In almost fifteen months of his presidency, Bola Tinubu and his party – the All Progressives Congress – have not been able to sell either hope or optimism. Nothing to uplift people, but everything to knock them down. Everywhere you look, despair and pessimism have supplanted hope. Don’t forget that every presidential campaign is a series of tests, and every policy reform initiated by the President is also a test of the promises made during the campaign. As it has turned out, almost every promise made by Tinubu during his quest for the presidency can now be seen for what it is, a bag of tricks to attend some personal end. If historians are to pass judgement on Tinubu’s government, the verdict will likely be that, this is one of the darkest chapters of modern Nigerian politics.
That’s what happens when a politician seeks power just for power sake. After all, didn’t he tell his supporters that ‘power is not served `a la carte… you have to grab it and run with it’? What has unravelled within this period is clear: what a leader does when he’s trying to get power is not necessarily what he does after he has got that power he desperately sought, especially for a man who claimed it was his turn. That approximates to what Robert A. Caro, a renowned American presidential historian said in one of his books, “The Path to Power”. It’s to the effect that, no one can truly lead or govern and be great who does not first acquire power and know how to use it. Often, the trouble is that the combination of the two skills is rare.
For me, that mirrors the current clumsy presidency that we have. From what we have seen so far, it’s not unfair to say that the President appears to be at a loss, perhaps confused about how to use power to achieve great purposes. Without a vision beyond a personal advancement, a leader could be paralysed in the implementation of his policies. Anyone who is concerned about the numerous missteps that President Tinubu has made since he was sworn in, doesn’t really understand the innermost heart of a typical Nigerian politician, who when he gets power, thinks there’s nothing really there but the desire for more power. Such a politician doesn’t have other agenda but to dominate others for his own gain.
That’s what happens when a president thinks like a fox, and believes that he can see the jugular in every one and goes for it. Isn’t “Renewal of Hope” the main staple of Tinubu’s presidential campaign? How has that panned out now? Why did he dash that hope from Day one, when he announced by fiat, “subsidy is gone”? That marked the beginning of the terrible situation Nigerians have found themselves today. That’s is where we are today, with hunger, hardship, insecurity, unemployment, soaring inflation and national debt stock that threaten lives and livelihoods. All of that culminated in the recent #EndBadGovernance protests in many states. Even though the protest has ended, it should serve as a warning of possible worse things ahead if urgent steps are not taken to address the issues that led to it. The nationwide broadcast by the President two Sundays ago, was increasingly painful to watch, and hard to bear. In that broadcast, the President offered no hope, and no symbolism of reassurance that the demands of the people calling for his immediate attention meant anything of value to him.
As a matter of fact, why should the President show empathy for the hardship and the demands of the people tugging at him? I guess many Nigerians were shocked to learn that the President was quoted to have told some traditional rulers who paid him a courtesy visit ahead of the protest that he “bought the presidential seat” with his personal money. Though this claim has not been verified, suffice it to say that accountability can only be demanded if the man who sits on the highest political office in the land holds that office in trust for the people. Indeed, it troubles the mind that our leaders, including President Tinubu, feel they don’t owe Nigerians any debt of gratitude. Maybe, they are right. How many of them truly came to power through the mandate of the electorate? Therefore, don’t expect any sunshine after the storm. It will amount to ‘waiting for Godot’, that absurdity of existence written by Irish playwright Samuel Beckett.. It is not far from the mirror image of this government and its sly methods.
We are in a tenure of briefcase of excuses, and a leadership that is not taking responsibility, and blaming everyone else but himself. That perhaps was why former vice president Atiku Abubukar, last week accused the President of being “deficient in credibility. Atiku also accused the presidency of constantly deploying “propaganda as state policy”. Expectedly, the president’s hitmen responded, called Atiku an “ethnic jingoist”. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo was more forthright in assessing the dire situation in the country , warning that the country “is sitting on a keg of gunpowder”. He describes Nigeria of today as a nation “that takes two steps forward, one step aside, and four steps backward”. He said the demands of the #EndBadGovernance protesters were “legitimate’, and advised the government to heed the people’s grievances and stop pretending that all is well. As Peter said on Sunday, the suffering of the masses is getting unbearable.
