Opinion
By Steve Osuji
THE tin-god democrat: This column can state categorically that President Bola Tinubu is not a democrat. He is a power monger who has climbed on the back of democracy to grab power. For him, democracy is a highway maiden who’s services he procures to sate his appetite.
Tinubu’s vice grip on Lagos since 1999 is one proof that he’s a political barracuda who would not share his space with any fry. Show me a godfather and I will show you a dictator. If you still have any doubts about Tinubu’s democratic bona fides, consider the 2023 presidential election. A democrat doesn’t declare plaintively that it’s his turn to be president. Democracy to him is a game of thrones: “Smash, grab and run with it, (the crown).” A democrat doesn’t debase the tenets of democracy in order to get power; a democrat doesn’t capture the state in the quest for power as we have in Nigeria today. The legislature, the judiciary, the electoral body and nigh anything that stands in the polity is in a choke-hold under President Tinubu’s balmy armpit. He’s best described as a tin-god democrat. He manipulates the world’s most beautiful governance ideal for his own devious end.
DEMOCRACY IN TIME OF CHOLERA: So it is that Tinubu plotted for Nigeria’s presidency for over two decades. Now that he’s grabbed it, he’s much distraught upon realising that power is one thing and governance is another. After a year of ascending the throne, he has nothing to report. Almost, absolute zero. To deflect that ugly fact, he wouldn’t address Nigerians on his first anniversary in office (something unheard of in the annals of democratic governance), rather, he organised a democracy show: the 25th anniversary of the annulment of the presidential election of June 12, 1993.
Here, he celebrates a free and fair election but sits on a dubious mandate.
While Tinubu deigns to celebrate democracy, he dodged telling Nigerians what he has been up to in the last 12 months. While he hees and haws, cholera is ravaging the country starting from Lagos. As at two days ago, 30 states, 30 deaths and 1141 hospitalised. Lagos leads with 15 fatalities and 350 suspected cases, according to The Punch.
Cholera is a poverty-induced disease. It occurs only in the poorest of environments. No properly run society reports cholera outbreak anymore. The Cholera this time can be said to be Tinubu’s cholera, his special gift to Nigerians on his first anniversary.
The whole of Nigeria lacks potable water. This crisis has been exacerbated by high cost of packaged water. Under Tinubu’s watch, most Nigerians can’t afford packaged drinking water anymore. Basic staple food are beyond the reach of the majority of Nigerians. This is a fertile environment for cholera and other opportunistic diseases to fester. Sadly we don’t have the capacity to take count or gather basic health data. Rural health centres are comatose across the country but annual rural health budgets are in billions. You would think a president would speak to issues like these and not some cheap platitudes about democracy he doesn’t believe in.
NOT EVEN BUHARI: Nigeria’s current president, Bola Tinubu is setting a new template in democratic leadership. Not one press interview or media parley in one year. Worse still, at the end of a usually crucial first year as president, Tinubu ignored addressing Nigerians on his scorecard and stewardship of the commonwealth.
Even Buhari, the arch autocrat turned democrat, gave Nigerians one of his best speeches on his first anniversary in 2016. Though, as has become the way of the ruling APC, Buhari got his long-sought prize – the presidency, and like a rabbit in the glare of a strong light, he became frozen. Inertia seized him to the point that he couldn’t appoint ministers for almost half the first year.
A contrite President Buhari told Nigerians on the occasion of his 1st anniversary: “For too long, ours has been a society that neglects the poor and victimises the weak… So today, I am happy to formally launch, by far, the most ambitious social protection programme in our history.” That was Buhari on his first year.
But President Tinubu didn’t deem it necessary to render an account to Nigerians after one year. On May 29th, we were told Tinubu would address the nation on Democracy Day on June 12. They made it seem like the two epochs were one and the same. But alas, on June 12, 2024, President Tinubu dished Nigerians a dissonant democracy fable that could have been better published in a lowly tabloid.
