By Sunny Ikhioya

THE whole purpose of government is the people. It would appear that the leadership we had in the past decade did not factor this old tradition that has been with man from the beginning of existence. Everywhere a government has decided to take the people for a ride, there have always been consequences.

Today, I will be comparing two leaders from different countries, faced with the same harsh economic squeeze and restless population baying for blood. I am talking about President Bola Tinubu of Nigeria and his Argentinian counterpart, President Javier Miliei. President Tinubu was sworn in on May 29, 2023, amidst pomp and pageantry, with new heights of expectations from the people, having survived a very gruelling election campaign.

His Argentinian counterpart, Javier Milei was sworn in on December 10, 2023, with a wave of support yearning for change in a very comatose economy. Both of them promised the people that they would turn things around and were not afraid to go for hard and bold decisions. Tinubu immediately removed the hydra-headed monster of fuel subsidy and, the economy reacted to his decision. Prices of goods and services shot upwards.

The people were still grappling with how to contain the unexpected turn of events when he took another bold decision: he scrapped the multiple-window foreign exchange regime and allowed the naira to go on a free float against other currencies. Since these decisions were taken, things have not been the same again in the country, to the extent that, the challenge now is to contain social dislocations arising from the policies of government. The questions people are asking here are: Was the decision taken by the Tinubu administration a just one?

If yes, why is it causing so much hardship on the people? Is it the decision that is the problem or its implementation? How do we steady the ship of state, given the gargantuan challenges that have resulted from it? We must also note that over the years successive governments, from the time of Obasanjo to Buhari, have tried to contain the fuel subsidy challenges, but failed because of the ripple effects on the economy and subsequently, the people.

President Tinubu decided to take the bull by the horn; he is now facing the consequences: social unrest, hunger and famine in the land, insecurity, multidimensional poverty and unemployment. With all the measures taken so far, we are yet to see light at the end of the tunnel, but they are telling us to be hopeful. On his part, the Argentinian President Milei on being sworn into office immediately hit the ground running.

He promised to take drastic decisions during his campaign and did not waste time in swinging in that direction. But he faced stiff resistance and criticisms from various interest groups. Like Tinubu, not a few of the people rose up against him in protest and maintained a skeptical outlook about the future of the country. In just two months, Milei achieved the first monthly surplus for Argentina in 12 years. The newly elected President marked his administration’s success with a positive $589 million balance at the official exchange rate, the surplus includes payment of interests in public debt.

According to the report: “It is the first (monthly) financial surplus since August 2012 and the first surplus for a January since 2011”. As a libertarian economist, the 53- year-old aims to balance public finances in year 2024. The government slogan is: “The zero deficit is non-negotiable”. Milei is an advocate of substantial spending cuts and reduction of public debt. Shortly after taking office in December, the chainsaw-welding President boldly acted on his campaign promise and halved the number of federal ministries.

Other measures include: a 50 percent peso devaluation, lifting price controls and significant rate increases. Following the economic measures, the country recorded a 20.6 percent inflation rate in January, as against a 12 month rate of 254.2 percent. Poverty level is 57.4 percent in January for Argentina’s 46 million people, marking the highest rate in 20 years. In year 2023, under previous socialist government, Argentina ended with 211 percent inflation rate and 45 percent of the population in poverty.

Milei still predicts an economic rebound within three months despite the current challenges. They have laid off more than 50,000 public employees, stopped renewal of more than 10,000 contracts, stopped 200,000 irregular social programmes, reduced discretionary funds to provinces by 98 percent and made public works to be zero, as a measure of curbing corruption. Why have I gone through all of these details? It is because, from your body language people will know whether you are serious with your promises or not.

If we do not cut costs of governance here in Nigeria, restructure the civil service and other parastatals of government, we will not achieve any success. Milei is facing criticism but he is facing the civil service squarely. Instead of reducing, we have increased ministers to 47, the highest so far in the history of our democracy since 1999. We have also encouraged wastages in our legislative arns of government and allowing profligacy to reign in the land.

Meanwhile, we are asking the people to tighten their belts. How do you think this will work? When government is serious, the people will know and follow suit; by their examples they will be identified. If we all decide to be prudent with resources and encourage local production with enough power and effective security in place, our result will start reading positive. During his campaign, we saw Tinubu’s age as a weakness and source of concerns.

That, indeed, may be slowing him down and affecting his performance, his decisiveness. Since the previous government and until now, we have seen how social intervention programmes were mismanaged. Tinubu’s policies are alright- though people question the timing – but the implementations have not achieved the desired result.

Maybe, we can also assume that Tinubu’s health situation is also opening up space for family members to interfer in the affairs of government, whereas, they are supposed to be kept at bay. Is there hope for the country? Certainly! There is, but the rulers must act with sincerity of purpose and love for the country. If they put their personal interests first and allow nepotism and cronyism to creep in they will fail. If they act rightly, the government and indeed everyone will be the better of for it.

* Ikhioya wrote via: www.southsouthecho.com