By Emeka Alex Duru
A friend called the other day from Germany to get a true picture of situations in the country. The initial attempt was to pretend that all was well, that, apart from the dust of the February/March elections, there was not much to worry about. But that seemed a big error, in fact, a terrible one. He blurted: “Old Boy (as we address ourselves), you got it wrong on this. Reports I get every day from people at home indicate that things are not working. The emergence of Bola Tinubu has not helped matters. Except those in the corridors of power, every other citizen is panting. What I get is that, for Nigerians, it’s from frying pan to fire.”
There was nothing to argue with him. Perhaps, at no time have Nigerians had it as rough as they are going through currently. And to think that this is a country that is not at war, yet the citizens are literally passing through hell in the hands of their leaders. It rankles exceedingly. The cost of every basic item in the land has hit the rooftop. Nigerians are hungry and angry! Minor issues that would have been overlooked can now result in fisticuffs. People wear frowns on their faces as if they woke up to continue with unfinished quarrels.
This appears to be the only system where the past is reminisced over the present. You would hear the people constantly cite instances of the ‘better’ days that have gone. In Nigeria, things don’t seem to improve, they get worse. Look at the leadership profiles of successive administrations. It took the lethargy and cluelessness of the Goodluck Jonathan administration for the people to reference the misguided Olusegun Obasanjo government as one that gave the country focus.
The ululation that accompanied the Muhammadu Buhari government
soon gave way for despair and the people realizing that they had elected a
parochial and narrow-minded President. It did not take up to two years for
Nigerians to realise that, even in his utter lassitude, Jonathan was by far a
superstar compared to Buhari. That was when it dawned on the people that the
assumed taciturnity of Buhari was not a matter of concern over the direction
the country but a dummy – sheer concealment of inaction and acute situation of
not knowing what to say or do.
Tinubu
has worsened the situation. Painfully, he is on the way to lionizing Buhari
with his litany of errors. Karl Meier, former West African correspondent of the
Independent of London, could not have chosen a better title for his book on
Nigeria than This House Has Fallen. Nigeria, is currently on all fours, truth
be told.
It
could only take a President of Tinubu’s hue to make a weighty announcement of
removing fuel subsidy and harmonizing the foreign exchange market on his first
day in office, without cabinet or any known body of technocrats working with
him. Since that declaration, which he admitted was based on the spur of the
moment, Nigeria has not been the same.
In October 2022, four months to the February 25, 2023, presidential
election, we had argued here that Nigerians needed to know the candidates they
were voting for. Knowing them went beyond merely knowing their names,
identifying their faces or the political parties they were representing. The voters
needed to know their thinking, their level of sophistication and emotional
intelligence. They needed to know what they had in ideology and programmes at
repositioning the country. For a system that has been maliciously held down by
a chain of rapacious leadership for the greater part of its 63 years of
statehood, having such details on those aspiring for the highest office in the
land mattered.
Being
the standard-bearer of a political party is a big deal. It is not a position
for the boys but for serious minds. The office itself – the presidency –
demands a lot. Gerald R. Ford, 38th President of the United States, captured it
that the presidency is not a prize to be won but a duty to be done. It is the
hardest job in the world, says American essayist, John Dickerson, in his piece
on the White House.
For
obvious reasons, the handlers of Tinubu shielded him from interrogation and
ensured that his supporters did not know their candidate adequately. A
gathering at the British Foreign Institute, the Chatham House, days to the
election provided him the opportunity to tell the world how ready he was for
the job, to sell himself and his programmes to the international community.
It gave him the chance to address nagging questions on his health, his past, his academic records and his real identity – issues that his opponents have serially feasted on in mocking him. Rather, he ducked and parried the questions thrown at him at the gathering to his stooges. By evading the questions and assigning them to surrogates, Tinubu unwittingly confessed his lack of capacity and preparation for the presidency.
Now he has happened to Nigeria, irrespective of his breezy paths to power and accompanying disputations. But Nigerians are bearing the brunt. From his very first day in office, it was certain that he had no precise programme for the country, despite his claims that attaining the position had been his lifelong ambition. In removing the fuel subsidy and unfolding a phantom palliative regime, the entire thing looks vacuous. Tinubu is yet to explain to Nigerians how distribution of rice and maize as well as a paltry N5 billion to the states in the form of “palliatives,” would cushion the impacts of the outrageous pump price of petrol, rising inflation and youth unemployment due to closure of small and medium-scale businesses that his hasty withdrawal of subsidy and forex market harmonisation have caused.
Governance
is not about catering for the interests of cronies and hangers-on. That is the
major challenge of the Tinubu administration. He is so much surrounded with
sycophants who daily feed him with the impression that things are normal,
while, in fact, the country is going down the hill. Daren Acemoglu and James
Robinson, authors of the encompassing book, Why Nations Fail, summed it that
the most common reasons why nations fail is because of parasitic political and
economic classes. Nigeria has had this extractive elite over the years. For
them, what matters is what they derive from the system, not what they add to
it. The Tinubu administration is furthering this odious culture to the
detriment of the people.
*Duru, the Editor of TheNiche, is a commentator on public issues
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