•Onigbinde and Tinubu
The founder of civil advocacy and pro-accountability organisation, BudgIT, Seun Onigbinde, says President Bola Tinubu’s administration has started off on the wrong foot with his twin policies of petrol subsidy removal and unification of the foreign exchange windows.
“Honestly speaking, I don’t think they’ve started well. I think we are seeing a dearth of technocratic leadership. There is an over-extension of political opportunism. That is my problem with the government,” he said today on Channels Television.
Onigbinde said many of the decisions of the president lack the input of experts and his cabinet is being populated by politician-ministers who earned their seats as a political reward.
“That’s why a lot of decisions were taken and they were not taken with sound technocratic support,” he said.
The BudgIT founder said beyond the sack of five ministers, Tinubu should let go of more members of his cabinet and bring technocrats onboard who would offer him sound advice like in the days Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, former Nigerian Finance Minister and now World Trade Organisation (WTO) boss; former apex bank chief Sanusi Lamido Sanusi; former Agriculture Minister and now African Development Bank (AfDB) chief, Akinwunmi Adesina, among others.
Onigbinde said, “Remove fuel subsidy from day one, I think that was a bad decision. The exchange rate parity without a significant buffer. A currency must have some level of stability. You don’t see that anywhere in the world where currency just fluctuates randomly like we are having it right now.
“I feel that he (Tinubu) has to go back and reflect. Do I want to govern or do I want to do politics? Because look at his cabinet, there are still at least five to six people that he can look at (for disengagement).
“There are still more people in the system that he needs to take out. We need the days of Okonjo, Soludo, El-Rufai, we need that technocratic core.”
