The Tinubu administration’s strategy for the economy brings up the concept of Robin Hood.
The English throw him up as one of their major eponymous heroes.
He was man as legend, a terror of the patrician class, a swordsman as go-getter, a lifetime as a cause, an equalizer of resources.
No self-delusion like the grandiloquent swordsman of the best novel ever written, Don Quixote, who mistook himself for the masses. Robin Hood’s vanity was in the right place: with the people.
He was no pure hero, and history has never embalmed a creature without a flaw. But Robin Hood was peculiar as a rough-hewn ancestor of Karl Marx, Fabian socialists and the welfare state.
He was a warrior who upturned his martial acumen and morphed into a traitor of the feudal class.
He would raid the rich in gold and food and hand them to the poor.
He was the people’s brigand. As a ballad, A Gest of Robin Hode, describes him, “Of the good he shall have some/if he be a poor man.” Plays, films and adventure stories have inked his heroics. Shakespeare endorsed him in two plays. Ben Jonson, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Thomas Paine cruised on his tales. He haunted the French Revolution. Even those who loathed him were villains like the Republican fellows who banned his stories as a heartthrob for communism in the United States during the McCarthy Era.
The first person to decorate President Bola Tinubu as Robin Hood is former Lagos State governor, then governor of example, Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN). He should know. Some see it as a term of endearment. Some have skewed it with mischief. But whatever his flaws, Robin Hood was a soul after the commoner’s heart. His lion’s heartbeat for the poor.
That was behind the policy to do away with fuel subsidy and turn the money over to the little guy. One was $800 million, and that amounts to over N500 billion. There has, however, been a mix-up in the public imagination between the supplementary budget that includes an $800 million loan for cash to the poor and the N500 billion saved from the subsidy. News hysteria should be restrained for the facts. The mistake is probably because $800 million equates a little over N500 billion. Tinubu came with a number of measures in what he described as a national emergency on food security. It is a wide swath of programmes, some of which, I hear, have not yet been unveiled. One, the $800 million that entails the N8,000 for the very poor households. Two, N19.2 billion for agriculture and that will help farmers immiserated from floods. The allocation of N70 billion whose details we are awaiting and the N35 billion to the judiciary do not belong to this programme. The N10 billion for Abuja may, in parts, address the question of poverty.
The declaration against food security is the first time we are cohering food policy with security. There has been some hoopla as to whether it made sense to give N8,000 to the poor. Such critics do not live where the real people are. It has been said in some circles that it is nothing new. The United States has done it over time. So has the United Kingdom. Covid was an example. We infested ours with corruption. What the West gave its citizens compares with ours. We only put flies in our own ointment. During the George W. Bush era, he won an election on a promise of cash transfers of a few hundred dollars. The real point is not just the amount of money but because such an infusion would stimulate demand in the economy. Economists like Keynes call it demand-pull, and it vitalised the New Deal of President Franklyn Roosevelt during the Great Depression. When such monies are doled out, no one saves. They spend them. People buy and sell and that helps drive production and boost jobs. Bringing such an amount of money into the economy through the people’s spending is one great way to nourish a system.
Some have asked, how will the money get to the poor? Others have said we should have done census first. They are a little confused. We cannot wait for a census in an emergency. But that view also advertises ignorance. They do not know the National Social Safety Nets Coordinating Office (NASSCO) that has a database of the Nigerian poor. The agency will cross-check its data with the National Cash Transfer Office to get this money across. Reporters should investigate it. I gathered that all beneficiaries do not have to have bank accounts but their information is documented. The document, according to my sources, is not cast in stone. The Labour Unions, my source adds, are welcome to coordinate their lists with them. Citizens without bank accounts will get codes to get cash on POS machines.
My worry is if the operators of those machines do not gouge the poor and give less than they were allocated. Some wonder if this is a good chance of fraud. The government must guard against it. Since this is a policy for the people, the people will know if they get the money. The government expects it will be the people’s evidence against a doubting elite. A hand-proof against Didymus. Doubts are not unfounded, though. They saw this recently when the former Humanitarian minister splurged billions on non-existent students.
Ekiti State had it under Governor Kayode Fayemi, except that some poor complained that his government punished the mothers of successful children. A mother of a Customs officer griped that she was being punished for being a successful parent. While rigour is required, it cannot satisfy all. We want the utilitarian maxim of happiness for the greatest number of people.
But this is different from the subsidy money that is being worked out in committees on transportation and mass transit, health and education, cost of governance, etc. Chief of Staff Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila is in the centre of some of this. The subsidy money will also look at agro-industrial zones to ensure that goods are shipped without inflationary pressures. We have one in Ogun State and the African Development Bank has identified about 19 across the country.
If inflating the economy with cash will stimulate activity, it can also inflict high cost of goods. Inflation is a factor of dollar value. President Tinubu has unfettered forex, so it should bring down dollar value and prop the naira. A stronger naira will check the cost of goods. It is a smart idea. Banks must be monitored not to play Shylock with the currencies.
“The inflation will not last, especially if we enforce the policy of not exporting raw materials,” said a source.
Bringing the economy to the poor is not supposed to be easy. Even the poor will resist. The cash-for-the-poor policy is a Robin Hood idea. Nigerians who are not trusting it are those who are used to being duped by the government. Releasing money to farms also means strengthening security. Many farmers are coy to go to farm because of bandits. Farms with fertilisers but without farmers is stillborn agriculture.
On the cash transfer, getting the money across is less a test of policy than a challenge of integrity. The howls of disputers should not deter the government. Doubt is not an excuse. The goal is gold. The money is no ghost. If implementers fail, a spectre of mistrust will dog the government.
Taking from the rich to the poor in a modern Robin Hood style is more subtle than in the early Middle Ages when he reigned on horseback. It works today by stealth of policy, not the sword of valour. It is by redrawing the map of supply and demand. Shakespeare described it as “distribution undo excess and each man have enough.” That bard did not know Marx, just like Robin Hood. Shakespeare, Marx and Robin Hood knew the early Apostles’ commune and the tale of apostates.
Food security is not fool’s gold. It is a national goal.
NB: Sam Omatseye is a respected columnist with The Nation Newspaper.
