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T H I S D AY THURSDAY MAY 18, 2017
COMMENT
Editor, Editorial Page PETER ISHAKA Email peter.ishaka@thisdaylive.com
MACRON, LEADERSHIP RENAISSANCE AND NIGERIANYOUTH (1)
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The election of Emmanuel Macron as President of France holds lessons for Nigeria, writes Emmanuel Ojeifo
hen the world talks about successful people, the conventional story line is always the same: our hero or celebrity is born in modest circumstances and by virtue of his own grit and talent, and a combination of pluck and initiative, fights his way to greatness. It is often the image of a person who rises to the top from nothing, save for his own individual effort. In his book, Outliers, the renowned American writer, Malcolm Gladwell radically alters this widespread perception of success. He argues that, “these kinds of personal explanations of success don’t work. People don’t rise from nothing. We do owe something to parentage and patronage. The people who stand before kings may look like they did it all by themselves. But in fact they are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot.” For Gladwell, where and when we are born, the town we grow up in, who our friends and families are, the schools we attend, the culture we belong to and the legacies passed down to us by our forebears are all instrumental to understanding the ecology of success and achievement. This may well be the story of the accession of Emmanuel Jean-Michel Frédéric Macron, the 39-year-old former civil servant and investment banker who was recently elected as President of France. Macron’s election has reinforced the conviction of many people in the potential and possibilities of youth. But it has also provided another good opportunity for Nigerian youth to reaffirm their irrepressible belief in the prospects of youth leadership, in a nation that is suspicious of the preparedness of young people for politics and public service. To be sure, Macron did not fall from the sky. He is a typical portrait of the sort of remarkable people that Gladwell calls “outliers,” that is, men and women who do things that are out of the ordinary. Macron’s electoral victory is the result of careful planning and deliberate preparation for many years, since his adolescence. This fact needs to be restated very clearly in a society like ours where many young people disparage hard work, discipline, commitment and are resentful of the words ‘sacrifice’ and ‘deferred gratification.’ Delayed gratification, according to the psychiatrist M. Scott Peck, “is a process of scheduling the pain and pleasure of life in such a way as to enhance the pleasure by meeting and experiencing the pain first and getting it over with. It is the only decent way to live.” Sadly, the desire to make it by all means – fair and foul – has robbed many young people of this virtue of deferred gratification. Many young people today find themselves unwittingly choosing a shorter period of pleasure followed by a longer period of pain in preference to a shorter period of pain followed by a longer period of pleasure. No thanks to today’s version of religion, many young people are made to believe that they can make it quickly in
life and rise on the ladder of success and prosperity by believing in the “God of miracle” without work. This is not how Macron reached the height of his life’s accomplishments. He nurtured the values of hard work and discipline, with a combination of grit, pluck and initiative. Nigerian youth who want to be like him have at least four lessons to learn from this youngest president in the history of the French republic. These lessons are: faith, hard work, education, and mentoring.
