Minister of Information and National Orientation Mohammed Idris has said President Bola Ahmed Tinubu listens to citizens and uses their feedback before adjusting government policy.
Idris spoke in Abuja on Tuesday when a delegation from the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS), led by Director-General Prof. Ayo Omotayo, visited the ministry. He said the ministry’s job is not only to announce policy but to carry public opinion back to the presidency.
“Whenever I sit with him, the first question he asks is: ‘What are Nigerians saying?’” Idris said. The president, he added, is not merely a broadcaster of decisions; he wants to know what people think. Governance, in that telling, is a process that can be modified.
He pointed to the National Orientation Agency’s more than 800 offices as a way to hear farmers, artisans and others at the grassroots. He also pledged support for NIPSS research on the creative, or “Orange,” economy, the theme of Senior Executive Course 48. Former minister Lai Mohammed attended.
Omotayo said participants had visited seven Nigerian states and several countries to study creative industries and their possible role in a trillion-dollar economy. NIPSS plans a national summit and exhibition. The sector, he said, covers about 48 areas and can create jobs; some Nigerian musicians have already earned large sums on digital platforms. He asked the ministry to help promote the summit so the country would take the creative economy more seriously.
The minister’s claim is institutional: a two-way pipe from villa to street and back. Whether that pipe changes prices, security or hospital queues is the test citizens apply, not the courtesy visit. NIPSS is asking the same government to treat music, film and design as economic infrastructure.
If the feedback loop Idris describes is real, the orange-economy file is one place it could show up—as policy that follows what people already earn, not only what the state already announces.
