Since his first day in office, when he declared, prematurely, that “subsidy is gone”, President Tinubu has stumbled from one policy decision after another with the intention of dealing effectively and satisfactorily with the after-effects of subsidy removal – without success so far. Instead of providing relief, the Federal Government appears to be making things worse for just about everybody; including state and local governments.
However, before going forward with my deeply-felt complaint about “Tinubuism” – a novel sort of political leadership unfolding before us, permit me to make a few comments about a trending matter.“A journalist should be pursuing a fair rendition of the truth without regard to popular moods; the journalist should not be swayed by public opinion…” – Marvin Kalb, born 1930- legendary 93 years old US Journalist.
Several philosophers, leaders and statesmen have attempted to provide us with an objective measurement of government’s performance. I strongly believe that Bentham’s idea – the greatest possible good for the greatest number of inhabitants of a country should be the criterion for determining if a government is moving in the right direction or not. This is particularly true of a democracy – which somebody else has defined as “government of the people by the people for the people”.
The most obvious question is: Can a government which declines responsibility for providing subsidy relief for workers in the informal private sector expect those people to cooperate in helping to bring inflation under control? The answer is already being given in the open and supermarkets; where prices of food and other commodities are going to the moon.