By
Olalekan Adigun
Ahead of the 2023 presidential election, the two leading candidates – Bola Tinubu and Atiku Abubakar, have launched their manifestos. Nigerians now have to choose between Tinubu’s “Renewed Hope” and Atiku’s “Covenant with Nigerians” next year. Again, Nigerians will choose between candidates of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) like they have done in the last three presidential elections. There is no indication that this pattern will change in at least the 2023 cycle.
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Candidates seeking elective offices are, by tradition, required to present manifestoes or policy documents to the voters about their plans and programmes which they intend to implement if elected. Nigerians are not strangers to election manifestos.
Tinubu’s 16-point manifesto is anchored on the following principles: provision of job opportunities for young people; giving manufacturing its rightful place; surplus balance of trade (i.e export more than import); strong policies to boost agriculture; modernizing public infrastructure; harnessing emerging economic sectors (entertainment, sports, arts, digital space etc); socio-economic inclusion for the most vulnerable people; electricity generation; affordable healthcare, education, and housing for all; and establishing adaptable national security policy (pp. 3-5 Renewed Hope 2023). Tinubu’s manifesto aims at achieving a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth of N780.9bn by 2027 from N440.8bn in 2021 at the rate of 10% per annum.
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On the other hand, Atiku’s 5-point agenda envisions tackling the current lingering insecurity to guarantee the safety and security of lives and property, build a dynamic economy for prosperity, re-structure the polity to foster unity and stability, as well as provide qualitative education. Atiku promises to restore Nigeria’s fractured unity, as well as rebuild the nation’s battered economy back to the pre-2015 level, where the country was the strongest economy in Africa, with a GDP of $546.7billion, as against the current GDP of $440billion.
Both candidates aim to improve and strengthen the education, health, and transport systems through heavy government investments and private sector participation. Tinubu’s manifesto promises the provision of financial incentives through the establishment of Media City for tourism, tax exemption for the creative sector, and grants for the entertainment sector.
Also, both candidates promised more youth and women inclusion in the political process through empowerment schemes. This shows the importance of both demographics to both candidates.
Atiku’s policy document is simply an updated version of his 2019 campaign where “restructuring” featured prominently. He promises more devolution of powers to the states and local governments. Tinubu’s document, an update of Chief MKO Abiola’s “Hope ‘93”, has similar provisions but under “Federalism and decentralization of power”. Under this, Tinubu promises a comprehensive constitutional review, equitable resource allocation, judicial independence, and local government autonomy.
Both documents contain some clichés like “We shall combine increased aerial surveillance over land and sea” (p.8 Renewed Hope 2023) without any attempt to provide details of how much will be done.
For instance, security experts have noted that inter-agency collaboration between the Department of State Service (DSS), Army, Police Force, Immigration, Customs, Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC), and Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) is needed to effectively fight crimes and security-related challenges. Nothing in any of these policy documents suggests these candidates have solutions to new security threats bedevilling the nation. Rather, the use of old clichés like “repositioning the police”, “increasing the number of officers” etc, while they may form part of the solutions, do not appear they have an adequate diagnosis of the nation’s current challenges.
In the area of the economy, there appears to be too much emphasis on government spending. Tinubu’s plan, if fully implemented without hiccups, will mean the nation will run on serious budget deficits and sustained borrowing like the current administration. Tinubu himself alluded to this when he reportedly dismissed the concerns about Nigeria’s rising debt profile. According to him, countries like the US would have been “in jail” if taking loans were to be a crime. Atiku on the other hand had proposed the stoppage of loans to fund “non-viable projects”. While this may appear as a point of divergence between both candidates’ plans, there is nothing in Atiku’s “Covenant” to suggest a surplus budget going by his massive spending plan in his manifesto.
Another thing most Nigerians should be worried about is the fact that there seems not to be a firm commitment in both manifestos to assuring political will to fight corruption amid massive government spending. The documents do not adequately address Nigeria’s “revenue” problem. The excessive commitment to budget deficits, especially with Tinubu’s plan, did not say much about its impacts on inflation.
It is still surprising to see 2022 manifestos using “import-substitution” as an economic measure. This was used by many developing economies of Africa and Latin America in the ‘70s and ‘80s with devastating effects. They proved to be no workable solutions to the economic crisis in the long run. Rather, Tinubu’s document should have been more forward-thinking by placing more emphasis on export promotion. Even though Tinubu said he will be committed to having more export than imports, there is not much evidence to suggest this in the Renewed Hope document.
Apart from being old, repeated solutions over the years, there is nothing radically new in both plans. There are no indications in the documents of bold actions to be taken by the candidates on emerging security and developmental challenges like climate change, drug abuse, and farmer-herder conflicts. Also, none of the plans seems to boldly mention specifics on issues like full University autonomy, fuel subsidy removal, etc.
Both plans may appear as the same old, regurgitated ideas many Nigerians have been told before. Tinubu’s plan appears more detailed without much quantitative mumbo jumbo for the readers. Also, Tinubu’s continuous references to his previous tenure as Governor tend to be distracting in the document. Atiku’s plan does not seem to have much empirical basis for validation considering his well-known political exploits. Tinubu’s “Renewed Hope” may have been designed to inspire confidence among Nigerians for a better future, Francis Bacon’s statement that hope could be a “good breakfast,” but could turn out to be “a bad supper” may be tested if Tinubu gets elected.