The recent outing by the Chairman of Nigeria Revenue Service, Mr. Zacch Adedeji, on Sunday Politics, was a blanket verdict on the characters of persons in the President Bola Tinubu administration. Olawale Olaleye writes. After watching the Chairman of the Nigeria Revenue Service (NRS), Mr. Zacch Adedeji, fumble on simple questions around basic principles of good governance and sound leadership, it’s easy to come to terms with the reality that, there are moments in public life when a single sentence tells you considerably more about an official than an hour-long interview ever could. His recent outing on Sunday Politics, a Channels Television programme dedicated to Politics, Governance and Current Affairs, has just given credence to the saying that, it’s better to stay quiet and remain unassuming than to open one’s mouth and clear all doubts, sadly, shamefully. For Adedeji, unfortunately, that moment arrived last Sunday. Appearing on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics, Adedeji undertook what ordinarily should have been an uncomplicated assignment: defend the economic policies of President Bola Tinubu. His job was clearly cut out without equivocation. Explain the administration’s thinking, provide context to some of its difficult choices and, perhaps most importantly, reassure a population carrying an extraordinary burden that those in government understand their sacrifices. Instead, somewhere along the way, the defence escaped him. What Nigerians got was something altogether different: a remarkable exhibition of how very easily intelligence can become separated from judgment. Asked about the cost of governance and the lifestyle of those in power at a difficult economic moment, Adedeji offered, among other things, the fact that President Tinubu walks from his residence to his office as evidence that the President is not living extravagantly. He said the President eats once a day, has spent long stretches without travelling abroad and hardly attends parties. Then came the sentence that ought to be studied in schools of public communication. “How much is an Escalade that the president of Nigeria cannot afford?” he asked. How much is an Escalade? Really? That question, coming from the man who heads the institution charged with collecting revenue from Nigerians, was perhaps more revealing than Adedeji intended. It was not merely the answer that was troubling. It was the frame of mind from which such an answer could emerge. Nigeria is living through a severe cost-of-living squeeze. Even where macroeconomic indicators have begun to improve, the relief has yet to reach millions of households in anything resembling proportion to the sacrifices demanded of them. Reuters reported only this week that many Nigerians continue to struggle with food, fuel and other essentials despite improving investor sentiment and other signs of macroeconomic stabilisation. That is the audience Adedeji was addressing. Not economists at a seminar. Not a gathering of investment bankers. Not presidential aides sitting around a conference table in the Villa. Ordinary Nigerians. Men and women, who calculate transport fares before leaving home. Families that revise food lists several times before reaching the market. Salary earners for whom the last week of the month has become an exercise in improvisation. Small-business owners confronted simultaneously by electricity costs, fuel costs, rent, taxes and weakening purchasing power. And the chairman of the country’s revenue service looks into a television camera and asks them, in effect: How much is an Escalade anyway? Therein lies the tragedy. The question was never whether Tinubu could afford an Escalade. Adedeji either misunderstood the question put to him or chose to answer a more convenient one. The issue is not whether Bola Tinubu, as a private citizen, possesses sufficient personal wealth to buy a Cadillac Escalade. That is beside the point. A President may personally be able to afford 50 Escalades. He may be capable of buying a private aircraft, a yacht and whatever else catches his fancy. If lawfully acquired with private resources, that would be a different conversation entirely. The question about the cost of governance concerns public resources. It asks whether a government demanding sacrifice from its citizens is itself demonstrating restraint. It asks whether the political class appreciates the moral obligation to share, or at least visibly recognise, the burden of economic adjustment. It asks whether official expenditure reflects the gravity of the times. It asks why the belt appears permanently tightened around the waist of the citizen while government always seems to find another hole through which its own waist may expand. These are questions of leadership, s
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