MACRON’S ELECTION HAS REINFORCED THE CONVICTION OF MANY PEOPLE IN THE POTENTIAL AND POSSIBILITIES OF YOUTH
Faith: Macron was born into a non-religious, well-educated middleclass family of doctors but was baptised a Roman Catholic at his own request when he was 12. This deliberate decision of faith at such a tender age is not something to gloss over. The young Macron knew that a commitment to know God, love God and serve God is a crucial catalyst for meaningful and purposeful success in life. This remarkable decision of faith was also responsible for his choice of the Jesuit-run high school in Amiens for his secondary education. Hard work: From his early years, Macron was said to be smart and determined and performed well both in his studies and public career. He applied himself to all his tasks with diligence, vision, and a sense of purpose. In 2004, he started work as an Inspector of Finances in the Inspectorate General of Finances and then became an investment banker. He had to pay Euro 50,000 to buy himself out of his government contract in 2008 to pursue his highly paid position at Rothschild & Cie Banque. He demonstrated a capacity for quick learning, and rose through the ranks to become managing director, earning renown for his role in advising Nestlé’s $12 billion acquisition of a division of Pfizer in 2012. Education: Macron attended a series of elite schools, but he distinguished himself with his intellect at an early age. He was a young person of brilliant and exceptional qualities, displaying an aptitude for literature, politics and theatre. After attending the local Jesuit school La Providence in Amiens and the prestigious Lycée Henri IV College in Paris, he went on to study philosophy at the Nanterre University, and obtained a Master’s degree in public affairs from the Paris Institute of Political Science. His interest in civil service made him train at the École Nationale D’administration and graduated in 2004. He achieved all these educational prodigies at the age of 27, and set out to pursue a clearly defined career path in politics and public service. One could see that his academic choices were well tailored to prepare him for his future public career. He also made deliberate effort to gather wide educational experience. In 1999 he worked as an editorial assistant to Paul Ricoeur, a prominent French philosopher who was then writing his last major work. Ojeifo is a Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of Abuja
A REFORMIST IN THE SADDLE
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Emmanuel Ado writes that Nasir el-Rufai, Kaduna State Governor, has done remarkably well
overnor Nasir el - Rufai of Kaduna State can safely be declared a reformist. The Macmillan dictionary defines a reformist as one “wanting to change and improve society or an institution”. Nothing has been the same since he became governor. Every sector - from the public service to the agricultural sector - has received the Nasir el- Rufai “shock therapy”. Kaduna State, the Centre of Learning, lagged behind in about every area and was in dire need of a reformist in the mould of El- Rufai to wake it up from years of stagnation. In one word Kaduna State was creaky. It is fair to conclude that rocking the boat, “shaking up” things and striving to make them better is the essential Nasir el - Rufai, Mallam to his fanatical supporters. The operating motto of El-Rufai seems to be the eternal words of Abraham Lincoln that “You can please some of the people some of the time, all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but you can never please all of the people all of the time.” El-Rufai’s zero tolerance comes from his very nature. For El- Rufai, leaders are elected to make difficult decisions and take risks. Some of his aides insist he wants to be convinced by facts and not by sentiments, or history (convention).”For El -Rufai the fact that previous governments shared grains during the Ramadan, doesn’t justify it as the right line of action or appropriate,” said Professor Kabir Mato, Commissioner of Agriculture and Forestry. Government is for common good of all and not for a tiny minority to feed fat from the state resources. Kaduna State on a monthly basis gets N2.4 billion, from the Federation Account, and has a wage bill of N2.2 billion, leaving virtually nothing for development of the state. This should be repulsive not just to the governor, but to anyone with conscience. There was never any doubt about El - Rufai’s capacity to “shake up” Kaduna State which had fallen into a state of decay with the likes of Namadi Sambo and his protege Ramallan Yero, as governors. They lacked vision and conviction, thus they couldn’t “shake up” Kaduna State. Sambo and Yero are
“twin towers” of governance defined more by looks - starched babanriga and designer sunshades- than by substance. Their times remain dark chapters in the history of Kaduna State. Sambo whose motto from day one was “promises kept”, kept none of his unwieldy 11- point agenda. His legacy remains the N20 billion office complex that is an architectural nightmare in terms of functionality, which compared to the brand new Government House Complex built by Ibrahim Shema of Katsina State for less than N10 billion, is a rip off. El- Rufai inherited a dysfunctional public service, that was largely unproductive, an aging workforce that lacked capacity to deliver, but very “focused on taking care of itself”(recurrent budget is always implemented, as opposed to capital expenditure that is hardly funded). El - Rufai has rightly argued that “No nation