In my last
intervention, I examined the queer
macroeconomic management template in which our ‘snatch and run government’ tries to
moderate inflation by adopting inflationary policies. Today, I want to
highlight another refreshingly different public policy management model designed and
perfected by this government. It is the theory and practice of Management by
Impulse, which should actually earn our dear BAT a place in Guiness Book of
Records, which he has publicly craved for.
We are all
used to Management by Objectives (MBO) as enunciated by the one and only Peter
Drucker. I learnt about MBO during my
NYSC year( 1980/81) at Government
Secondary School Azare, Bauchi State, where I taught economics. Because I had
all the time in the world, I also fixed
extra classes, but the students were not
so keen on; they saw it as outright
meddlesomeness. So, I ‘killed time’ by reading
novels, especially the African Writers Series, of which I was reading as many as three daily. I cannot recall any novel that took me more
than a day. It was in the process of keeping myself busy that I devoured the
five Drucker books (which I had bought at Ibadan) and that was how I came
across MBO in his Practice of Management( 1954). You may
wonder what a students of Economics had to do with novels and Druckerian books.
Well, I read literature at HSC level and the Economics we studied at UI
broadened our outlook and encouraged us to search for knowledge
multidimensionally. By the way, I occupied a duplex as a corper at GSS Azare!
Anway,
when I decamped from economics and banking to management, MBO
became a regular concept which I read,
taught and critiqued. MBO is a strategic management model that aims to improve
organizational performance by clearly articulating objectives agreed upon by
managers and subordinates. It is an inclusive and consensus-oriented objective-setting
process. As the cacophony of management
principles, thoughts and practices emerged, MBO appears to have taken a back
seat. However, it is down but never out because
most of these Y2K complaint theories and concepts are just a rehash of the good
old ones. It was at this stage that the present government came in and courageously introduced
Management By
Impulse. I must admit that I am not the author of MBI. I was
introduced a long time ago by a friend, Dr Onwuzuruoha in an intellectual
platform we both belong to.
What I am doing now is to deepen
the concept of MBI, and especially, its applicability in an emerging( or
progressively-regressing) economy like ours. I am also not the first person to
engage in this
deepening business. I am just trying to follow the footsteps of
Enis, who deepened the concept of
marketing 50 years ago ( Enis, BM( 1973), Deepening the Concept of Marketing, Journal of Marketing,
37(4),pp57-62)
MBI is a
practice in which public policies are
enunciated ‘as
the spirit directs’; on the spur of the moment. The architect or any design expert
first goes to the drawing board before producing and showcasing the final
product. However, under MBI, the government produces the final version before
going to the drawing board. It starts
from the end, which is an adulteration of Habit 2 by Covey; start with the end in Mind. Here, they just start from the end!!! Just
imagine where somebody who wants to build a house starts from the roof! Even
the surgeon does not open up the stomach before determining what he is
looking for. She first of all determines what to look for, where it is situated
and how to identify and ‘finish’ it before opening up the
patient. Actually I met a doctor around 1994, in the Masha axis of Lagos who offered to ‘open
up’ my stomach and then search for the
forces responsible for the continuous
volcanic eruptions in my stomach. Of course, that was my last visit to his clinic! MBI is akin to
what I have always called ‘Thinking Through the Mouth’ (TTTM). Instead
of thinking and properly articulating before mouthing it out, you mouth it out
first before thinking and articulating what it actually is. It is also called DBT( Doing before Thinking) or LAD( Learning After
Doing). MBI has several advantages. It enables you to announce
policies without any rigorous analysis; it is easy to practice, and at times,
it earns you accolades from ‘the people’ and also from the international
community. I will leave the reader to highlight the downsides of MBI!
Having
gone through the conceptual and
theoretical clarifications, and with the usual Front Page Analysis as my methodology, I go straight to presentation and discussion of findings.
