The Food, The Hand, The Spoon: Assessing President Tinubu at Midterm

 

It was a tug of war between my intellectual and impartial faculties on one hand, and my political and parochial inclinations on the other hand to undertake a mid-tenure evaluation of the impact of the 4-year Presidential mandate officially handed to Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR on 29th May 2023. Over the past two weeks, the dailies have been awash with a flurry of self-declared scorecards such as the caption ascribed to Mr. President’s second anniversary speech by the Statehouse press team on 29th May 2025 - “We have made undeniable progress” - and some pre-anniversary briefings by his cabinet members.

Going by the chant of his unapologetic double stroke of oil subsidy removal and foreign exchange unification, tax system reorganization, fiscal discipline and debt managements, President Bola Tinubu’s midterm speech reminded us of his administration’s unrepentant conviction that its daring economic reforms remain the silver bullet against Nigeria’s hyena-like financial adversaries. His critics, comprising majorly the labour movement and opposition parties, are however of the hardline opinion that Mr. President’s perceived economic interventions may have reduced wastage & eliminated some saboteurs, but these masterstrokes have beaten millions of Nigerians into misery, sickness, hunger, coma and even death, and have backed their claims with several statistics across board.  

While I believe strongly that the drivers and their doubters have equal rights to their claims and counterclaims respectively, this piece aims to direct the attention of both sides to the poorly interrogated, faintly articulated and yet unresolved quagmire in our country’s public administration system, which play a pivotal role in this government-governed relationship. These sequential pipelines needed for efficient delivery of economic goods to Nigerian masses are currently clogged in manner like the atheromatous plaques that reduce the optimal delivery of blood, oxygen & other nutrients to the trillions of cells, tissues and organs of humans who are prone to stroke, heart attack and other morbidities. While I’m informed that the recent drop in the market price of a bag of rice may be a result of Asiwaju’s economic strategies, I am of the dispassionate opinion that Mr. President’s well-intentioned economic “inputs” may not have yielded the anticipated social “outputs” in sufficient quantum because of some less considered fault lines. There exist some intermediary “processes” (pipelines) that may have been inadvertently unidentified, unscrutinised or basically unconsidered for equally ‘bold’ reforms by President Bola Tinubu’s government.

These go-between entities in Nigeria are of two forms – governance structure and public procurement system. Someone should please whisper to Asiwaju that the missing pieces between his administration’s necessary & bold economic reform (“food yield”) and the wellbeing of Nigerians (“the mouth”) are the “hand” (governance mechanism) and “spoon” (public procurement system). These two conduits are the tools expected to appropriately ‘channel’ the “food” to the mouths of an estimated 220 million Nigerian populace. Call them the wealth distribution strategies and you'll be correct. Considering Nigeria’s numerical, geographical, tribal and religious complexities, public goods cannot be efficiently delivered to Nigerians if the obstruction caused by our governance structure and public procurement system has not been relieved. May we have a better grasp of these issues with a few instances forthwith.

If monthly allocations accruable to State governments from the national level are tripled, but these subnational recipients yet lack sufficient legal, geographical, administrative, political & economic powers for self-sufficiency, Nigerians will continue to hurl insults at Mr. President for suboptimal improvement in their living conditions. If the 36 States & Federal Capital Territory (FCT) are left to continue like their federal counterparts with flawed & corrupt procurement systems needed to deliver public goods, the reality of less value for money despite fiscal discipline of President Tinubu’s government that translates to higher cash receipts by State governments will not stop. The results of Mr. President’s economic reforms will only be positively delivered to ease the pains of Nigerians when he audaciously institutes reforms that accommodates constitutional restructuring for decentralization of sufficient legal, geographical, administrative, political & economic powers to the States.

These reforms must also include fundamental alterations in the largely corrupt method through which Federal, 36 States, FCT & 774 Local government entities purchase goods & services from private vendors (contractors, suppliers, consultants, Non-governmental Organizations used for siphoning public funds etc.). It goes without saying that Mr. President, with his cognate experience in both public sector and private sector engagements within Nigeria, is fully abreast of shenanigans of the “three elite musketeers” (political office holders, top civil servants and government contractors - not all of them though) in the public procurement process. For as little as purchase of stationeries for government offices to large-scale construction of public buildings, houses, markets, roads, bridges, rails, refineries, power infrastructure and supply of million-dollar equipment of hospitals, universities etc., the culture of short-changing the system as well as its last mile beneficiaries appears to be a norm in Nigeria.

Furthermore, if economic reforms increase our domestic savings but lack of reforms in governance and public procurement systems is allowed in perpetuity, more monies will be appropriated for Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) of the nation’s refineries, but they will end up in private pockets and deliver non-functional refineries and their attendant consequences to Nigerians. If trillions of naira are appropriated for the Federal Ministries and agencies across the Health, Education, Agriculture, Water Resources and other sectors, whereas their state counterparts & local government equivalents continue to receive a meagre proportion of these gargantuan sums that are centralized by the Federal government’s domination of Nigeria’s pollical economy, our lives will only improve in trickles and at a snail speed. And if the comparatively small sums allocated to these subnational governments must rely on the warped and corrupt public procurement system whereby deceitful bidding processes, contract inflation, institutionalized kickbacks by vendors to political office holders and top civil servants remain the order of the day, Nigerians will not relent in expressing their frustrations about your economic policies. Again, this is because majority will only receive ‘crumbs’ from the warped ‘spoon’ that the dysfunctional ‘hand’ would have diverted away from their mouths.

Permit me to end by reiterating that Mr. President’s stifling but necessary economic policies requiring the patience, hope and sacrifice of Nigerians for better & sustained feeding may birth sufficient quantum of ‘goodies’ in one corner. However, I am convinced that the most populous nation in Africa deserves 37 corners & 774 or more robust zones for sufficient production of goods & services (economic means). These subnational entities also require constitutional reforms to support 37 hands & 774 or more fingers (governance mechanism) that will efficiently direct 37 spoons & 774 or more cutleries (procurement method) to efficiently load & deliver the produced goodies to 220 million mouths (Nigerians). The prevailing overcentralized governance contraption and its accompanying public procurement culture are devoid of appropriateness, sanity, fairness and justice. Please renew our hope by courageously commencing the reforms of these two dirty, disorderly and discouraging pipelines or wealth distribution avenues. 

Dr. Adetolu Ademujimi is a Medical Doctor, Health Finance Specialist, Author, Reformer, Coach, Public Policy expert and social entrepreneur who can be reached in Abuja via adetoluademujimi@gmail.com