Unravelling the Leadership Style of President Tinubu

Understanding Tinubunomics: Unravelling the Leadership Style of President Tinubu

By Joseph Chinenyeze Ibekwe

Every political leader comes on stage with pre-conceived notions to do things differently than their predecessors. This is normal expectation. Oftentimes. the political and socio-economic trajectories of those leaders become their regime identities.

Within this context I dare discuss what it calls “Tinubunomics”, the political leadership style of President Ahmed Bola Tinubu, GCFR.

I contextualize Tinubunomics as an oblique approach to public leadership that attempts to solve endemic socio-political problems that have plagued the system without the people realizing their problems are being solved. T-nomics for short, is identified to be associated with proceeding with the long-demanded political restructuring of Nigeria without mentioning the word. It includes redesigning the economic and financial architecture of the system so subtly that it takes the discerning to grasp what is happening. 

T-nomics includes working to bring all political actors under one roof for political dominance, and in the process diminish the pollical space for fair competition necessary for plural democracy to thrive. 

T-nomics also is painfully associated with the institutionalization of palliative distribution as a public governance strategy. Given the widely spread economic hardship the followed the sudden removal of fuel subsidy and fiscal and monetary policies of this administration, the distribution of perishable palliatives has become part of governance framework, unsustainable as it is.

T-nomics also includes creating an atmosphere where intellectual and civic activism is numbed because of material poverty and fear of being reprimanded for speaking out. It manifests itself also in the loss of identity by members of the fourth estate of the realm who can no longer function as ought to checkmate excesses of the executive, judiciary and legislative arms of government.

T-nomics has become too powerful to contend with; too wide to wrap your hands around it; and too deep you can’t get in and remain the same. Essentially, T-nomics has taken the levers of power out of the hands of perennial owners, eliciting fights and throwing of mud slings. 

The most striking aspect of T-nomics is that it is redistributing political structures while it concentrates the core within its core. Tinibunomics is tough and ruthlessly determined to change the narratives in spite of the relentless pushback from opposing forces.

I strongly believe that Tinubunomics is an emerging public leadership study.

Joseph Ibekwe is the President of FLED Group Africa and an Honourary Professor of Public Leadership & Governance at FLED International Leadership, Abuja – Nigeria