MBI was quintessentially applied in our contentious Students Loan Scheme. On
June 12, 2023 the President, signed
before the whole world, the Students Loan( Access to Higher Education) Act and
announced gleefully that it would start in September 2023(9 months ago). In
September, it was postponed and then re-postponed
to the extent that postponement became its baptismal and confirmational names. However
on 12/3/24, it was postponed indefinitely. The Executive
Secretary of the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND), Akintunde Sawyer, told a bewildered nation and a coterie of
stakeholders that the postponement was because We are sort of waiting to ensure that all the
stakeholders are aligned to make sure that nobody is blindsided, then we can
actually roll this out in a meaningful, comprehensive, wholesome and
sustainable way. So, why did they not plan properly so as to ‘roll this out in a
meaningful, comprehensive, wholesome and sustainable way’? And why
should it take them 6 months to realise that they acted just as the spirit
directed? Well, within the succeeding 48
hours, another bill on the same matter
was presented to the NASS . It was ‘The Student Loan (Access to Higher Education) (Repeal and Re- Enactment)
Bill, 2024’, which
sought to enhance the implementation… by addressing
challenges related to the management structure,.. fund eligibility
requirements, loan purpose, funding sources, disbursement and repayment
procedures! Indeed, the entire bill was rewritten! Why
did they not do the homework before mouthing the programme in 2023? Simply
because that would be against the principle of MBI!!!
Meanwhile, the budget for the students’ loan programme was N5.5bn, 10bn, N50bn or N60bn, depending on your source. But the Federal outlay for 2024 hajj subsidy was N90bn; this excludes subsidy by the various states, which usually become flamboyant once it comes to religion. You don’t need to ask what our priority is!
However,
the students’ loan scheme, which has already been bungled before it started, is
not the first policy that was midwifed under the MBI (or TTDM, DBT, LAD)
template, though it is a perfect example. The numero-uno in the MBI ‘ecosystem’
is the fuel subsidy quagmire. The president mounted the rostrum to read a formal
acceptance speech after his snatch and run electoral victory. Such
speeches usually take weeks to prepare, has cross-sectoral input and multidimensional
content, thanks the people for reposing confidence on him and his party ( even
when they did NOT) and outlines the agenda of the government. However on
29/5/23, BAT was seized by a unusual courage to declare that ‘subsidy
is gone’, a statement he admitted was not contained in his
formal address. Well, today, subsidy is not only back, it is even alleged that
what is being paid now is more than what we were paying before. The promise to set up a committee on minimum
wage was only given attention just the other day and has not yielded any fruits
as I write. Or rather, it yielded a fruit that is worse that fruitlessness. Other
subsidy-effect ameliorating strategies are yet to take effect, a year after the
‘elimination’ of fuel subsidy. Even the N35000 wage-award, which the FG
announced without consultatiing the state governments, (most of which were not
paying the extant wages) was unilaterally stopped by the same FG and which
placed it on collision course with the now disorganized-organized labour.
And by the way, even though the fuel
consumption was reported to have dipped, we are now spending more in fuel
importation(as much as $2,16bn in 2 months).
How many of us remember that there was a time OAU Teaching Hospital, Ife had three Acting Chief Medical Directors, with two of them appointed within a week in July 2023? These were Prof O Adegbehingbe( Letter dated 22/6/23) Prof A Owojuwigbe( letter dated 27/6/24) and Dr A Adekunle who was appointed before these two. ‘The more the merrier’ does not apply in every situation! Maybe, I think that it was a deliberate strategic move: send ALL the lobbyists to the field, let them fight it out and let the winner take it all.
I hope we have not forgotten the ‘yo-yo’ dance with the empaneling of the
CBN board. The first nominee to represent the South East, Urum Eke, flatly rejected the appointment, saying that he was( and is) fully engaged with
his multinational consultancy exploits. This simply means that the man was not
consulted. They had adopted the military
model in which people were appointed or ‘de-appointed’ through Radio Nigeria( alias FRCN).Because we
are in an era when everybody craves government
‘come-and-chop’ appointments, they had assumed that
the man would organize a thanksgiving party for the announcement. The
government then announced Dr Rubby Onwudiwe as the replacement and immediately
it was announced that her nomination would be withdrawn because as some prominent APCians protested
that ,she was OBIviously OBIdient!
