On Sunday, December 22, 2024, Premium Times published the full text of an exclusive interview which Sunday Dare, Special Adviser on Public Communication and Orientation to President Bola Tinubu had with its journalists. The robustness of the interview inspires this reproduction of it on this platform. Enjoy it.
By Beloved John
The Special Adviser on Public Communication and Orientation to President Bola Tinubu, Sunday Dare, recently sat with PREMIUM TIMES journalists at the newspaper’s head office in Abuja to discuss critical issues such as the controversial tax reform bills, the administration’s economic policies, and press freedom. Read excerpts from the engagement.
PT: People have criticised President Tinubu’s frequent foreign trips as excessive and wasteful. Why can’t he stay and face the challenges at home?
Dare: I think every administration has been dogged by this same perception of the president travelling too many times. Recall that under Obasanjo, there was some massive documentation of his trips. I remember Obasanjo’s response then: “I am the chief diplomat. I have to go and make pitches for this country. I have to go out there and engage with other world leaders.” When Obasanjo left, we had Yar’adua. When Jonathan came, the same issues came up. Buhari came, and the same problems about travelling too much came up. Some of these trips are programmed in the world’s calendar. Going to the UN General Assembly and the G20; these meetings are almost cast in stone. We have to make a choice. Do we want the president present or absent from that table because he is Nigerian? And when he goes to these places, you see other world leaders who are presidents like him, who flew from their countries for that meeting. There’s a justification for it.
You have others based on consultations and processes where the ministers or the foreign ministry advise him about the importance of an event to Nigeria’s interests. The chief diplomat, the marketing chief for Nigeria, is the president. He has other diplomats and ministers, but there’s nothing like hearing from the president of a country, making a pitch for his country and for his people.
For Nigerians, the president is well known. But globally, he has only been president for 18 months. The world does not know him at the level of a president. So he needs to open doors and open windows. He needs to go out. And these trips will eventually reduce.
Governance, as we have it and as we have had it, is about institutions. Are these institutions in place? Are they functional? The mere fact that a president sits at home and doesn’t go anywhere doesn’t mean he’s going to succeed. If he’s at home 365 days a year and the institutions of government are not working well, his presence alone won’t change that.
When you look at the American government as it is today, it’s about institutions. Those institutions have stood the test of time. America once had a bedridden president in a wheelchair who had no cognitive ability for years without people knowing. Yet the institutions powered by the Constitution ensured America functioned perfectly. So, these trips are justified. We might disagree as to the level of their justification, but I don’t see this president embarking on trips just like a flight of fancy.
PT: Some said the president has been embarking on these trips because he has a new jet. (Laughter)
Dare: Let’s give him a bit of credit. We’ve seen him travel and come back for three or four days because of important state events and then return. Any president who is not committed and serious would just sit it out there.
PT: That could be because he has a house in the sky.
Dare: Whatever the house is, you still come out of it. He doesn’t live there permanently, and I keep saying that the aircraft is used to perform his duties. It’s like the cars we have. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a Mercedes Benz or a Kia. The cars we have are being used for different reasons. They are important to us. They take us to our places of work; we travel with them. We use it for some other things. That’s the way I think people should see that aircraft. That aircraft belongs to the Federal Government of Nigeria.
It is being used to advance Nigeria’s interests. From time to time, it’s what is given to whoever is president as a means of conveyance to take them from one point to another. That aircraft does not belong to Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
PT: But what are the gains of the trips so far? For instance, the president went to the UAE, and it was said that Nigeria had negotiated with the country’s government to resume flights by their national airline to Nigeria. But it was not the case and it seems like a wasted trip.
Dare: No, it was not wasted. First, Emirates is back.
PT: Are Nigerians buying their tickets in Naira or dollars?
Dare: I think what’s important is that the government has done its part, and Emirates is back. The Nigerian government cannot control the currency of sale of these airline tickets because it’s a free market. You can choose quite a number of them. If you don’t want to buy Emirates, you buy another one. But I think that being able to broker that thing and bring Emirates back is major, and most Nigerians are happy with that.
Also, as a part of this effort, you need a bit of shuttle diplomacy. Sometimes, one strike doesn’t get you what you want. You have to do a second strike. As Americans say, you do a third strike. And then, if the third strike doesn’t work, you know there’s no way for you here. Look at the UAE. The president has gone there a number of times, and this is beyond the visa issue. There are other weighty issues that will need foundational development beyond the visa issue. Take, for instance, the recent trip to Riyadh. I know that they’re in the final stage of the $5 billion support—a soft loan that should come to us.
PT: Another loan?
