- Adds: Nigeria’s biggest problem is over-concentration of power at the centre
A former President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Dr. Olisa Agbakoba, SAN, has warned that Nigeria must undergo deep-rooted political and economic reforms to make progress.
Speaking in an interview with Vanguard’s Olayinka Ajayi, Dr. Agbakoba evaluated some of the policies of President Bola Tinubu, including the fuel subsidy removal and naira devaluation and more.
Below are excerpts.
Before I am misinterpreted, let me be very careful to say that it does seem as if some of the structural problems regarding the issue of devaluation and fuel subsidy removal are beginning to have an impact positively, but not sufficiently to make an impact on the street.
So a man who has a high blood pressure reading of over 160 by 120, means it is very critical. It needs to come down to about 140 to 100. So it sums up Nigeria’s position. While these adjustments are good, even though we have to ask where the product of the fuel subsidy is, what it has done can be called a correction.
A correction is when you are going in a particular direction, and you know that that is not the correct direction. So nobody can dispute that the removal of the fuel subsidy is not in the right direction because only a few benefited, and the big question is, where is it going? Is it going into social institutions, hospitals, and schools? It’s a good idea that it’s happening and I think it was reflected in pricing: fuel pricing is not good. They can be N100 or N200, but certainly not N1,200. The current price is N930. Food pricing is high but stable, but not as before.
So if this is possible, why is it not possible to achieve more success? The reason is: if you have read Why Nations Fail, nations fail precisely because of the sort of nonsense going on in Rivers State.
It shouldn’t be happening at all. It’s a needless distraction. The rift between APC and PDP is not to the benefit of the people of Rivers State. That is the problem the authors of Why Nations Fail described.
The government fails to focus on good governance. Nigeria’s biggest problem is the over-concentration of power at the centre. If we are to achieve the N500 trillion targeted budget, which is possible, we must break up the overcentralised system to do at least eight constitutionally recognised political zones.
The Middle Belt Zone needs to come out of the North-West. The Edo area needs to come out of the South-South, each with its independent economic constitutional structure. People say there’s a delay in the Supreme Court; it takes up to 10 years to get a verdict. There’s only one Supreme Court. In the United States of America, there are as many supreme courts as there are states.
So why should the Magistrate Court in Yaba head to the Supreme Court? So when you open up the process, you have 36 Supreme Courts. In every county in America, which we call a local government, there’s a police chief, but here, we have only one.
On Trump’s policies
Do you know why President Trump wanted to make friends with the President of Ukraine but it backfired? It is because the world is shifting to a green economy. The green economy is driven by critical minerals, and North Central is ranked number four in the world for critical minerals.
Under the North-Central is about $6 trillion worth of resources that are not being utilised; rather, political leaders are fighting for the crumbs rather than saying, ‘If we work together, we can dig deep.’ That is why we should be talking about what President Tinubu can do. The fuel subsidy removal we thought was not a good idea has worked because it has lowered the temperature, but it has not lowered it to the point where it’s making an impact. Not until we start buying fuel at the rate of N200 can I congratulate President Tinubu. But it ought to be put on record that the naira has been stable.
My prediction is if these things go well, we should be going about N1000 to $1 in the middle of 2026. We must move away from what the Western world tends to paint us as. We have what we call formal democracy, where every four years there are elections.
But what is the quality of the elections we are having? In the West, what they look at is the checklist. One of the checklists is elections. But Nigeria, since 25 years ago, has not reached the four important processes from authoritarian to semi-authoritarian to liberal, but I will put Nigeria as a semi-democracy, and that’s very kind. Because the rule of law remains challenging, accountability remains challenging; these are the critical ingredients for a nation moving toward liberal democracy.
What Trump is doing is what I recommended a long time ago because I read this from Mrs Margaret Thatcher, a British stateswoman and Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990. Her government was a catchment of efficiency, which is what Elon Musk has done. This Department of Efficiency is what we need.
So the budget is in deficit because we have an inefficient civil service, and they consume 90 per cent of the public revenue. For instance, the colonial heritage of the cabinet office, which is now called the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, SGF, in Nigeria. We have the SGF, we have the Head of Service and the Chief of Staff. Three guys doing the same thing. I don’t know which one should stay; we are running an executive government, not a parliamentary one.
Those duplications are the things we need to look at. So if we begin to apply the Elon Musk formula, you can reduce Nigeria’s civil service substantially. You can’t expect Nigeria to move forward if you do not take revolutionary action. That’s the only way you can get results.