Her offence? She had tweeted that ‘It
was a resounding victory for LP at my Lekki Polling Unit’( a VERIFIABLE
truth that played out throughout Lagos). That was why people in the corridors
of power complained about the ‘abnormality of appointing an opposition
figure to serve at the Apex bank’. Is the CBN board membership a political appointment? I thought it is for knowledgeable
independent-minded people!. Maybe the
dynamics have fundamentally changed since
Emefiele contested for APC presidential ticket.
Urum & Onwudiwe; fine looking fellows
However talking of people with contrary
political spirits, this
government appointed Datti’s elder
brother as an Adviser and the VC of Datti’s
University as the Minister of Education. BAT is currently in bed with Fela Durotoyo; a
‘progressive’ Presidential Candidate,
Michael Achimugu. a top Atiku fellow and Daniel Bwala who said and wrote lots of unmentionable things about
BAT and APC. The Onwudiwe matter was why one, Emanual Aziken ( a columnist with Vanguard) asked: ‘should BAT take treatment from a Doctor who voted for PO’?
I don’t think anybody bothered to respond to that question. Anyway, it is now
an offence for people to express their political preferences and those ‘shooting their mouths’
anyhow,( this does NOT include the Son of Man), should know that there is ‘nothing for them’. The point is that the Onwudiwe matter indicates that there was no proper background check.
Talking about CBN issues, the other day,
the FG arrested Godwin Emefiele, who has
turned into an emergency Bible-clutching pastor, as he was trying
to sneak out of the country. During the trial-by media phase, he
was, accused of 1001 offences including terrorist financing, gun running, IPOBism and even eyeing some
peoples’ wives!. However, when the ‘come came to become’, when it
came to charges, it was ‘surprise-surprise’ as they charged him with relatively
harmless offences. Luckily. the loquacious uncommon Senator, Saint Godswill Akpabio, the No3 man of Nigeria, has explained
the scenario explicitly: The government is at a loss on what to charge
him for: ‘we don't even know what to charge him with. “Whether to charge him
for putting foam on top of a pail, or to charge him for illegal possession of
firearms, or to charge him for printing notes... I don't know what we're going
to charge him with. However,
the government has decided to slam him
with a three-count amended charge, which included unlawfully approving the
withdrawal of N124.8 billion from the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the
Federation and disobeying the direction of law with intent to cause injury to
the public during his implementation of the naira swap policy of the
administration of former President Buhari Disobeying the direction of
Law? Me, I no be loya!
He is also standing trial before Justice Hamza Muazu of the FCT High Court
on a 20-count amended charge, for engaging in criminal breach of trust,
forgery, conspiracy to obtain money by false pretence et al. All these for one person head!
Meanwhile, Justice Olukayode Adeniyi had
earlier awarded N100m damages in his favour and further restrained the federal
government and its agents from arresting Emefiele unless an order was obtained
through a competent court. This reminds me of Mustaphas case that got so
complicated and prolonged that people eventually forgot what the offence was! Anyway,
the government arrested him and locked him up and then set
up committee to determine the offences to charge him with.
Quintessential MBI.
In February 2024, the Government established an Economic Advisory Team’, made
up of some Federal, State and Private Sector
operatives. Before the people collected their letters of appointment and
TOR, the same government established
the EMT Emergency Taskforce. Those in the first group are also in the second committee.
I am still wondering whether the second has nullified the first or if both of
them are complimentary. We are all aware that we are now on the verge of
implementing the 12 year-old Orosonye report. However this government has the
largest cabinet in history and even created some new ministries. Why and how
did he bloat the public service if he had intention of miniaturizing the same
service?
It has
just been reported by the Guardian ( 29/4/24), with VERIFIABLE evidence,
that the forex unification policy, alias Naira FLOATATION, which the ONLY private sector man
who has also been in ALL the Governments in the past three decades, Aliko
Dangote, has described as the BIGGEST
mess created in 2023, has also been surreptitiously abandoned. However some of these mischievous netizens
have just resurrected his June 2015
advise to remove the subsidy &crash the currency. One thing though, those of us who grew in
the village would remember those our hand-made kites of those
days. These kites always had restraining
ropes to prevent them from going haywire. The only problem with this flotation
business is that we floated the Naira without any restraining rope and that
was/is why it is floating like mad.