Dare: Let me correct that. I don’t know whether it’s a loan or a grant. We’ll have to redefine that, but my point is this: Read the story of Dubai, the UAE. 92 per cent of the money used to build the UAE was loans. The important thing is to invest those loans wisely, and they’ve done this. Dubai has been a highly functional society with investors and tourists coming in. No nation has been able to repay its loan as fast as the UAE. As we speak, they’ve repaid about 68 per cent of the loan they took.
Now, look at the loan profile globally. When you look at the first 14 highly indebted nations that have taken the most significant loans, Nigeria doesn’t even show up there. We don’t even show up in the first 15. That’s not to say that we can just take loans for the fun of it. The loans we take must be justified, and a part of that justification process is that when it comes to the council, the finance minister must defend it.
From the council, even if it’s approved, it is taken to the National Assembly. The National Assembly has a duty to examine the reasons and the rationale behind these loans before it approves them. We can’t do the work of the National Assembly, the people’s elected representatives. If they justifiably approved it, that means it is necessary. It is now left to make sure that these loans are used judiciously.
PT: If the president is so concerned about foreign policy, why has he delayed appointing ambassadors for so long?
Dare: You must appreciate the fact that when you have a mission or an embassy, it is a structure. And what you have at the top is the ambassador, who can be just a political appointee or a career diplomat. But they don’t operate in isolation. They have consul generals. They have quite a number of diplomats and foreign affairs staffers who they call ambassadors who do the day-to-day work. So when the ambassadors are removed, the essential work or the core work of diplomacy of a consulate still goes on. It’s just removing one person. So, at no point did that stop for all our embassies.
I do agree that with an ambassador, you get a more pointed direction and the rest. But let me fast-forward. We’re at a point when that is about to happen. We’re going to see that happen shortly. The president has been deliberate because he understands that the ambassadors will play a key role in his plan to bring FDI into our country. They will play a key role in ensuring that Nigeria is plugged into the global economy at the right point. And I’m telling you, he’s been deliberate, making sure that those who will go as ambassadors have the credentials, whether career diplomats or even politicians, and that is why it has taken so much time. That’s what I believe, but we will have ambassadors very soon. I’m sure that is going to happen before the end of the year.
PT: The most topical issue now is his tax reform plan. What does the president think about the reactions to the tax reform bill at the National Assembly?
Dare: First, the president is an unrepentant progressive. When you look at his background as an accountant, you can see what he did with Lagos State. If you take away what he did about blocking loopholes and the tax regime he brought to Lagos State, his eight-year tenure as state governor will have been a failure. The president is about blocking the loopholes in the revenue and tax system. He is about increasing the IGR from $600 million to several billion. He is about increasing government revenue, and we saw the success it brought to Lagos State. As we speak, that template exists for the Lagos state. That’s why, to get the IGR of Lagos State, you need to put together at least 15 states. And then take his experience with private businesses and what he has done over the decades. All of that comes to bear when you become the president.
The president approached the National Assembly for the tax reform bil because the house is a house of deliberation. The assembly has representatives from every constituency. For every house member, some of your constituents have invested something in you to go and represent them. Now, that document has gone to the National Assembly for deliberations. When there’s a dissonance or disagreement, the president has asked the National Assembly to do its work. If you have petitions or need a public hearing, do it. This back-and-forth is expected.
Approaching the parliament happens everywhere. As we speak, the Australian parliament has passed a bill that will ensure that no kid below 16 has access to the internet. It passed overwhelmingly, but there was a lot of resistance. Parents kicked that they need it for school, they need it to do assignments. The president said to take it to the assembly. The assembly is representative of the people, so the tax bill is there.
Now we have over 61 taxes, and over 80 per cent are redundant. We are just refining the tax process to move from voluntary to cooperative tax. To say if you know you need to pay tax, there is a law that spells out why you have to pay tax. So you cooperate with the state and pay that tax. Beyond that, the freedom to generate and utilise the revenue as a state is within that tax system. We know that PAYE is no longer going to be taxed under that tax system. You don’t have to pay taxes if you earn less than one million annually.
Unless you read those documents or deliberately have a conversation to speak to the nuggets, when you hear it, you say no, this is not going to work. It also reduces the tax burden across the board. So you’re having, through this tax reform, the implementation of the true fiscal federalism that we’ve never had before. When you look at it, you look at people in the headquarters where taxes are remitted from across the country; we are trying to change that to say taxes, VAT especially, should be used where these concerns. This places some level of responsibility on the governors. Find more investors, increase the VAT revenue that comes to your state, and consume it.