develops beyond the capacity of its public service”. If El -Rufai holds the public service in disdain, it is for their perceived role in the underdevelopment of Nigeria. The Kaduna State Public Service Revitalisation and Renewal Programme, aimed at improving the efficacy and capacity of the service to deliver service effectively to the people of the state, was long overdue. The reform aims to resolve issues impeding public service efficiency, address low productivity rates, redundancy, duplication of roles, high proportion of aged workers, and unskilled staff, said Bashir Mohammed, the Director General of the Bureau for Public Service. The reforms are targeted at capacity renewal, through the injection of a new generation of skilled and motivated young people, to become successors to an aging work force, guarantee sustainable service, efficiency and increased productivity, restructuring the service wage bill and making it sustainable in the long run (the less than 100,000 civil servants presently consume the entire budget, and addressing the challenges of salaries, which is already becoming a problem), review of archaic laws and procedures, revitalisation and renewal of the service to meet the challenges of a modern service. It’s a scandal that in 2017, Kaduna State, former regional capital of then
Northern Region, still has in its service - typists and stenographers. When next Bill Gates comes visiting, the governor will do well to unleash them on Bill Gates to take notes. The reforms address the negative impact of the reform. Efforts in making the reform a win-win for the workers and the state, through the replacement policy, re-training of workers to fit in and retirement programmes for those that have no place in the new order, indicates a well thought out programme. The world Bank funded Kaduna State Public Sector Governance Reform and Development Project, will further address other structural challenges like cost efficiency, quality and trainable staff. The other critical reform project is the Partnership to Engage, Reform and Learn (PERL), a five-year public sector accountability and governance programme, funded by the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID). PERL is to reform how Kaduna State Government organises its core business of making laws, implementing, tracking and accounting for policies, plans and budgets used in delivering public goods (economic stability and an enabling environment for private enterprise so as to promote growth and reduce poverty) and service delivery to the citizenry, and how citizens themselves engage with these processes. PERL has three coordinated ‘pillars’ - Pillar one, accountable, responsive and capable government (ARC); Pillar one, engaged citizens; and Pillar three, learning, evidencing and advocacy partnership (LEAP). These reforms are works in progress, but results are becoming manifest. The BusinessDay Governance and Competitiveness award for ease of doing business, conferred on Kaduna State Government is a recognition of the tremendous work that the governor and his team have put in and are continuing to put in. BusinessDay used verifiable criteria, in this instance the World Bank criteria. The World Bank uses the ease of registering a new business, obtaining business licencing, favourable tax regime, ease of obtaining land and title documents, in concluding how friendly a state or country is doing business with them. The
award wasn’t whimsical.The Business Licensing Reform (BLR) team had worked with Kaduna State Government to instigate changes in business registration procedures in Kaduna State. The reforms, means that ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) will drastically shorten business registration durations and some MDA’s like the Ministry of Commerce; Kaduna Geographic Information Services (KADGIS); Kaduna State Urban Planning and Development Agency (KASUPDA); Kaduna State Traffic and Environmental Law Enforcement Agency (KASTELEA); The Ministry of Justice, and the Kaduna Environmental Protection Agency (KEPA),will commence E-registration procedures. The Business Licensing Reform Project is funded by the EU and implemented by DFID through GEMS3. Kemi Adeosun, the Minister of Finance in 2015 signed the Fiscal Sustainability Plan (FSP) - Framework for Sustainability of Sub- National Governments of Nigeria - with the 36 States, the Federal Capital Territory and 774 Local Governments of Nigeria. The FSP aims to address the issue of fiscal responsibility. It has five key strategic objectives, with a recommended 22- point action plan- improve accountability and transparency; increase public revenue; rationalise public expenditure, etc. States were to publish audited financial statements, publish budget implementation performance report, implement TSA, review revenue laws, biometric capture of civil servants, etc. For instance by increasing public revenue through increasing independently generated revenues, states can “stand alone” as strong functional entities. They were also expected to make every kobo count, by a rationalised public expenditure, through efficiency, reduced costs and plugging of leakages, improve public financial management by embarking on a series of reforms - revision of archaic laws, civil service rules, etc. Finally, a sustainable debt management, such that states debts are sustainable and at a healthy level. In a sense the FSP is to save the states, most of whom are permanently on blood transfusion (FAAC) from themselves, like drug addicts must be saved from themselves. Ado wrote from Kaduna