Tinubu: A year's policies and impacts

Hon Modestus Umenzekwe:

Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria took the oath of office on May 29, 2023, as the sixteenth helmsman of Nigeria.

Today, the Administration is one year, one year of well-articulated, impactful and signature policies, giving Nigeria reason to be confident. Bola Ahmed Tinubu knows where he is going with consciously designed roadmaps, these for me is a very good sign of a nation that understands what it is doing, and is heading to a well consciously designed and determined destination, and in no distant time, I believe, with an egghead, political technocrat like Tinubu, the era of political, economic, social and security challenges will improve.

Of course, with his Renewed Hope Agenda, Tinubu came to power well prepared to right the wrongs of any visible and noticeable wrongs in the country. Tinubu's economic policies are said to be hurtful but for me, these are a child of necessity. When he said subsidy is gone, he knew what he was saying, and knows how to go about it. If there was the right time to stop the subsidy, it is now, not tomorrow, if Nigeria must breathe again. Therefore, with the subsidy removal, the whopping amount of money paid in respect of that has been saved and are being ploughed back into the public coffers for infrastructure upgrade, road constructions and rehabilitations, mass housing, all these and other critical areas of the country are dully receiving attention

Over the weekend President Tinubu was personally in Lagos State to formally inaugurate projects including the popular Lagos/Calabar Coastal road, to mark his 100 years in office. 

President Tinubu’s achievement in just one year is quite amazing; he secured a financial partner from EDIB Hong Kong to develop the $27.29bn Escravos Seaport Industrial Complex. This project is located in Escravos (Gbaramatu Island/ Omadino. President Tinubu has provided a written confirmation of a new era Free Trade Zone, with a workable financial model 99years concession of build, own, operate, and transfer in which Delta State is to provide 31,000 hectares of land.

President Tinubu approved the EISC deep seaport; this port will service all inland ports along River Niger. It's called "River Niger Canal Project," in partnership with Suez Canal Authority. This Canal/International Marine highway project is a 600kms ESIC seaport that runs to Baro Port. This project will open up the canal to a depth of 10m to enable it to take vessels up to 100,000 metric tons.
President Tinubu has approved Kano - Lagos narrow rail express service. It will help farmers to move their goods and aid quick products export from the hinterland. He has just switched payment for Crude Oil sales to CBN, away from the NNPC.
Tinubu has equally launched the Student loan Scheme which will commence soonest because all measures have been put in place to ensure it gets to Nigerians who are yearning for University Education. PBAT has been able to pay back some of the loans owed to China, India, America among others, and he has entered into bilateral agreements and signed MOU on ways to improve the economy and power generation.

President Tinubu has also signed a bill passed by the National Assembly to start paying the vulnerable, aged and unemployed graduates a certain amount of money on monthly basis which will definitely kick start soon. PBAT as we are all aware has been able to recover trillions of monies stolen by people.

His anti-graft posture is unarguably outstanding and cannot be faulted. He suspended his minister for alleged corruption. He doesn’t want anything to stain his administration.

On roads we can boast of Ado, Ijan Road and Ado – Ikere – Akure road all in Ekiti State. In Abia State, the on-going Bende-Ohafia-Arochukwu road, we are also talking about the Lokoja–Okene road in Kogi State; the Abuja-Kaduna-Zaria-Kano Road is also there.

He floated naira to compete with the dollar as a means of stabilising the volatility in the forex market. In Healthcare there is an upgrade which is ongoing, road rehabilitation and construction is ongoing, education development is also ongoing.

Also the President believes that business environment must be conducive, hence the recent fiscal reforms by the Central Bank of Nigeria to clean up the system. The Renewed Hope Infrastructure Development Fund (RHIDF), recently introduced by Tinubu is also mobilising billions of dollars for infrastructure projects which he hopes will reshape the country’s landscape, particularly roads and highways, airports and seaports and power plants.

In his foreign engagements, particularly with local and foreign investors, the President plays the role of Chief Marketing Officer for the country with great energy and enthusiasm. In fact, in the last one year, we have seen investment commitments in excess of 30 billion USD, across various sectors. The President in the last one year has been focused on policies and programs that provide direct and targeted economic relief and benefits to the pockets and livelihoods of Nigerians, by way of grants, education loans, food and fertilizer distribution, cash transfers, health insurance, and consumer credit. The disbursement has since commenced of the Nano-grants of N50,000 for one million Nigerians which is part of a larger 200 billion Naira MSMEs credit programme.

Besides, the National Social Investment Programme (NSIP) is currently being repositioned to ensure that it delivers maximum value to the intended beneficiaries, without the distortion of middlemen, this vision of targeted economic relief has also led to the launch, in recent weeks, of the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) and the Nigerian Consumer Credit Corporation (CrediCorp), as well as the work going on to negotiate a new minimum wage that will touch the lives of millions of Nigerians, we should not forget in a hurry the Presidential Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) initiative as it would provide a cheaper alternative to petrol and diesel for transporters and commuters which is being finalized.

Tinubu took a notch further recently at the World Economic Forum meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where he said, “Concerning the question of subsidy removal, there is no doubt that it was a necessary action for my country not to go bankrupt and to reset the economy and the pathway to growth. It was going to be difficult, but the hallmark of leadership is making difficult decisions when they need to be made.”

His anti-graft posture is second to none. He banned the money-for-degree universities in Benin Republic, Togo and other countries; embarked on the clearing of the N12billion outstanding allowances and other arrears for the Super Eagles, the same with arrears owed other national teams were also paid by the President.

The government has earlier started the payment of wage support benefits to civil servants, the disbursement of N105.5 billion for 266 road repairs.

The launch of the automated passport portal and the unfolding of plans to build a new Chinese-funded plant in Nigeria which was hatched during the visit to China by the Minister of Steel Development, Shuaib Abubakar Audu. The students’ loan scheme has been signed into law; of course you read that over 1.4million students have applied.

Tinubu also cut the cost of governance by drastically reducing the number of people in his entourage on local and international trips. He also directed that the top government functionaries, dignitaries and aides on his travels be slashed by 60 per cent, more than half. He ordered that in the area of security, his team should rely more on the capacity of the security establishment and existing protocols in the host states.

The importance of cutting the number in the President's travels, apart from reduction in total cost of the trip, first, it is in agreement with the difficulties of the present time when prices of goods and services have gone up owing to what many tie to the prevalent foreign exchange rate, of course you have seen that Forex is coming down on daily basis.

With President Tinubu’s stance on ant-graft battle, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) will grow, Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) will grow, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will grow, I am sure with what the executive arm is doing it will help the legislature and judiciary in stepping up in the ant-graft battle. I know it is not yet Uhuru, but President Tinubu’s policies and strategies are very commendable and that is the only way people will start to see and believe the government on transparency, accountability and diligence.