The core of it is that the federal government has shed some weight on the state government. The federal government has shed some weight. It’s now taking 10 per cent (of VAT) instead of 15 per cent. The weight they’ve shed has moved to the states. For states, it has moved from 50 to 55 per cent and local government 35 per cent. That is in the spirit of true federalism as a concept, and then you get granular and talk about fiscal federalism. What comes with fiscal federalism is also fiscal responsibility, so you need to read between the lines.
I’m not saying it’s a perfect document, but the very core of the tax reforms that we need is built into that. When is this country going to be ready to embrace the policy changes that are needed? Go and look at the American tax system. One of the most brutal and one of the most efficient. Virtually everything is taxed, apart from oxygen. The success we see in America is based on a successful tax system. Look at the UK as well. There is a TV licence in the UK. Do you pay for your TV licence in Nigeria? Some people have 10 TV sets, and the government doesn’t bother them.
The tax system is the reason why, in America, you can’t save more than $200 a month from your salary. Also, the tax system is refined from time to time. Some are dropped, and some are reduced. We have all of those elements here. I can say on record that out of our 51 or 55 taxes in this system, they’ve been reduced to 10. The president has said the entire philosophy around this tax bill is not to tax the poor but to tax the rich. He said, “I want to tax prosperity.”
You must understand that this is just to widen the tax net and not to introduce new ones. It is to ensure that those who are expected to pay taxes pay. When was the last time we reviewed our tax regime? The time has come for the state to harness its resources, and no state can develop economically or otherwise without addressing its tax system. You must design your tax regime to allow for development. The revenue that comes to the state is critical. The taxes that come also recirculate within the system.
Consultation is what we’re having right now. We have the Federal Inland Revenue Chairman, the presidential tax force chairman, for the second day running, at the Senate. We saw how heated it was. Isn’t that what you want? It’s democracy. The president says, “Let it stay there; let’s have that conversation.” We have a president who is ready to accept superior arguments, and that’s why that conversation is taking place. He’s paying very close attention to it, being briefed almost every day. Those of us who work with him are following those arguments. Then, we must also give our lawmakers the benefit of the doubt because they will be deciding what is good for the people.
PT: Are you concerned about the opposition message that Tinubu’s economic policies are directly responsible for the country’s hardships?
Dare: The message of the opposition is not different. We come from an opposition background. All you have to do is, if the government is going right, you go left. Very often, as opposition, you do not have to really explain; just be opposed to what the government is doing. But it is not for me to be concerned by what the opposition is saying. What is truly important is to discuss how this country is being run presently, what the driving force is, and what the philosophy is.
The buck stops at the table of Mr President. When a president comes in and announces his programme according to an eight-point agenda, when a president comes in and approves hundreds of billions targeted at specific programmes, I can list quite a number of those programmes. When you have a social investment programme with a budget of N1.37 trillion and is progressing in terms of the five million households, when we have a de-risking programme of N198 billion to de-risk businesses, when we have N50 billion single-digit loans for small businesses under the beneficial ownership register, it speaks to the fact that this administration is focused on the big picture but is also granular in saying we should be deliberately targeted.
What do the manufacturers need, and what do we need to get the engines humming again? There is a N75 billion manufacturer’s fund. More than half of these manufacturers are already drawn on those funds. They come in and say we don’t run a credit system, and that’s why corruption is endemic.
We have seen success first targeted at civil servants and the whole of Nigeria. Over 17,000 civil servants have benefited; we have never had this before. The government is introducing new instruments of governance that borrow heavily from best practices elsewhere. The credit court scheme and the NEL (Nigerian Education Loans) fund scheme have been tested here. President Biden had to write off student loans in the US last month. There’s a reason for that. What we have here is the NEL fund, which is a very soft loan. 617,000 people have applied, 410,000 have been approved, and it’s one of the most successful programmes.
Then, you look at the CNG, which provides an option. India has the most successful story of CNG implementation. In 2022, 33 per cent of car users in America opted for CNG. It has been tried elsewhere and is working, and we’re having that for the first time as an alternative to PMS. This is a government that is confronting the challenges and providing solutions. These solutions will take time to yield, but we can mark down progressive results as we go incrementally.
PT: So, you’re not worried about the opposition pushing the narrative that government policies cause the problems?
Dare: President Bola Tinubu did not inherit a perfect country, and the problems we are facing now are not entirely new. However, every president who comes to power must also examine the issues on the ground and determine what policies to continue, as well as re-engineer. The government must look at what we need to do and what has stopped this country from moving forward. In addition to the oil sector, the government must look at the agri-sector because you’re also elected and entrusted by the people to bring your ideas to better this country.
