Save The President From Himself!

 By Dan Onwukwe

Nothing is normal any more in Nigeria. In both scale and scope, the ominous signs are everywhere for any discerning mind to see. The message is simple:  What leaders do while they are trying to get political power is not necessarily what they do after they have it. That, in itself, is lesson in power. Whatever former President Muhammadu Buhari made worse for Nigeria and its citizens, Tinubu presidency is striving to make breathtakingly  much worse in scope.

*Tinubu
If Buhari was, for want of a better word, a nepotistic Northern President, Tinubu is careening dangerously towards becoming, to paraphrase Olusegun Adeniyi, columnist and Chairman, Editorial Board, ThisDay newspapers, an ‘Oduduwa President’. The evidence is no longer in doubt. 

Did we see this coming? Were we not warned? What do you do with a scandal-plagued President? In 140 days of his presidency, Tinubu looks, by every measure, in desperate political trouble. The honeymoon is far gone. Look at the man’s performance so far,  it is as if he’s at the nadir of his presidency. Everything seems out of joints. According to the London based Financial Times, Tinubu’s “economic policies are going awry”. Under his leadership, Nigeria is polarised down the middle. The fault lines that divide us have widened more than ever before. His academic records and identity crisis are not the only issues of immediate sort.

Other core issues are his leadership style, competence, lack of effectiveness, his feebleness, and bumbling, among other troubling traits. And while Nigerians are groaning under the worst living conditions in decades, the president’s son, Seyi, recently flew in presidential yet to a polo event in Kano. Nigeria’s assets have become the first family’s private property. How sad! What is unfolding before us is not just the unresolved issues of his academic records, but also the choice of his political appointments. Is this President irreversibly committed to a defined course of action and bent on satisfying sectional agenda? That Buhari did almost the same thing an excuse to justify this pursuit of narrow, dimwitted provincial presidency?     

All of this has revealed both his real character and shortcomings. It calls for all hands on deck to save the President from himself. This has become critically important because, as historians will tell us, without a vision beyond a leader’s own selfish agenda and advancement, a leader is almost paralyzed once the goal had been achieved. We warned when Buhari embarked on this cynical, self-destructive ambition, but it was not heeded. And this is where he left Nigeria, in the worst rung of leadership scale, and the people in extreme poverty, a collapsed economy and misery ever imaginable. In the case of Tinubu, what we are witnessing is the temperament and behaviour of the most ambitious, cynical political player adept at amazing power that is at odds with federal character and imaginative visionary that cannot make great things happen for his Nigeria and Nigerians.                                    

Added to his identify crisis, this concern about a regional presidency is real and capable of undermining our democracy and federal character as provided in Section 14(3) of the Constitution (as amended). We will come back to this shortly. But suffice it to say that the current conversation on the President’s academic records and identity crisis will not go away anytime soon, regardless of the outcome of the appeal filed by Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi at Supreme Court in the weeks or months ahead. That’s the issue raised last week by Mr Peter Obi, Labour Party Presidential candidate in the February 25 election. The same concern was also raised by columnist Dr. Festus Adedayo(Published in Sunday Tribune, October 8, 2023)

Adebayo had asked these salient questions: “who is the man who today sits atop the Presidency of Nigeria? What is his name? Who are his parents? Who are his childhood friends? What was his childhood like? What primary school did he attend? Or the university? Is he a serial forger? On account of the above, can we trust him? Can he be trusted with the destinies of over 200 million Nigerians? Can the rest of the world trust him as the embodiment of Nigeria?” These are the right questions that can’t be wished away by Tinubu’s hordes of sychophants. Peter Obi drove these issues even more forcefully in his press conference last Wednesday in Abuja. He said that Tinubu “should have saved the nation and himself from this protracted embarrassment and undue anxiety”.  

