Bayo Onanuga is the Special Adviser to President Bola Tinubu on Information and Strategy. In this interview monitored on Arise Television, he speaks on growing international optimism about the Nigerian economy, declaration of state of emergency in Rivers State and the second year of Tinubu’s presidency, among other issues. ANAYO EZUGWU writes

The President will celebrate his second anniversary in office on May 29. How do you reflect on those two years that he’s been in power?

Well, two years, that would be the midterm of the President. I will say the first year was very turbulent. The first year was marked by many reforms being introduced simultaneously and that disrupted a lot of things in the country. We saw inflation on the rise.

We saw people complaining about the rising cost of living, and so on. But in the second year, I think the nation has taken a corner for the better. Things are getting better. We are seeing good signs on the horizon that the economy is being shaped properly.

And you can see even from international observers and people look at the economy from outside; everybody is saying that the reforms are good and they are going to position Nigeria to better days ahead. So, the second anniversary is going to be a year of celebration. All the reforms that the President has put in place have not been in vain.

They are turning things around for good for this country. Just today, before I left the house, I was reading a story from the Nigerian exchange, one of our banks is declaring a N7 dividend to its stockholders. That’s a sign that some companies are making money.

Will those policies will be there long enough to stabilize the economy and bring down inflation significantly because we haven’t seen that yet?

Let me address the issue of inflation. Inflation is coming down. I think we all go to the market and we see that prices are falling, so inflation is going down. These reforms are not there just momentarily. They are there to make sure that we put our country on a solid footing.

Some reforms ought to have been done decades ago. We kept postponing until we had a president who said, look, let us do this thing now or this country will sink.

We need to commend President Tinubu for the courage that he has demonstrated in bringing those reforms on board. For several decades, when we have been doing oil subsidies, we have seen the problems that occurred with subsidies. Under President Goodluck Jonathan, people were using it to loot the treasury.

Under President Olusegun Obasanjo, the same thing happened. But you can see the benefit of its removal; the market a free, prices went up and started coming down. That is to the benefit of the Nigerian consumer. The president is not even doing that alone. He has introduced CNG.

This country is more of a gas country than a petrol country. And we are maximizing the use of the gas. So, CNG is on. I know that many motorists have converted their vehicles from petrol to CNG. Many truck owners are using CNG to move their goods across the country and so on.

So, it has given us even an alternative. It’s not even stopping at CNG. Just about some weeks ago the government signed some contracts to introduce a fleet of electric vehicles to the North-East part of the country. So many things are going on and what I see is that our country needs to be thankful to this president for initiating so many reforms.

The initial problem is that, they came all simultaneously because Mr. President was in a hurry. He wanted to get a lot of things done and that was what led to the initial problem. But s I said, we are on the front foot now and things are getting better every day.

Given the marginal improvements in the economy that you talk about, imagine the surprise and even shock of many people when they suddenly saw the president take a political decision to impose a state of emergency in Rivers State. Why didn’t he opt for a political settlement in the state?

Let me first of all address your use of the word marginal improvement in the economy. It’s not marginal. What we are seeing is a vast improvement in the economy. Let me mention an example. On the revenue side, more money is coming to the coffers of the state than before. More money is going to our states than before or to all arms of government.

Since the minimum wage was increased, for instance, no state in Nigeria has said it cannot pay. All of them are paying. And just a few days ago, we heard in the news that even our youth corps members are now collecting the minimum wage. The economy is improving, so you cannot say marginal.

It’s a vast improvement. Look at the boom in the stock market. I just mentioned the example of a company that is declaring N7 per stock dividend. It’s the first time that it’s happening in the banking sector. Even the stock market index it’s now about 150,000 or 160,000. When the President came, it was around 50,000. So, when you look at the gap, it is more than 100 per cent.

So, to me, the economy has improved vastly, not just marginally. And things are going to get better as the President continues his term. And now to your question on what has happened in Rivers State. I don’t know why Nigerians, always sometimes respond to things in a knee-jerk manner. I don’t mean that as an insult, but that’s the reality of our country.

Most of the time, something happens, and people just follow whoever speaks first. If somebody comes and says this thing is bad, everybody will just say it’s bad without having to sit down to reflect on it. If the President had not intervened in Rivers, perhaps things would have been worse by now.