Some of these might bring pain in the medium to short run, but they become extremely necessary. You know, we talk about how a stitch in time saves nine. How many times do we back up to really understand it? Refusal to take that stitch now will make you take nine stitches later. The removal of the oil subsidy is painful because previous leaders did not block that hole. Right from Obasanjo’s time, the subsidy thing and the scam persisted. We needed a leader who would say, “Let’s put a stop to this bleeding; let’s deal with it.”
If we had taken that stitch 20 years ago, we would not be where we are now. The president is like Daniel coming to judgment. He comes and says, “Listen, I’ve lived through all this in the last 30 years. I’m going to bite the bullet for this. I know it’s going to cause pain; I know I’m going to be attacked for it, but it’s necessary.”
We’re at a point now where we must thank Nigerians for their understanding and the sacrifices they’ve made. We’re at a point where we can boldly say the subsidy regime is over, in which we have a fully deregulated market, and the full market forces are at play. We are at a point now where we have local refining capacity, and don’t forget that it’s under the president’s watch that Dangote eventually came to the point of refining by making sure that he can buy in Naira and giving him all the support he needed.
We have about nine functioning modular refineries in this country. We have NNPC coming in, and we have about 35-40 per cent local refining. That’s some progress, and I think that’s important. Government policies do not always work perfectly but that should not stop us from introducing a necessary policy. I believe the reforms we’re having in various sectors are necessary. Some of them should have been taken way back. However, we now have someone pressing those buttons to make sure that we have a reset in critical areas of our economy.
PT: When it comes to media attacks and press freedom, the statistics don’t appear to be good for the administration. Is it something that he cannot re-orientate?
Dare: A reorientation is already afoot, which I cannot talk about fully. But it’s true to note that one of the greatest friends of the media is the president. There are a lot of testimonies bound to that, from his investment in the media to his investment in individuals who are core professionals. So many of them can tell their stories of how he played a role. So you have a president who places a premium on communication, watches about four or five channels, reads newspapers, and always wants to know what is happening. He understands not just the power of the press but also his relevance.
You can expect improved relations. But also, we have institutions, often times some of these things happen and it takes a week or two before the president knows about it because these institutions work based on their guidelines and their ethics. These institutions find somebody who has written something and call him in for questioning. These matters only get to the table of the president when it gets too much.
PT: Even when the president is aware, there’s still a lack of accountability.
Dare: I don’t want to speak for the agencies, but they have certain processes that cannot be ignored. Even if somebody intervenes, they can insist that such a person put down a statement before he is allowed to walk away. Also, we live in a world of information and multiple channels of information. There’s a glut. A world in which, because of Web 2.20 and now Web 3.0, everyone is a journalist. It’s an extremely dangerous world. No gatekeepers. We come from a background of 20 to 30 years where you don’t have gatekeepers. So right now, to create a crisis in Nigeria, you just need somebody who has a smartphone, and N1000 to buy data and can open a Facebook account, one of the easiest accounts to open.
He can write, “Fourth mainland Bridge has collapsed” and send it out. He has published it, and within an hour, more than 10 million people will have read it. Then, there will be commotion everywhere. So we live in an extremely dangerous world where everybody wields a pen.
My point is that as we fight, we must fight with the support of those who are core professionals. There’s a sense of responsibility. We have seen stories written without any evidence. They are written to cause disaffection and a breakdown of law and order. A media that is robust and holds the government accountable is critical for development. But also, we must recognise within our ranks and file that there are purveyors of falsehood, people who have no business with journalism, and we must be wary of them.
Any journalist who performs his role responsibly will not be hounded by this country’s security agents. If that happens, the president will step in and handle the situation.
PT: What should Nigerians expect from this administration in the next 2-3 years
Dare: Nigerians should look forward to a more functional country and expect some reforms to become more impactful. The presidential media team recently launched a tenable reforms tracker that looks at the gains, expected outcomes, and impact of ongoing initiatives. We’re looking at about 13 critical sectors: oil sector reforms, manufacturing, the CNG, Credit corporation, Nelfund, youth sector reforms, business reforms, international corporations, the FDIs, power sector reforms, infrastructure, agriculture, and housing.
Reforms are often progressive. You don’t jump. It is not a leap from zero to 100 per cent success. It’s not overnight. So, with the tracker, we are following most of these reforms 18 months down the road. The data gathered will be shared with the public, and I think it shows an openly accountable government. It’s important to show some of the fruits of these reforms.
Citizens can expect a country that will have met some of these challenges in these critical sectors and will be able to run a social investment programme that reaches out to the poorest among us.