NOTHING TO REPORT: It was a dissembling anti-climax. Tinubu had no scorecard to show Nigerians after one year. The bunch of poor propagandists who masquerade as strategists had organised a jamboree where no-good cabinet members had equivocated all day about their incompetence and failures. On Democracy Day, the inept presidential handlers had uncannily unveiled a larger-than-life portrait of President Tinubu; a portrait that’s already staking for a place in the Guinness Book of Records. Bloated image, bloated ego in aid of a failing presidency. In the face of a horrendous year in which Nigerians have been diminished and damaged like rotten tomato, Nigerians are fed inanities by infantile presidential handlers.
TINUBU LU’LE: President Tinubu had a great fall on the parade ground. But this column wagers that he didn’t fall, providence gave him a gentle nudge. It’s a signal to Tinubu and his ruling clique to don their thinking cap.
Tinubu and his presidency have failed woefully in the first year – to the point that they can’t muster an address. All performance indices are not only pointing downwards, they have crashed. They met a dead nation, they insist , but like undertakers, they have nigh buried it in just one year!
But the worry for Nigerians is not that everything has gone awry under Tinubu, the great concern is that the president can’t seem to do the right things or move in the right direction. Despite all the promptings and tips from well-meaning Nigerians, hope seems to dim by the day and it’s frustration galore in the land.
AGAIN, WHAT TINUBU CAN DO: Again we proffer below, a few quick things this government can do to begin to quickly turn things around. Call them low hanging fruits, if you will.
First, this presidency is puny. (See Puny Presidency, EXPRESSO_PRESIDENCYWatch, 25 July, 2023).
Fact is that there are few thinking heads in this government for the urgency and enormity of work at hand. This presidency must be tinkered with quick. The economic team too is poor. They are mere fish in water, no one is holding down the bull or taking it by the horns.
People don’t know or seem to remember anymore that Godwin Emefiele (being vilified today) was the thought leader in the eight years of Buhari. Emefiele controlled the exchange regime (in line with Buhari’s nationalist inclination); he managed the subsidies, ensured there was a modicum of production and curbed excessive imports. He also galvanised development finance for large industry, MSME. He drove large scale agric production…
Look around, who’s doing all this now?
Second, again and again, Tinubu must intentionally cut waste and frivolous spending. He must stem crude oil theft, apprehend and make a show of bringing the oil thieves to book. Why are the refineries still not working? Why are we importing everything now including crude oil and refined Petroleum products?
Third, this government doesn’t seem to care about the rampaging corruption in every sphere of the polity; indeed beginning from the presidency. Nigeria is now scourged by the military and security set up and not by terrorists and bandits. The commander-in-chief has a duty to urgently cleanse this graft-induced rot in the military-security-intelligence architecture to end the endless insecurity in the land. Weed out the black legs in the military! End insecurity in the land! There must be patriotic men and women left in the armed forces to wring the required change, especially if we look beyond ethnic considerations.
Fourth, sycophants now describe Tinubu’s blundering as ‘reform’. But the real reform must commence immediately. He must start by clearing out the numerous clueless ministers in the cabinet, prime the various institutions of government, drive agriculture, shore up export capacity and improve operating environment for businesses. Why is the president not worried that even multinationals are fleeing Nigeria?
Lastly, he can easily reconcile the polity by applying political solution to lingering ethnic and separatist strives. This will calm some frayed nerves and win over for him, some fractious elements in the polity.
EPILOGUE: It may not have been all gloom but even the few wins by Tinubu are haphazard and mired by flip-flops. Consider the policy to rationalisation MDAs; the students’ loan scheme, the fuel subsidy removal, LGA re-tracking and the minimum wage brouhaha. Some of these if properly and timeously delivered would have been of great impact.
This column avers that if Tinubu could get the local government council to work again, Nigerians would probably forgive him everything because that singular act would signal the beginning of a new Nigeria.
After Tinubu’s one year, hope is neither renewed nor bright. Some Tinubu diehards think time is on his side, but the only thing sure is that there shall not be any more excuses on the second anniversary.
A.I
June 17, 2024 @ 18:13 GMT|
Tags: President Bola Tinubu Steve Osuji