The week he intervened, the legislators were saying they were going to impeach the governor. The governor was saying he was going to bring his budget to them, and all kinds of things were happening. And the state was already tilting into some kind of crisis.

President Tinubu is very clear eye about what he wants to do to improve things in this country. He did it when he was in Lagos and he has brought to the national arena

If the House Assembly had been allowed to impeach the governor, maybe Rivers State would be a state flowing with blood. Nobody wants that.

And of course, if you judge by what the governor even said when this crisis was on, urging, and telling his supporters to wait for his signals and then on the day that this emergency was imposed, there were some attacks on our pipelines.

Rivers State harbours our oil resources, either oil or gas, and the state is like the oxygen to this country. Most of the bulk of the money we earn from oil is from that state. That’s why no leader will ever wait for the state to burn before acting. So, the President acted to avert any unforeseen crisis.

That’s what he did. And he suspended, which we underscore the word, he didn’t remove, he suspended. He said, gentlemen, House of Assembly, go and arrest somewhere for the next six months. Mr. Governor, go and arrest somewhere for the next six months. Try to reach some truce very urgently, so that the state can regain its peace and so on. It’s for the good of the country.

I’ve had lawyers from the two divides, some attacking the President and even politicians attacking him, without actually reading section 305 very well.

I’m not a lawyer, but I’ve read the section. I’m educated enough. It gives the President the power to take extraordinary measures if he foresees a problem that can be a real problem for the country.

That’s what he did, extraordinary measures. The National Assembly looked at what he did and both chambers supported and ratified it. It’s a suspension.

We should keep underscoring that the President has not removed those people. He has merely suspended them to say, you cannot be there now. Let us seek peace first, and then you come back to your offices.

That’s what he has done. What he has done is to cement our democracy, to further solidify it, not to destroy it, as some people have been saying, but to further solidify the democracy that we have today. If you allow peace to reign, Rivers State will come back to what it’s supposed to be.

Is the president interested in any constitutional restraints on what he can do?

I think those who have that point of view are just using hyperbolic terms, exaggerating what the President has done, trying to picture him that way to dress him in the gala he doesn’t have.

This president is a democrat, and he has the pedigree. He didn’t just do it whimsically; he sought the opinion of his Attorney General before he took the step.

You mentioned some lawyers, who are constitutional lawyers saying the President did wrong. I can also tell you many constitutional lawyers who supported what the {resident has done.

I just read a few days ago that Chief Afe Babalola said what the President has done is correct. Even the former president of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) said the same thing. So, those who are saying the president has done wrong, it’s a point of view.

They are not necessarily right or let me say they are not right. It’s only the court of law that can determine whether what the President has done is wrong, or whether it is right.

So, those who are saying the President has done wrong, let them go and challenge it in the court of law and let’s see what the court will say at the end of the day.

What is the vision that President Tinubu has for Nigeria that all Nigerians will feel that they are reassuringly a part of, which will inspire them to contribute everything they can to the realisation of that vision?

I disagree with you on that. Renewed Hope is not a slogan. Renewed Hope is a programme. I will even say it’s an ideology of this administration. And if you look at our manifesto, you will see the roadmap that this government stated in the manifesto about what it intends to do to renew the hope of all Nigerians.

And that’s what the government has been doing from day one, saying whatever we have been doing in the past, we should forget those and let’s chart a new path. That’s what Renewed Hope is all about. This country, if you cast your mind back before this government came, things were bleak. People should not forget that in a hurry.

But the country was carrying very readily into a financial dark hole when this man and the new president came. If you remember, by 2020, before the president came, we were spending about 97 per cent of our revenue to even service debt.

That ratio has come down very drastically. We were not even able to raise internal revenue. This government has almost doubled it, and it is going to do more in 2025.

So, it’s a sign that things are getting better. You can see the flow of investment even in the oil sector and the economy generally. Was it not last week that the NNPC reported that since President Tinubu came, $17 billion has been invested in this economy. That’s just in the oil and gas sector. There are other investments in other sectors and it shows that things are getting better.

The economy is being put on a solid footing more than ever before and it must be to the credit of this administration. President Tinubu is very clear about what he wants to do to improve things in this country. He did it when he was in Lagos and he has brought to the national arena.