Farooq Kperogi : Tinubu, listen to Falana on welfare for the poor

Femi Falana’s August 3 request to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to “approve not less than N5 trillion to fund the National Social Investment Programme” to counterpoise the mountingly punishing effects of his twin policies of unsustainably extortionate petrol price hike and naira devaluation has given me another discursive lifeline to write about an issue I had given up on.

As regular readers of my column would have noticed, there has been a significant diminution in both the numerical frequency and emotional intensity of my commentaries on economic issues, for reasons I’ll lay bare shortly. It suffices to say that I had resigned myself to the inevitability of the current state of affairs.

But if Falana, an esteemed Senior Advocate of Nigeria and vigorous advocate for everyday folks who has been treading this path for more than four decades, hasn’t given up, who am I to? Maybe, just maybe, if enough people sustain pressure on people in positions of power, they may be persuaded to reverse what seems like Nigeria’s intransigent march to economic perdition.

In his press statement, Falana recalled President Tinubu’s acknowledgement of the severe existential hurt that his policies have caused Nigerians and his appeal to APC governors to “wet the grass more and deliver progressive change to Nigerians.”

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Falana used this presidential concession of the damaging effects of neoliberal policies to request two things: the funding of four mitigatory federal welfare programs already passed into law and ensuring “that the National Social Investment Programme Agency Act is adopted and enacted into law by the 36 state governments in Nigeria, rather than committing billions to renovating state houses while the masses wallow in abject poverty.”

These are reasonable demands to moderate the mass pain and sorrow that Tinubu’s policies have visited on the nation. At this point, frankly, it’s unrealistically optimistic to expect that Tinubu would reverse his punitive signature policies. If he can’t stop the fire he started, he should at least hand the most burned Nigerians some water.

You know this government is not ready to reverse course either out of pride or blind ideological commitment to neoliberal orthodoxy because it is now an obligatory rhetorical ritual for every government official and government apologists outside the orbit of the formal structures of government to preface every speech with an extolment of Tinubu’s “unprecedented,” “extra-ordinary,” “courageous” (take your pick) removal of subsidies and floating of the naira.

When the very wrongheaded policies that are the triggers for mass economic distress in the land have been promoted, almost as an official policy, as the objects of obligatory worship, as worthy only of saccharine praises, and as evidence of grand, unexampled presidential derring-do, you know change is not in the cards.

As someone who studies and teaches rhetorical communication, it seems to me that the government’s strategy of conceding that its economic policies are visiting unprecedented economic violence on a lengtheningly vast swath of people while subtly enforcing the ritual of praising those very policies in public speeches is deliberate.

Government officials, including the president, habitually admit just enough of the hardship people are going through to seem empathetic, but without undermining the core argument that the policies that caused the hardship are “necessary” or “beneficial.”

The ultimate goal is, of course, to diffuse public anger by signaling, “We understand your pain,” while continuing the same course of action, anyway.

The injurious policies are then reframed as visionary, reformist, “necessary sacrifice for a better future,” short-term pain for long-term gain, “bitter medicine,” or “tightening our belts for national survival.”

This aligns well with what we call pathos-driven persuasion, which appeals to our sense of patriotism, resilience, and shared struggle, but often without any evidence of the long-term benefits that will arrive.

Praise of the government’s hurtful policies is ritualized in order to normalize them, drown out or weaken dissent and, ultimately, create a one-sided, unchallenged narrative.

I have to give it to the government’s paid mind managers. They have been remarkably adept at devising a strategic mix of concession and what is called propaganda reframing to create the illusion of empathy by government officials while leaving untouched the harmful policies that caused the pain that they feign empathy toward.

So, their rhetorical strategy combines pathos (acknowledging the suffering of the people), ethos (appearing reasonable by doing so), and logos (claiming the suffering is necessary if Nigeria is to avoid collapse), but it’s ultimately manipulative, since their acknowledgment of harm doesn’t lead to policy change.

That was one of the major reasons I gave up talking about these issues. What’s the point of continually writing about an issue when nothing nudges even an inch? It’s like shouting into the void or watering dead plants.

But my interest was reignited because Falana hasn’t given up. Another reason is the urge to confront another beloved ritualized talking point of officials of the Tinubu administration, including Tinubu himself, which is the idea that the removal of fuel subsidies and the devaluation of the naira have put more money into the coffers of governors than at any time in Nigeria’s history.

This argument has always mystified and caused me second-hand embarrassment. First, when the value of the naira relative to the dollar has fallen to the unprecedented low-water mark that it has, foreign income earned in dollars will add up to more naira than ever before. Because the value of the naira is abysmally low, more naira doesn’t necessarily translate to more money.

Second and most importantly, what exactly is the value in giving governors more money when it doesn’t lead to the improvement in the quality of life of citizens?

As I have argued in several past columns, all that the so-called removal of fuel subsidy has achieved is to take money from the corrupt, subsidy-sucking oil importation cabal (whose corruption at least led to a reasonably affordable petrol price regime) to a cartel of equally corrupt, unaccountable governors, which has led to the current usurious petrol price regime and its devastating domino effect on the economy.

The money “saved” from stopping subsidy payments isn’t being used to build or renew infrastructure. The government is still borrowing, like previous governments did, to fund major infrastructure projects.

So, it’s safe to say all that Tinubu’s “courageous” and “extra-ordinary” policies have done is give more money to elected officials at the federal, state and local levels. And what’s the trade-off? The democratization of poverty.

I can bet my bottom dollar that if Nigerians are presented with a choice between the previous subsidy regime dominated by a select venal, rapacious fuel subsidy junto, which nonetheless kept the price of petrol at less than 200 naira a liter, and the current state of affairs that stuffs governors with more money than they need at the expense of the people, they won’t hesitate a split second to prefer the former.

I admit that there are obviously a few conscientious governors who are trying hard to do the right things with the more money at their disposal, but without foolproof institutional guardrails, nothing that will make governors, suddenly awash with excess cash, to “wet the grass” for ordinary people, to use Tinubu’s expression.

What most governors do when they get their excess cash from the money “saved” from subsidy removal is, according to many news reports, convert the naira into foreign currencies and salt them away in their personal coffers.

NLC President Joe Ajaero pointed out on May 1st that several state governors still don’t pay the N70,000 minimum wage. This is not surprising because a 2024 report noted that 15 states had not implemented the previous ₦30,000 minimum wage.

Taking vast sums of money that ensured ordinary people could afford petrol for their basic transportational needs (and therefore make a tough economy survivable) and giving them to governors who can’t be compelled to pay a living wage to state workers is pure reverse Robin Hoodism, that is, robbing the poor to pay the rich.

Tinubu’s moral suasion to the governors won’t work. What will work is to follow Femi Falana’s advice and, in the short term, fund welfare programs already passed into law but ensuring that the programs are, as Falana put it, “managed by the accredited representatives of the Federal Government, elected representatives of trade unions and other credible civil society groups.”

In the long term, he should invest energies in guaranteeing that laws are passed to establish the state equivalents of these programs in ways that institutionally compel state governors to devote substantial portions of their allocations to the welfare of their citizens, irrespective of party affiliations.

The best long-range solution, for me, though, is to tackle the source of the renewed hell people are experiencing. Transformative leaders are often open to revising their policies if the effects of the policies are disastrous for the great majority of the people. That’s where real courage resides: the ability to admit that you are wrong and then change course.

Farooq Kperogi is a renowned columnist and United States-based Professor of Journalism