Washington, DC — Early appointments have given some hope to Nigerians. A major one – the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) – is pending.
Africa's most populous country faces the greatest threat to its future in over half a century, when the southeastern region, known as Biafra, attempted to succeed from Nigeria a few years after its independence from British rule.
Two and a half years of war in the late 1960s is reported to have killed a million people – some estimates of deaths are three times that, many from starvation – and battlefield casualties were accompanied by massacres around the country. The conflict divided European colonial powers as well, with the United Kingdom supporting the federal government, while the French favored oil-rich Biafra.
Today an estimated 25 million Nigerians face starvation, due to erratic rains and flooding, lack of jobs, and armed conflict that has displaced millions, especially in the northeast region. Farmers and herders alike have been driven from their traditional lands. Kidnapping for ransom has spread nationwide.
All those factors fueled a youth wave of social media savvy voters, pressing for politicians they believed would "serve the people" better than previous administrations. One of the beneficiaries was third-party presidential candidate Peter Obi, whose decade-old Labour Party won an unprecedented 42 National Assembly seats.
Despite legal challenges to the national and state-level elections in March, Bola Tinubu was sworn in as Nigeria's president on 29 May. Although his administration faces enormous challenges, Nigeria's resource wealth and innovative citizenry present opportunities.
The country has Africa's second largest oil reserves, after Libya, and more exploration has begun. Abundant sunshine could provide off-grid solar power to millions in rural areas, and longer-term investment in renewables could make Nigeria an electricity exporter. Yet Nigerians have the world's worst access to energy, according to international organizations. Untapped strategic minerals could generate further riches, but most Nigerians remain desperately poor.
Appointees can bring hope. Their performance can sustain it.
What will it take to bring hope to a public disillusioned by years of patronage among politicians, as conditions worsened for the majority of people?
On his first day in office, the 71-year-old president said: "We shall invest more in our security personnel, and this means more than an increase in number. We shall provide, better training, equipment, pay, and firepower."
Shortly afterwards, he declared a state of emergency to address a ravaged economy and the poverty and insecurity afflicting 200 million Nigerians. Special advisor Dele Alake promised that the government would take immediate steps to address food insecurity and the faster price rises that followed the president's removal of an unsustainable fuel subsidy.
While some Nigerians have been disappointed at the heavy presence of controversial "old career politicians" on the list of ministers, even some sceptics have been encouraged by Tinubu's earliest appointments, in particular in the security arena. Nuhu Ribadu is the President's National Security Adviser. He began his career as a police officer in some of the most violent areas of Lagos, Nigeria's commercial capital and largest city, Eventually he became head of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, overseeing over a thousand employees, including young anti-corruption activists, until forced into temporary exile by multiple assassination attempts.
Ribadu spent some of his time abroad as a senior fellow at Oxford University. After his return, he conducted a government-commissioned investigation about the squandering of US$38 billion in Nigeria's oil industry, but no action followed. Now, he pledges, he will use his senior position to subdue insecurity.
This month's cabinet nominees have attracted attention as well. Questioning of the nominees by the Senate is underway and could take weeks or months, but the group is serving as presidential advisors in the meantime. Only after the Senate confirms the appointments will their portfolios be announced, but several are obvious.
If 'health is wealth', Nigeria is one of the world's poorest countries. It has more deaths of children five and under "than any other country in the world, including more populous India and China and countries experiencing widespread long-term conflict, such as Somalia".
Nigeria's maternal death rate is second only to India's, despite the existence of an inexpensive drug, tranexamic acid, to stop the bleeding during childbirth that is a major contributor to those deaths.
A physician turns down top international job to return to Nigeria.
Dr. Muhammad Ali Pate is expected to be the new Minister of Health. In addition to his medical training in internal medicine and infectious diseases, he holds a Masters of Business Administration from Duke University and a Masters in Health System Management from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
Pate was Minister of State (junior minister) in the health ministry from 2011 to 2013, after he headed the National Primary Health Care Development Agency. In one of his most notable achievements, he conducted Nigeria's successful campaign to eradicate polio against breathtaking odds, including the murder of vaccinators in northern Nigeria, where the crippling disease was endemic.
