The Long Game: What will Tinubu Leave Behind (2)?

In 2018, when the author enrolled at Johns Hopkins University–SAIS for graduate studies in Public Policy, she didn't anticipate that President Bola Tinubu would become a subject of her coursework. The course focused on Energy and Environment, with a case study titled "Remaking a Neglected Megacity: A Civic Transformation in Lagos State, 1999–2012."

The case study was not unique to Johns Hopkins University, as Harvard, Princeton, Cornell, and many other prestigious institutions studied it as well. The transformation in Lagos was attributed to Tinubu, and reading the case study made the author view Nigeria differently. Instead of viewing Tinubu as a newspaper character or a partisan figure, the author saw him as a governance case study, prompting a deeper question: what happens when a leader thinks beyond the next election?

In 2009, Tinubu gave an interview to Princeton University discussing his philosophy of "thinking for change." This phrase warrants attention, as it encapsulated Tinubu's approach before his focus on infrastructure, taxation, transportation reforms, digitization, and institutional restructuring. Before he became governor of Lagos, Tinubu described the state he inherited as plagued by decaying infrastructure, chaotic traffic, immense waste, antiquated accounting, bureaucracy, poor revenue collection, and a government in overdraft.

He did not view these issues as an excuse but as a "complex situation" that needed to be broken down into "manageable components." His approach was reminiscent of a management consulting practice like Deloitte, applying such thinking in real time.

The author, who had lived and worked in Lagos, recognized that Tinubu's strategy was not merely about management, but also about institutional reform. He addressed government revenue, payroll, information systems, and accountability. Tinubu introduced a biometric payroll system to eliminate ghost workers and a computerization system to improve the lives of civil servants and their families.

He emphasized that computerization could change the lives of citizens, and he highlighted a significant achievement: Lagos' revenue, which stood at N600 million monthly when he began, eventually grew into the billions.