IN what is becoming clearer by the day, the reform agenda of President Olusegun Obasanjo is set for a destructive course as he continues with his rambunctious approach to governance. His gong approach to the prosecution of his New Economic Empowerment and Development Strategies (NEEDS), has further impoverished Nigerians more than when he took over in 1999. And as the coalition of unions prepares to embark on a nationwide strike this week, there is still a window of opportunities for President Obasanjo to save face. What options are open to him and why he needs to carry Nigerians along. The full text of this piece is being reproduced because of its importance to the on-going debate about Obasanjo's style of governance. It was first published last Friday.
Before Nigerians are bamboozled with the mantra of 'No Alternatives to NEEDS (New Economic Empowerment and Development Strategies)", there is a need for us to provide a practical example of how to engage a reform agenda. Because the reform agenda of President Olusegun Obasanjo, encapsulated in the NEEDS document, and which is being pursued with a very dangerous zeal, has continued to subject tens of millions of Nigerians who are leaving below the poverty line (close to three quarters of the population) to untold harship, the example of Lee Kuan Yew, the man who turned the nation of Singapore into a success, is worth presenting here.
The example from Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore
In his book, From Third World to the First, The Singapore Story: 1965 - 2000, by Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore and the Asian economic boom, Yew told of the Singaporean experience and how he won over the unions. In one of the chapters of the book, captioned ‘Winning Over The Unions’, Yew narrated the difficulties he encountered in getting the unions to buy into his reform agenda.
According to Yew, “The National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) secretary-general, Ho See Beng, a PAP MP and an old colleague from my trade union days, protested against my policies,...I had to override his protests but took care to meet the union leaders privately to explain my worries. These off-the-record meeting made them understand why I had to get a new frame-work in place.
“The deep sense of crisis that prevailed made it possible for me to turn around union attitude in a few years. The danger of an economic collapse because British forces were about to leave altered the mood and attitudes of the people. They realised that unless we made a U-turn from strikes and violence towards stability and economic growth, we would perish. I got management to undertake their new role of winning worker cooperation, without which productivity could not increase. Strict laws and tough talk alone could not have achieved this.
It was our overall policy that convinced our workers and union leaders to support our key objectives; to establish international confidence in Singapore and attract investments and create jobs. But ultimately it was the trust and confidence they had in me.”,
A president rocks own boat
Now, to institute a reform programme which admittedly hurts the masses and not to expect a concomitant protest is akin to flogging a child and insisting that he should not cry.
Perhaps, it would serve President Olusegun Obasanjo and his teamsters well to do a rethink on what manner of reform initiative they are engaging. For a president who relishes a flight of fancy by acknowledging that successful world leaders are his friends, he seems to be doing a very bad job of governing Nigeria - and he has had all of five years, and still counting, to do that.
President Obasanjo threatens Labour: October 8, 2003
Exactly one year today, President Olusegun Obasanjo threatened fire and brimstone. It was at a time when Nigerians were actually complaining about the pains of government’s insensitivity to their plight; it was just some four months after an earlier eight-day strike action which paralysed the nation with attendant loss of lives. While some Nigerians were attempting to dialogue with labour, President Obasanjo mounted the airwaves in what observers still describe as his worst outing ever:
“We must move forward in the interest of this country. In recent times, especially since the new administration was sworn-in in May this year, the NLC has constituted itself into an opposition political movement rather than a labour organisation to advance the interest of its members contrary to the provisions of the law establishing it. The tactical move by the NLC to mislead and recruit some opposition political parties is evidence of an attempt not only to politicise what otherwise is an economic issue, but also to promote its avowed objective of bringing down a democratically elected government.”
After leveling a charge of treason against labour, just because the latter had threatened to embark on a nationwide strike action, Obasanjo went on to say that “this new alliance appears designed to attain power through undemocratic means. The leadership of the NLC has engaged in series of subversive activities, deliberately misrepresenting government policies to the public and its members, and using every opportunity to blackmail the government and others who hold contrary opinions or views. What the NLC leadership must realise is that it has no mandate from whatever source to mobilise, much less call for anti-government action, the Nigerians who are not dues-paying members of its affiliate unions.”
But Obasanjo got it all wrong when he charged that: “If the NLC decides to run its own transport company or engage in petroleum importation or refining, it is free to do so and sell to its members and whoever it pleases and at whatever price it deems fit.”
That was President Obasanjo in a nationwide broadcast on October 8, 2003.
Why my government would not be moved, by Obasanjo
And just on Tuesday, Obasanjo declared that the resistance to economic reforms in the country would not move his government. He said in an address to the 34th Annual Accountants’ Conference in Abuja that the reforms were yielding desired results and that resistance to his economic policies were not unexpected, in the first instance.His words: “The beauty of new ideas, nay, economic reforms, is that they come with teething challenges which are surmountable. As experts, these challenges should spur you to greater heights.
On our part, from the outset, we did not expect the task to be easy neither did we expect the process of adaptation to be smooth sailing. However, irrespective of the pockets of resistance and inevitable occasional operational hiccups, we shall not waver.”
But what is this government’s mentality
It is a mentality which feeds on the use of force rather than persuasion and reason. It is a mentality which thrives on bare-faced bravado and not constructive engagement. And because it is a mentality which believes so much in self-glorification, it treats with scorn, any dissenting view, no matter how sagacious.
Between the all-knowing and all-conquering posture of President Olusegun Obasanjo, and the we-no-go-gree position of labour lies the dangerously familiar game of ego-tripping.
For a president who came in with so much promise and on whom so much hope was invested, the present path of shambles which his administration is set comes as a rude shock to many of his countrymen - although some people had always insisted that nothing good would come out of his second coming as president and Commander-in-Chief.
Whereas there are those who still insist that President Obasanjo’s economic policies would usher in a new Nigeria, a nation where the proverbial milk and honey would really flow, believing that at some point the Nigerian people would begin to appreciate the efforts of their president, the reality on ground, and a painful one at that, is that when Nigerians wake up in the morning, they are constantly besieged and harassed by one government policy or the other.
The latest came in the form of petroleum products price increase. Just within two days of procuring a court order, government upped the pump head price of petrol from about N43 per litre to N53 per litre.
And the questions being asked are many: What has happened to the licensed refineries? Why are the old ones still not working? Why does Nigeria, the seventh largest producer of crude be import dependent for local survival? To what use is the excess crude funds being put? Can Obasanjo’s reform initiative, for which he is making Nigerians suffer outlast this administration?
It needs restatement that unless and until President Obasanjo disembarks from his high horse of know-all and be-all, for so long would there be opposition to his reform programme which is already set on a wobbly course because the simplest of economics formula which acknowledges that to revamp any economy, the middle class must be empowered is being overlooked by Obasanjo and his team of advisers.