Taking a community-based approach of convening meetings that included religious leaders, he persuaded wary citizens that vaccinations were not a plot to reduce births among the predominantly Muslim northern population. Although as in other countries around the world that still use live vaccines as the fastest way to control the disease, there is an occasional case spread largely through water contaminated by poor sanitation – a but all those cases have been contained rapidly.
Leaving Nigeria after concluding that his position lacked the authority to continue essential health progress, Pate taught at Duke University's Center for Global Health and at Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He headed Big Win Philanthropy, whose founder Jamie Cooper took a collaborative approach to giving, and he has advised such donors as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on funding that empowers the recipients to make decisions for themselves.
He also was Global Director, Health, Nutrition and Population Global Practice of the World Bank and the Director of Global Financing Facility for Women, Children and Adolescents and co-chair of the Lancet Commission on Covid-19.
Pate's willingness to return to Nigeria was a surprise that prompted some dismay outside Nigeria. He had accepted the job to head Gavi – the Vaccine Alliance – an international organization that cooperates with the World Health Organization and arranges distribution of life-saving vaccines, including for Covid, in countries that were discriminated against in transfers of available supplies, which was most of Africa.
Advocates for women and for Africa-wide health progress mourned what they saw as a loss to nations of the global south. It was a difficult decision to withdraw, Ali Pate told the Gavi board, but he believed he had a special responsibility to Nigeria at this critical time.
Global financial markets are expected to be comfortable with the likelihood of Adebayo Olawale Edun, the former chair of a Lagos-based investment bank, as Minister of Finance. When President Tinubu was governor of Lagos, Edun was commissioner of finance, where he doubled the state's internal revenue.
Like Pate, Edun has an international profile, holding degrees from two British universities. While earning his Master's degree in development economics at the University of Sussex, he did research at its Institute of Development Studies. Tapped for the World Bank/International Monetary Fund's young professionals programme, he worked on financial aid packages for several countries.
Another Nigerian whose possible return to national service has been speculated is Professor Kingsley Moghalu. A respected scholar who has taught international business and economic policy at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, he began his career as a lawyer and journalist in Nigeria but was quickly courted to work in international organizations. After serving in high-level United Nations positions including as head of global partnerships and resource mobilization at the $14 billion United Nations Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB and Malaria based in Geneva, he moved into the private sector, founding Sogato Strategies S.A. in Geneva and Washington DC and advising some of the world's biggest multinationals, global banks, and institutional investors on macroeconomic trends and risk management to enhance investments in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
He was headhunted by then Governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi and President Umaru Yar'Adua to become Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria in 2009 after the global financial crisis, giving him expertise in Nigeria's monetary policy. Moghalu played a key role as Sanusi's deputy responsible for implementing the country's banking-sector reforms as well as payment system reforms that triggered an explosion of the fintech industry. After that service, he was appointed a professor at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, recruited by its dean at the time, the retired four-star Admiral and former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, James Stavridis, and to panels and positions such as United Nations Development Program Special Envoy on Post-Covid Development Finance for Africa. As a close protégé of the late UN Secretary General Kofi Annan from Ghana, Moghalu was widely regarded as a potential Secretary General himself.
But Nigerian commentators have argued that he should be appointed CBN Governor – a move that would likely be popular among foreign investors and at home with Nigerians jaded by economic theft by officials. In June, former Governor Godwin Emefiele was suspended and hours later was arrested by the secret police. The presidency cited an "ongoing investigation of his office and the planned reforms in the banking sector".
An appointment of Moghalu, known for a modest lifestyle and for integrity, also would be welcomed in Europe, North America and such international organizations as the World Bank, who fear the consequences of economic implosion in Nigeria.
The Tinubu administration needs all the help it can get from people who Nigerians already respect for their honesty and expertise.
Last year the British medical journal The Lancet's Nigeria Commission, warned that Tinubu has no time to waste to put right the failed policies that have led to poor health, a climate crisis, and the despair that feeds conflict.
"With Nigeria's large and growing population, ongoing governance and security challenges, and potential leadership role in Africa and globally," it said, "the decisions made today will determine whether Africa's most populous country will become a success story or a cautionary tale."
