FROM SYMBOLISM TO SUBSTANCE
How Nigeria can turn gestures into good governance, writes MAJORITY OJI
When a government learns to reason with its critics instead of railing against them, when it exchanges the cudgel for conversation, it begins, perhaps unwittingly, to lay the foundation of legitimacy.
In recent months, the air of Nigeria has been heavy with grievance: from the turmoil over ASUU’s agitations to the uproar surrounding presidential pardon, from the quiet fleecing of citizens by telecom giants, DSTV, and banks to the inflated costs of imported goods and essential commodities. These are not scattered outcries because they echo one basic truth, which is the revelation that the social contract between state and citizen has frayed.
The recent reversals and conciliatory tones from the government suggest an awakening, but symbolism alone cannot suffice. The time has come to transmute gestures into governance, rhetoric into reform, and promises into performance.
Few unions have borne the moral cross of Nigeria’s educational decay as steadfastly as the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU). For decades, ASUU has played Cassandra to a deaf state. ASUU has been warning, pleading, striking, all in pursuit of what should have been obvious: adequate funding, infrastructural renewal, and respect for agreements solemnly signed yet repeatedly breached.
The ritual is drearily familiar. Government negotiates with pomp, pledges with passion, and defaults with precision. Then follows the inevitable strike, resulting in students being stranded, lecturers vilified, and the nation poorer for its own neglect. Yet ASUU’s agitation has been less rebellion than a reminder to all Nigerians that the nation which toys with its teachers toys with its future.
It was great news that ASUU called off a warning strike through dialogue rather than decree. It hinted at a new temper of reason over repression. But this must not be mistaken for closure; it should be the opening line of a new chapter. To restore faith, the government must ensure it provides what it promises. Government at all levels must release funds, publish timelines, and institute transparent monitoring. It is only when agreements are honoured and accountability enforced will the long night of strikes begin to give birth to a new beginning.
Presidential clemency, too, has stirred unease. Mercy is a solemn prerogative meant to temper justice with compassion, yet when it appears to embrace the unrepentant, it risks becoming mockery. President Tinubu’s recent act of pardoning a cohort of convicts, some reportedly guilty of grievous crimes sparked outrage that reverberated across the nation.
The Constitution may have empowered the President to forgive, but not to forget the public trust. To wield mercy without moral calibration is to corrode confidence in justice. The subsequent review and suspension of the pardon list were, in themselves, victories for civic vigilance, a reminder that public outcry can still correct official missteps. However, the winner in this instance is the Federal Government, with a gold medal hanging around its neck. Its review and reversal of the errors found in the mercy list mark the beginning of a race toward a new national rebirth that is just beginning to dawn.
But the lesson must run deeper: the process of pardon should not be shrouded in executive mystique. It must be transparent, consultative, and just. Let clemency be guided by principle, not patronage, lest the altar of mercy become a sanctuary for impunity.
Beyond the grand theatres of politics lies a quieter agony, the daily attrition of citizens’ wallets. Telecom operators, DSTV, and the banks have perfected a modern art of invisible extortion through arbitrary deductions, maintenance fees, ‘inactivity’ penalties, and vanishing airtime that evaporates like dew under the sun.
The Senate has in the past accused GSM operators of ‘daylight robbery’ over drop-call deductions, yet the menace persists. It appears the Senate only used the warning to shine light on itself rather than put a stop to the charade. Thus, DSTV’s subscription model, banking levies, and digital transaction fees all feed into a labyrinth of opaque billing that spells death by a thousand deductions. Government must step in not as a spectator but as a sentinel. The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection (FCCPC), and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) must enforce transparent billing, mandate refunds for wrongful deductions, and legislate caps on arbitrary charges. No citizen requires a degree in accounting to discover why 15 naira must disappeared from his account because he made a first call of the day.
Meanwhile, the price of survival in Nigeria has become a daily crucifixion. Inflation stalks every market stall, fuel prices fluctuate like a fever, and transport fares soar without wings. While officials would quickly point in the direction of global trends, a deeper rot festers as importers pad invoices, explore customs loopholes that reward excess, and skillfully navigate a currency regime that invites exploitation.
Social commentator Martins Vincent Otse known as Very Darkman Man, recently spotlighted the culture of inflated import costs, an investigative work that resonated across Nigeria because it captured what citizens already know about importers’ culture of mischief that treat regulation as suggestion. Fuel, too, is ensnared in a vicious web of subsidy distortions, opaque pricing mechanisms, and the heavy hand of foreign exchange volatility. What should be a lifeline for productivity has become a labyrinth of profiteering where multiple intermediaries feast on arbitrage and the consumer bears the cost. Each tweak in policy seems to birth a new distortion, while the promise of a good life embedded in deregulation drifts farther away from the reach of the common man.
To ease this burden, the government must act with surgical precision: tighten customs oversight, audit import cost declarations, cap handling surcharges, rationalize fuel distribution chains, and introduce targeted reliefs to cushion impacts on ordinary citizens. Inflation is not a ghost that is beyond control; it is the offspring of negligence and systemic greed.
The recent ASUU engagement and the pardon reversal prove that the government can listen, but listening is only the first step toward redemption. To earn the trust of a weary populace, Nigeria’s governance system must evolve from episodic reaction to enduring reform.
True renewal will demand transparency in public contracts, pardons, tariffs, and cost frameworks. This will ensure participation that ultimately gives civil society, unions, and victims a seat at the table, and the needed institutional framework that can replace discretion with due process and, of course, accountability, where every naira and signature traces not only a visible line of responsibility but a discharge of a specific duty.
Nigeria stands again at the crossroads between promise and pretense. It has danced too long to the rhythm of symbolic gestures where each retreat from error is mistaken for reform, each drop of apology offered taken as progress. But nations are not built by gestures; they are built by grit.
If this administration hopes to be remembered not merely as a caretaker of crises but as a true architect of change, it must move beyond the stage of symbolic gestures and step into the arena of genuine reform. The time for rhetoric is over; the time for structure has come. Only then will governance rise above mere performance to become a mission that is driven by focus and purpose.
Oji is a Professor of Mass Communication, Delta State University, Abraka
