region, in a Nigeria built on equity, fairness and justice. And the region is awash with deep political economists and intellectuals, who can provide the roadmap to reincarnate the pre-civil war south-eastern economic miracles of Michael Okpara.
Perhaps, the time for the much touted handshake across the Niger has come
