After announcing the removal of oil subsidy, the President in his Democracy Address to the nation said “we’ll repay Nigerians with massive social services: infrastructure education, healthcare, power supply and other public services and so on that will improve quality of life. Factually, education enhances quality of life as it guarantees social mobility and empowerment. Later same day, he signed the Student’s Loans Bill into law. The loan is interest-free and targeted at indigent students, which over 80 percent of Nigerian students are potential beneficiaries. This will further lead to the establishment of an education to give effect to the student’s loan. Much as the Bill was passed under former President Buhari, President Tinubu has every right to take credit for signing it to law. Happily, it came in a day Nigerians celebrate the power of unity, a day we stand shoulder to shoulder, hand in hand, to reminiscence the struggle and sacrifices for democracy as a way of paving way for a brighter future.
In my review of the President’s Democracy Address, I noted that the address dwells much on human rights and sustainable democracy through additional sacrifices by citizens for the actualization of a renewed hope for the country. Human rights may sustain the spirit, not the body. Your democracy should not create an artificial divide between food and rights: political and economic democracy must go together. Stand firm against corruption and poverty. You have to deal with inclusion for democracy under your watch to serve the best interest of citizens and guarantee our policy and economic rights. You also have to deal with the factors that make Nigeria to be left behind.
What the President seems to try to do is to review the kind of democracy the largest democracy in Africa has been living with, which is not far from kakistocracy: a pattern of democratic practice that has put Nigerian democracy under a bushel, where citizens never feel the supposed dividends of democracy. Nigeria’s, like African democracies bears the fate of a fig tree that is being sustained by the weather of fear and violence under a political climate of hunger, poverty, injustice, and agitations for inclusion. This kind of politico-economic atmosphere generated the Arab Spring, replicated somehow by the Nigerian version in #EndSARS#.
However, the peace elections in 2023 in Nigeria, whose major beneficiary is the President and his party, and the passion in the way he hit the ground running as promised will surely go to a long extent in making democracy the ideal and best governance model, unlike in some African countries where elections have become a major source of conflict and instability. In our case, what President Tinubu is trying to point out is that democracy might itself not be the issue but the people who wield power and do not know what to do with it for the good, development and stability of their nations.
The students loan bill is making ours an economic democracy for cautious but the authoritative allocation of resources with mechanism that empowers ordinary citizens and better their lives, which amplify their voices and make them hold their leaders accountable, and in this case, people-centered, and youth-driven. For our democracy to grow and made sustainable, we must consciously anchor it in the local dynamics forces our youth are. It is my believe that for Nigerian democracy to grow and become sustainable, it must be channeled towards developing the knowledge of the young people. They understand the challenges of their time, and they deserve to be supported; they understand better technology, which they can easily get connected with, and therefore, the youth should be empowered not only to participate, but as leaders of tomorrow, to learn how to lead. But to lead, they have to be empowered and the student’s loan will ease their route towards knowledge empowerment. But surely, the scheme might be misinterpreted as a ploy to roll back the state in the provision of education that might allow tertiary institutions to determine their fees and possibly their salaries. This might provoke students protests when misled by opportunistic radically-infatuated unionists and pseudo intellectuals that sees academic instability and cajoling student’s unrests as another academic responsibility. Luckily, the victory of the Federal Government over no-work-no-pay has placated the unions to be responsible than irrational in ensuring academic stability.
This could be easily stemmed, coming at a time when poverty is rising, and savings meant to finance children’s education by parents are being liquidated by soaring inflation. It is gladdening that in such situation the President has come with a paradigm shift of funding student’s education, whose advantages are better than personal loans. Some of the advantages include being interest free, moratorium holiday or payment after graduation or completion of course, repayment may attract subsidy for indigent students, much as the government is abrogating subsidy from its expenditure dictionary, it doesn’t require collateral unlike personal loans and parents needs not to liquidate valuable assets and parents will be liberated from the burden of sponsorship.
What might need to be worked out as the scheme becomes operational is the detail of how to go about it and the modality of repayment. There are many models to adapt from the “Conventional Mortgage-type loan (CML)”, to “Income contingent loan (ICL)”, and so on. It will require government to involve variety of stakeholders and experts to fashion out better and workable models for efficiency.
Prof Ashafa was acting Vice Chancellor
Kaduna State University, Kaduna