The MBI model was also
applied in the introduction and hasty cancellation of Expatriate Employment
Levy(EEL). The EEL was launched on 28/2/24 but was suspended barely within a
week of its operation. Olufemi Adefulugbe reviewed the fate of the EEL and concluded
that The issues that led to the embarrassing suspension of the EEL are
the same issues we saw with the implementation of subsidy withdrawal and
floatation of the Naira. This government acts before it thinks; it puts
the cart before the horse. It continues
to demonstrate grand incompetence in portfolio, change, strategic and executive
management. He opined that the government introduced the EEL without
taking the necessary preliminary steps, namely, gap& impact analyses,
alternative solutions analyses , stakeholder analyses and engagement, and
readiness assessment. For instance, he argued that if the government had
undertaken the gap/impact analyses, it would have known that the EEL conflicted
with our quest for the elusive foreign investment.( The suspension of EEL by Government
of Nigeria; another demonstration of poor policy implementation by Olufemi Adefgulugbe, Federalist Majority,
12/3/24;) When an individual names himself Federalist Majority in
a non-federal setup, the only centralised federation in the world, then…) Funny
enough, we are searching for foreign investments when those in Nigeria are
closing shop, while those owned by Nigerians are seeing renewed shege, including policy
infidelity! I did not mention PZ and Landmark Beach!
Anyway, just as I started with a dramatic MBI
case (Students loan scheme), I will also end with another dramatic MBI case. On
Sunday,7/4/24. The FGN announced Tuesday and Wednesday( 9-10/4/24) as public
holidays to mark the 2024 eid-el-fitr festival. On Tuesday, 10/4/24, the same
FG announced an extra one-day holiday of
Thursday, 11/4/24. Among others things,
the announcement reiterated ‘the
president’s firm commitment to providing a safe and prosperous Nigeria for all
to thrive’! An extra holiday in a country
that has the highest number of holidays in the world, so as to make
Nigeria safe and prosperous? A holiday that caught some of us unawares, was
extended by 24 hours so that we would thrive, in an economy which requires
all the work-hours we can have so that
we can actually thrive?
Having
discussed the conceptual framework and deepened the theory and practice of MBI, and undertaken
an extensive empirical review, I will now go on to the discussion of findings.
According to Chinua Achebe, the bird, eneke-nti-oba, has decided that since the hunters started
shooting without aiming, he had decided to fly without perching. That is in the
literary realm! In the practical realm, no hunter shoots without properly
aiming. The hunter identifies the game, positions himself appropriately, aims
and then ‘Bang’! He does not shoot before seeing and aiming at the animal or
just shooting widely into the bush and
hoping to hit an animal. Doing that will even scare the animals. Which Pilot
takes off before ascertaining the
fuel level, its destination, checking the weather conditions and
obtaining the necessary technical and regulatory approvals? It does not happen
and will not happen. But that is what this government is doing: shooting
without aiming or flying without checking the fuel gauge and then trying to
convince ALL of us that the country is
doing wonderfully well and hiring some people to ecstatically clap for it.
Franklin Covey in his 7 habits of highly effective people advised in Habit 2 that we should begin with the end in mind so that we should start with a clear understanding of the destination so as to better understand where we are now and ensure that the steps we would take would be in the right direction. He did not advise that we should start from the end. I think somebody read it and confused starting with the end in mind with starting from the end and that is what has landed this government, and all of us where we are today.
The
only person who has advised people to shoot first and aim later is O’Reilly( The
Entrepreneurial Instinct, Chapter 2, www.oreilly.com).
I don’t know the number of entrepreneurs that have made it big by adopting this
weird strategy and certainly no
political CEO has tried or should try this. This appears to be what we are
trying to do. We have been accused of criticising without suggesting
alternatives. This does not need any recommendation but if they need it, it is
simple: think through, build scenarios, undertake programme impact
analysis and consult widely before you announce and implement. If there
is a spirit from the village( in Lagos or Osun?) that gives him the false
courage to announce what he has not fully articulated, he should please assemble ALL the dibias from that
village to BIND that spirit! I have SPOKEN!
The Eagle has Landed.
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