Anyone that has been watching this space closely, should not be surprised by the turn of event as far as saboteurs in President Buhari’s government is concerned. Needless to say, there is a standing cabal in Nigeria’s public service who only respond to action (removal, dismissal and prosecution) not body language. But it appears that this President has not undertaken the most potent policy response of to sabotage, which is “sequencing” to neutralize their capacity to act.
Something strange happened last week, the President upon arrival from Qatar walked into a celebratory parade at the airport of Scottish guard parade mounted by the Presidential Guard. The picture soon went viral online, and the pundits were not sparing in their treatment.
The ridicule of such elaborate state welcome, when the word on the street was the lack of economic direction – fiscal (budget) or monetary (central banking)- was not lost on the public. The half hearted explanation of the Buharists of a visiting Turkish President which turned out to be false, and the ultimately true story of the cultural melodrama of adopting foreign couture in our military tradition of dressing despite our own rich dressing tradition made matter worse.
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While these elaborate drama played out on social media, few important things happened, which may turn out to be for the president the precursor of things to come, not so good. First there was news that power generation fell from 2015 ending peak of 5,000 MW to a new low of 2,900 MW. Evidently this was the case, as rolling black out in the major cities became the order of the day even as the government groaned about vandals and saboteurs.
But matter went from bad to worse, when over the week end the major newspapers reported a major undersea pipeline sabotage in the Niger Delta that led to drop in oil and gas supply (inevitably power) by fifteen percent! All these as the President reportedly admitted to have saboteurs in his government while interviewing in Qatar, reminiscent of what his predecessor had said about Boko Haram in government.
Anyone that has been watching this space closely, should not be surprised by the turn of event as far as saboteurs in President Buhari’s government is concerned. Needless to say, there is a standing cabal in Nigeria’s public service who only respond to action (removal, dismissal and prosecution) not body language. But it appears that this President has not undertaken the most potent policy response of to sabotage, which is “sequencing” to neutralize their capacity to act.
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The idea of sequencing is to apply policy palliatives in the right order to minimize institutional resistance and its knee jerk response to sabotage change. The objective of sequencing is to neutralize internal opposition by building external pressure.
While Buhari loyalists have put a lot of blame on Aso Rock Villa Communication, it must be said that communication is one thing and sequencing is another. The underwater sea pipeline breached in the Niger Delta and consequent oil and gas production drop by 15% could have been prevented if the president have prioritized using a cash transfer scheme to ALL Nigerians as the basis of identity management and to build a new class of voters (especially in the Niger Delta) over the unplanned and now largely panned 500bn naira intervention find in the equally panned budget that has no law backing it, these kinds of sabotage would have been prevented before it was even conceived.
But no, he listed to civil servants and permanent secretaries and bought into the “oil price/forex is low” mentality, which have led to a wild goose chase and suspended ambition and potentially an unfinished change.
Another case of lack or prioritization and correct sequencing that ties into this idea was in the area of identity management. It is the singular most important thing that underline the plans of this administration for Security (use of finger prints to catch criminals), Anti-Corruption (link bank deposits to thieves) and Economy (unlock credit and put cash directly in the pocket of Nigerians from oil revenue), yet it has only been lip service and rhetoric from the Villa. For example, the budget which the administration submitted did not reflect the seriousness of the issue and importance of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) to its mission of lifting Nigerians from the throes of poverty, insecurity and corruption.
The 2016 budget assigned just one billion naira only to identity management acquisition, even when any amateur in the field would well advise the harmonization of existing identity data from the Bank Verification Number (BVN) and SIM Card registration exercises where up to 100 million Nigerians can be collated compared to 3 million Nigerians on current NIMC database should take precedent.
This compared of course to over 87 billion naira devoted to INEC in the past years for identity acquisition, which is probably not useful, and the billions the National Population Commission is now seeking to spend on another wasteful census! All which could be saved now and in the future with tokens devoted to NIMC.
Even the very act of designating the 500-billion naira poverty intervention funds in the budget without an enabling law that puts NIMC at the center of verifying receivers shows a certain lack of coherence on the part of the presidency. Be it as it may, the presidency can’t keep blaming the civil servants because after all they decided in their own wisdom to rule by permanent secretaries initially and failed to take advantage of the initial lull to plan, sequence and execute with eye at foiling saboteurs.
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