Will the government listen to these messages and not attack the messengers? Be sure the President will dismiss these urgent calls as coming from “sore losers”. But there comes a time in a nation when a leader should jettison partisanship and look facts – even unpleasant facts – in the face and not let himself be deluded by wishful thinking . Time is far gone to pretend that Nigeria is well. Nigeria is in decline, a failing nation. The symptoms of a failed states are evident. Even among the president’s men and rubber-necked sycophants, optimism and positive energy they had at the beginning of his presidency have since evaporated, but they are afraid to admit it. All that is wrong today in the country comes down to just one sentence: Abdication of leadership. Nigeria has lost its confidence, its willpower. But the president’s handlers haven’t lost their lies and conceit.
Some people are already predicting the emergence of a ‘strongman’ who may transform into an autocrat. But, I don’t see that succeeding because that vision will certainly backfire. Reason: Nigeria has a history of defeating a tyrant. And, Tinubu, despite his errors of judgement, was part of that vanguard that vanquished Gen. Sani Abacha. However, any assumption that Tinubu is still popular is a delusion. There’s a sweeping decline in his popularity across the country, especially in the North that foisted him on the rest of us and many of them are now complaining bitterly. It’s not hard to see the trajectory of this decline. It’s traceable, in part, to the one-dimensional image Tinubu’s handlers projected of him years ago as a NADECO chieftain, and later, as Governor of Lagos.
As Editor, Sunday Champion at the time, I witnessed first-hand, this sleight of hand by his media team, led by Dele Alake, current Minister of Solid Minerals. Give him that credit, Alake could sell water in the desert even when it’s raining. They packaged Tinubu as a compassionate leader, a master tactician, a wonkish intellectual, with political and idealistic gifts and extraordinary capacity for hard work, for public good. The veil is now off. It’s all façade that cannot stand intense public scrutiny today. That’s why power is like a bikini; it reveals more than it can hide. With a series of policy somersaults, this is the real Tinubu as President of Nigeria, not Tinubu as Governor of Lagos state. He is now on a bigger canvas. This is the problem : when a politician gets enough power, becomes the president of his country, you can then begin to see how he always wanted to treat people by watching what he does with the power and what he wanted to accomplish all along.
It needs recalling how Tinubu in 2012 unleashed attacks after attacks on some of the policies of the then President, GoodLuck Jonathan. He reserved his deadliest foul-mouthing and belittling slaps against Jonathan’s plan to remove fuel subsidy, and reminded him that his government “owes it’s very existence to the people’s desire to be governed by someone more humble than elitist”. He also described the attempt by Jonathan to remove fuel subsidy as a “sly piece of paper” that will toss the Nigerian people into what he called the “depths of the moonlight sea”. Last week, the President, said removal of fuel subsidy would not be reversed. What does that tell you about him? It’s simple: Many want to be president, but few are leaders in the true sense of it. Using power for great purposes has not been the gifting of some leaders.
We have seen lies, damn lies in most of this government’s claims. During his last nationwide broadcast, the President claimed that his government has disbursed N573bn to states as part of efforts to alleviate hardship. Some state governors have denied ever receiving such funds from the federal government. According to Gov. Seyi Makinde of Oyo state, what they received was refunds from the World Bank, not a dime(shishi) as grants from the federal authority. This is a classic leadership style of the present government. This administration needs reminding that the public’s notion of what a president should be are affected by what’s happening in their daily lives. The question I keep asking is, are you better off today than you were before Tinubu was sworn in on May 29, 2023?
Even though his predecessor Muhammadu Buhari sowed the seeds of the present economic crisis, Tinubu has perhaps done much worse in key sectors of the economy. If Buhari was a total failure, this administration could become a calamity. Any country facing the kind of economic challenges that Nigeria is confronted with, needs a Commander- in- chief, not an evasive manipulator. The country needs a caring leader, not a private schemer. Shifting expectations as this administration is doing can only produce shifting perceptions. This could be damaging to any leader who wants a legacy worth remembering. In the eyes of many, this administration appears disoriented and apparently knocked off its bearings. Could that be as a result of being overwhelmed by the challenges of the office, or the president’s underwhelming performance? Going forward, amid the gloom, doom and anger, can Tinubu take charge? He may. But he needs to look deep into his soul, away from yesmen around him and tell himself the gritty truth.