Beyond this, Obi argued that, “even this late in the day, however, Tinubu still owes the nation and the world a simple debt of obligation that only he can discharge. I call on him to immediately and personally mount the rostrum of his present high office to perform a simple task once and for all time”. That is what great leader who sought the mandate of the people, with a sincere desire to use power to achieve great purposes ought to have done. But not this President. Besides, Obi urged him to “reintroduce himself to the nation he governs and to the world for the avoidance of further doubt”. Can Tinubu heed this counsel and come clean on his true identity, place of birth, his parentage, the primary and secondary schools he attended with dates as well as the actual universities he attended and certificates obtained? I can bet on Aso Rock that Tinubu would not. The APC missed the point when its National Publicity Secretary Mr Morka argued without substance that Tinubu “does not need to reintroduce himself”.  

This is the nuanced picture of the man in the mirror. It’s his nature, the complexities of his overweening ambition. Having acquired that power he so craved for, Tinubu feels, and perhaps truly so, that nothing is beyond him to get in Nigeria. But as Atiku Abubakar and many other Nigerians have argued, one man’s ambition should not override the collective good and reputation of the country. But is this man and his deceitful supporters who harvest in crisis listening? That is why Nigeria’s politics and politicians are not measuring up in democratic ideals.    

This is in spite of Obi’s robust argument that a “leader cannot outsource a clear, unambiguous personal statement about his identity to political surrogates , social spokespersons, lawyers, or any other persons, no matter how highly placed. Does the President and his handlers know, to paraphrase Obi, that ‘the personal identity of a leader is too sensitive and central to the functions of the office he currently occupies…’? I am aware that having a larger end has always been more important to politicians than anything else.                       

This is evident in all Tinubu’s political career, and the battles he had fought. And the present one won’t be different. I did make the point on this column June 7, 2022, that in “all his political life, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu has held before himself the image of a daring cowboy, cast in the mold of a lion. He sees himself as the man with the capacity to outrun the wild herd, riding in the dark of the night, knowing there were prairie dog holes all around him”. This is a definition of a man to whom power means being able to bend people to his will, if possible, ruin their careers to achieve his own agenda. Such a leader doesn’t have any altruistic agenda other than using power to accomplish personal goals.           

That is what is driving him to fill key political appointments with people from his own ethnic group. Consider these political appointments: Wale Edun, Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of Economy, Dr Olayemi Cardoso, CBN Governor, Kayode Egbetokun, Inspector General of Police, Zacch Adedeji, Chairman Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Adewale Adeniyi, Comptroller General, Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Dele Alake, Minister Solid Minerals, Femi Gbajabiamila, Chief of Staff to the President, Chief Adebayo Adelabu, Minister of Power, Olanipekun Olukayode, Chairman, EFCC,  Chief Lateef Fagbemi, Attorney General and Minister of Justice. Other key ministers from from the President’s South West are: Gboyega Oyetola, Minister, Marine and Blue Economy, and Dr Bosun, Minister of Communication, Innovation and Digital Economy. Have we had it this bad since this present dispensation? Is this Yoruba or Oduduwa agenda? Or is this the emergence of an imperial president who can do no wrong? To be honest, I don’t think many Yoruba support this parochial agenda, and some of them have spoken out against the nature of these appointments. 

I suspect that more of Tinubu’s kinsmen in critical sectors of the economy are coming. Watch out! This will surpass the outrage that greeted Buhari’s northern appointments in his 8 years in office as President. My advice is that Tinubu should be watched carefully before he throws away our Constitution and turns it into his own playbook. And you ask: Where is the ‘Renewed Hope ‘ that he promised? Altogether, it bears repeating that Tinubu in less than five months in office has sacrificed national interest on the altar of sectional interests. 

More than any  thing else, Tinubu has revealed to us what he wanted to do with the office all along, the office he described as his ultimate life ambition.  This President needs reminding that the essence of Presidential power, according to Grant McConnel, the author of The Modern Presidency,  is the ability to appeal to both large and wide different constituencies at the same time. Every section of the country should receive equal treatment. For this reason Grant warns that any elected President who ignores this timely advice risks running aground in the office.

*Onwukwe is a commentator on public issues