The Concourse
By Soney Antai, serial award-winning columnist
A case for Nigerianomics
In 1969, during the first year of Richard Nixon’s presidency in the United States, the neologism, Nixonomics, created by combining “nomics” (taken as representing economics) and Nixon, was used to describe Nixon’s economic policy. Doing so was a convenient way of labeling a policy for ease of criticism or commendation; it was not a neutral creation.
Economist Walter Heller, chairman of President John F. Kennedy’s Council of Economic Advisers, is credited with using the term in a speech in October 1969. The American media picked up the neologism and gave it wings that remain strong to this day, because it would later be adopted across the world for other political leaders’ economic policies. And so we have had Putinomics, Tinubunomics, Jonathanomics, Reaganomics, Clintonomics and Obamanomics: a clone word that has grown into an iroko tree in the forest of political communication!
What the American political class and media did not do, however, was attach “nomics” to the name of their country to produce Americanomics. Perhaps no conditions were present to provide fertile a ground for this. Honestly, I never thought it could become part of a nation’s name. But now I know better. Who says knowledge doesn’t come with age, or with a harrowing, go-nowhere economic policy being pursued by a Nigerian who has described himself as “a stubborn politician”? Like poorly cooked food, such a policy is praised by the chef but disdained by those who taste it. This is Tinubunomics. It has struggled to stay afloat in an ocean of criticisms by its victims, but is sinking slowly, but steadily.
It goes without saying that such new words do not come into being in a vacuum. Necessity, we are told, is the mother of invention. This column has used the neologism, Tinubunomics, several times. Nigerians now know that it is defined by taxocracy (another neologism we have used here before), but there is also a kindred expression: pseudocracy, which meaning you can find out by yourself.
President Bola Tinubu has consistently, stubbornly and unapologetically pushed his economic policy, Tinubunomics, with messianic zeal. Nigerians suffering from it have, on the other hand, without saying so directly, pushed for what I call Nigerianomics: a policy that places the welfare of Nigerians first; is formulated and driven by targeting the greatest benefits for the majority of citizens, and should be pursued regardless of what political office holders think.
Whereas Tinubunomics, some of its critics say, places a premium on pleasing Bretton Woods imperialist interests through the withdrawal of fuel subsidy, the devaluation of the naira and the overtaxing of the masses, Nigerianomics calls for productivity over consumption, a leaner government over a bloated bureaucracy, and more capital development than recurrent political overkill. It calls for the stoppage of giving oil block licences to the individual, but to be awarded to corporate bodies, with the oil owners benefitting more than others.
Under Tinubunomics, a fallacy has been weaponised: that the President has given more money to states and local governments, and so we should ask governors and councils what they are doing with the money they have been given. Nigerianomics challenges the first leg of this narrative, contending that the President has given no state or council money that is not rightfully theirs. States receive only 26.72% of federal allocations, while the Federal Government, curiously, gets 52.68%, double what the states put together receive, and local government councils get 20.60%. The split follows the law of revenue sharing among the three tiers of government (as per Section 162 of the 1999 Constitution), not the President.
While we must ask states and local councils what they do with their revenue allocations, we must ask the Federal Government double similar questions. Concurrently, we must ask governors why they find it difficult to allow local councils to operate freely despite the Supreme Court’s ruling on local government autonomy.
Nigerianomics will question any unexplained wealth because it sees sudden wealth as coming at the expense of the people. A situation in which perpetuating oneself in political office is a lifelong obsession is antithetical to Nigerianomics, because it is a great way to exhibit pleonexia, and a horrific way to celebrate self-absorption. Personal and food security can only be guaranteed by economic policies that make the Nigerian people, not just a demographic of them, their centrepiece.
The urgency for this novel pathway could not be better served than now, as the 2027 polls draw closer. Nigerians must take back their country from state kidnappers whose primary goal in seeking or remaining in public office is to enrich themselves, their families and their cronies. We must now write the governance script with our own hands, rehearse it, and act it out on the polling booth stage, and ensure that all members of the electoral cast do their part to deliver a Nigeria that works for all. It is doable; yes, we can!