My advice to the president’s advisers is to let the nation feel the humane aspect of Tinubu. Let us see him demonstrate empathy. Not the orchestrated type. I am sure Tinubu will never say he doesn’t see the hunger in the land. He is not that type of politician judging by his antecedents!
INEVITABLY and instructively, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has become a symbol for and of all that has gone bad in our beleaguered, bandits-infested and drifting country. The state of the economy (judging by the rate of inflation) and the cost of living which is killing the living has not helped matters, with apparently comfortable folks routinely asking to be bailed out with as little as 30K!
PMS? That one is a sure killer. How many liters of fuel can forty-thousand naira buy if you drive an SUV or a truck that drinks fuel as if prudence has gone out of fashion? Even keke drivers complain about the cost of fueling their vehicles too! They transfer the burden to miserable commuters. What about the ubiquitous but restricted okada on account of being complicit in criminal activities?
Nigerians lay the blame at the doorstep and on the head of the incumbent President! Which is not new. Not a surprise. The leader gets blamed for everything that goes wrong in the land, even if unfairly!
One does not need a prophet or seer to tell Mr. President that hunger is biting hard in the country and that some people actually rummage through dustbins for remnants of food. And I remember Umaru Dikko under Alhaji Shehu Shagari saying ‘we will leave no stone unturned to ensure that there is sufficient food in Nigeria and nobody will eat from the dustbin’ twisted by the media to read ‘there was no hunger in the land because no one as yet was eating from dustbins! Dikko will never forget Nigeria and Nigerians and the distorted message which resonated very well with Nigerians at the time because of intense hardship while politicians were reveling in luxury, especially with the celebrated (notorious?) case of Akinloye Champagne imported from France!
By the way, never mind the out-of-this-planet comment of Presidential spokesman Chief Bayo Onanuga who is misquoted on Arise TV as saying that he does ‘not see the level of hunger Nigerians complain about! Good a thing he was misquoted as saying that he ‘has not seen’. He didn’t say that that level of hunger doesn’t exist. Can one see that level of hunger in the luxury of Aso Rock? Naah! But I believe Onanuga was misquoted. Or it was the work of Artificial Intelligence manipulated by his enemies from Ijebu land known for their fetish propensities! That statement was out of character for the Bayo Onanuga we had known in his chequered history of confronting bad/insensitive governments.
President Donald Trump of America described us in language that is unbecoming of a president just as former British Prime Minister David Cameron referred to our country as ‘fantastically corrupt’ in ways that reminded us that the era of simple niceties and courtesies in international relations is gone. Diplomatese? Relegated to the ashbin of history. What do we expect of a president who in the 21st century threatened to bomb out a civilization when he said ‘a whole civilization will die tonight? I wonder how John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan would have related with Trump!
Some aggrieved Nigerians rose in defense of the name of our dear country, stating in clear terms that in times of external aggression it behooves us to bury the hatchet in the head of a common enemy or first chase away the fox before warning the hen against wandering or something like that, quoting Chinua Achebe the proverbs genius, and that Trump was the enemy to civilization as we had known it and that he should focus on building instead of destroying people, and reminded him of his self-proclaimed image as a man of peace who will stop all wars, thereby making him a fitting candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize! Hehehehehe!
There were others (very unpatriotic Nigerians in my view) who praised Trump and Cameron for saying as it is, not minding the fact that some citizens who said what and how they felt about Donald Trump on social media have been hounded hand and foot or denied entry visa into the paradise of America or have even been arrested and dumped in ICE-facilities with one surrounded by a crocodile-sharks-infested river/terrain! Omar Abdulkadir Artan the FIFA referee who was denied a visa into America has a story to tell.
I am surprised that America allowed the Iranian team into the Paradise of America, home of Satan to play soccer! For good measure they took peeps of The Promised Land only on days that they played matches and flew back into the sh.thole of Mexico till their next match!
Never mind too that the very straightforward and reliable British system has changed Prime Ministers 7 magical and mystical times in 10 mystical years, like an adult who changes his nappies! Sir Keir Starmer came in with a lot of promise but soon stepped on the head of a ravaging/roaming rattlesnake at No.10 Downing Street in the shadow of the Epstein files and Lord Mandelson’s ambassadorial posting to America. How long will it take incoming PM Andy Burnham before he burns his fingers in British politics? May be two years. Or three at the most going by the recent of Prime Ministerial mishaps!
Back to topic for the day. Baba Tinubu and the rest of us! A leader’s head is the official dustbin of the community. So, everything that goes wrong is heaped on the head of the incumbent ruler. Or leader. President Buhari saw pepper in the hands of Nigerians when some even swore that it was his doppelganger that sat in Aso Rock, having been replaced by one Alhaji Jibrin from Niger Republic! Kai! Nigerians and fabu creations! A man who is unable to impregnate his wife blames Tinubu. An okada rider who exploits his passengers blames Tinubu. A landlord whose tenants are unable to pay their rent blames Tinubu. Everyone blames Tinubu for everything wrong in the country. He is the fall guy for our own weaknesses, systemic failure, and moral failings. The state governors don’t receive any attention. The LG chairmen don’t get mentioned. Tinubu is the cause of everything bad.
It is true that he made some promises before coming to power. He promised to fix power generation and supply. He ended up installing solar power in the presidency. Politicians can eat their own words sometimes. Winston Churchill is quoted as saying that ‘in the course of my life, I have often had to eat my words, and I must confess that I have always found it a wholesome diet’. The only lacuna is that the government offered no explanations to the electorate. I didn’t expect the president himself to offer explanations. This is for the aides to do. Insecurity. Inherited. I am excited that the president has made good his promise to establish subnational policing. Let the States have their own Police outfits. That way we can hold the governors accountable if insecurity persists.
His administration has helped to resolve the ASUU-Federal government dingdong affair. I am excited by the coastal road concept which can alter the face of long-distance road travel in Nigeria. I look forward to a rail track in the middle of the coastal road. There is more to be done in unbundling the problematic federal system of neither/nor that we have.
When it comes to roasting the incumbent office holder, Nigerians fire from all cylinders. It does not matter that President Tinubu inherited a system and culture which have taken decades in coming. The economy. Education. Cybercrime. An unstable polity. Insecurity. This one. This is the biggest of them all! Culture. Social media. Tinubu is responsible for everything bad. Even the maize or groundnut seller who has hiked the price of their commodity by a hundred percent blame it all on Tinubu. This is a classical case of the people versus leadership. The biblical account of the exodus shows how the people who saw a demonstration of God Almighty’s miraculous power turned to idolatry in the physical absence of the man Moses.
So, President Tinubu is in distinguished company if he is held accountable for the woes, real or imaginary, of the nation. By the way if any other person had succeeded Buhari they would have adopted the same policy on subsidy removal or the exchange rate. The method may have been different. Tinubu was prepared to make the difficult decision of subsidy which Buhari shied away from openly. He campaigned and fought for the job. I remember the passion behind the ‘emilokan’ speech. So, he must accept the garlands and thorns of the office.
My advice to the president’s advisers is to let the nation feel the humane aspect of Tinubu. Let us see him demonstrate empathy. Not the orchestrated type. I am sure Tinubu will never say he doesn’t see the hunger in the land. He is not that type of politician judging by his antecedents!
- Prof Eghagha is of the Dept pf English, University of Lagos
