By Ikechukwu Amaechi
Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu,
Nigeria’s president since May 29, 2023 is a man of many parts, talented in
multiple areas of life. As someone who is able to do many different things
almost effortlessly, Nigerians perceive him as a superman – the “ideal superior
man of the future,” as described by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, the 19th
century German philosopher in Thus Spake Zarathustra, “who could rise above
conventional Christian morality to create and impose his own values.”
Notwithstanding, it has become glaring in the 11 months of his presidency that what is still unknown about him far outstrips what people thought they knew. For instance, Nigerians didn’t reckon with his ability to do a disappearing act on them. Again, how could anyone have imagined that Tinubu had the ability to cast a spell on an otherwise vibrant people and turn them into zombies so much so that even in the face of egregious conducts, the people would rather relapse into portentous silence?
On Wednesday, May 8, the
president returned to the country after disappearing, literally, into thin air
for more than one week. Tinubu left Abuja on April 23 for the Netherlands on
what the Presidency described as an official visit.
His Special Adviser on Media and
Publicity, Ajuri Ngelale, said the visit was on the invitation of the Dutch
Prime Minister Mark Rutte. While there, Tinubu engaged in high-level
discussions with the Prime Minister and the Dutch royalty, including His Royal
Majesty, King Willem-Alexander and his wife, Queen Maxima. Thereafter, he
proceeded to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to attend a special World Economic Forum,
WEF, meeting scheduled for April 28 and 29.
But after what looked like a
successful trip to the Netherlands and Saudi Arabia, rather than return to
Nigeria as scheduled, the president vanished into thin air. All attempts by
Nigerians to know his whereabouts were rebuffed. Otherwise loquacious and
impertinent mouthpieces of the government uncharacteristically became dumb.
Then on Tuesday, May 7, eight
days after his disappearance, Tinubu’s Special Adviser on Information and
Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, finally confirmed that he was hibernating somewhere in
Europe, but will return to Nigeria on Wednesday, May 8. “President Bola Ahmed
Tinubu, along with his aides, will return to Nigeria tomorrow from Europe,”
Onanuga tweeted.
And in the early hours of
Wednesday, Tinubu moseyed back to the country which he left two weeks ago as if
nothing happened. And it will be business as usual until the next time he will
do another disappearing act, which no one needs to be a Nostradamus, the man
who saw tomorrow, to predict it will happen sooner than later.
The truth is that President
Tinubu took ill at some point during the Riyadh WEF meeting and as has become
customary, cancelled every other state duty to attend to his health. If he had
been in Nigeria, Aso Rock spin doctors would have told us that he went for a
private visit. But because he was already abroad, it was convenient for them to
be tongue-tied and ignore Nigerians.
I have no doubt in my mind that
Tinubu will get away with these disdainful acts. He believes that he has
conquered Nigeria and in a sense he has. If not, how can someone who claims to
be occupying the highest office in the land by virtue of the people’s mandate
act with so much impunity? Daily, the president and his cohorts game the system
and dare us to do our worst.
Maybe, the state capture is now
complete. But ultimately, as the conquerors who masquerade as leaders continue
to humiliate Nigerians with their contemptuous silence in situations where
explanations are needed, the joke is on them because as Nietzsche further noted
in the Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “Silence is worse; all truths that are kept
silent become poisonous.”
Everyday, Tinubu’s vuvuzelas continue to impudently tell anyone who dares
to ask questions, no matter how pertinent, to take a swim in a
crocodile-infested lagoon, which was what Daniel Bwala did this week when he
claimed that the president could govern Nigeria from anywhere because Aso Rock,
the seat of Nigerian government, was neither a block industry nor Tinubu a
bricklayer.
Whatever that means. But come to
think of it, aren’t leaders, particularly in fractured societies such as ours
with so many problems, supposed to be bricklayers, laying the building blocks
of a renascent society brick after brick?
Bwala, the erstwhile Atiku Abubakar Man Friday, who is excitably doing everything to be invited to the presidential dinner table said rather incredulously: “The President is in charge of the country and can govern from anywhere in the world whether the Vice President is also in Nigeria or not. Aso Villa is not a block industry and the President is not a bricklayer. Read Section 5 of the Constitution.”
And he must have been
happy with himself after such a “profound” discovery. How dumb can some people
get because of avarice?
Of course, Bwala did that to
further ingratiate himself with Tinubu. And in doing so, it didn’t matter to
him that he was throwing shade at his former paymaster, Atiku, whose only crime
was cautioning against Vice President Kashim Shettima and Tinubu being away
from the country at the same time as Shettima was preparing to travel to the US
for the US-Africa Business Summit even in the absence of his principal.
Atiku said a foreign trip by the
vice president at such an inauspicious time would create leadership vacuum at
the nation’s seat of power and a damning impression that the country was on
autopilot. Fortunately, reason prevailed and the vice president tactically
aborted the trip on the excuse that the presidential aircraft malfunctioned.
But the intervention of
characters like Bwala, one of the unofficial spokesmen of Tinubu, should worry
every well-meaning Nigerian. The fact that these hustlers who are prepared to
do everything to be admitted to the table have become the lodestars of the
Tinubu administration can only spell doom for Nigeria.
Of course, Bwala was talking
about the provisions of Chapter 1, Part 2, Section 5 of the 1999 Constitution
which deals with the executive powers of the Federation. As a lawyer, he knows
that no section of the Constitution says that the president can govern from the
moon if he so wished. He knows that Nigerians deserve to know the whereabouts
of the president. It is a right, not a privilege.
Recently, there was an uproar
when the US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was admitted to hospital without
making it public. Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers criticized him early
this year for failing to disclose a prostate cancer diagnosis and subsequent
hospitalisations in December 2023 and January 2024. He was summoned to testify
before Congress on February 29 about the situation.
Subsequently, Austin, a retired
army four-star general, the 28th US secretary of defence, who, before retiring
from the military in 2016, served as the 12th commander of US Central Command,
apologised during a televised news briefing for failing to disclose his health
condition.
And guess what? He was
hospitalised at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Centre right there in
Maryland.
When he had a relapse in
February, the Pentagon released a statement saying he had been taken to Walter
Reed for treatment. Not only that, the Pentagon also announced that he had
“transferred the functions and duties of the office” to Deputy Defence Secretary
Kathleen Hicks. And he is just a minister, not the president. But as a public
official, whether appointed or elected, he is accountable to the people and
such accountability includes his health status and whereabouts.
That is how things are done in
sane climes where leaders are accountable to the people at whose pleasure they
hold and exercise power. In Nigeria, the reverse is the case. The people
worship their rulers.
It is simply inconceivable that
even here in Africa, a President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa, or Nana
Akufo-Addo of Ghana, for instance, will go AWOL after attending an
international conference, and return after more than a week without
consequences.
It is only in a banana republic
that such impudence is normalised. But can Tinubu be blamed for his hubris?
There are precedents. He took a cue from his predecessor, Muhammadu Buhari,
just as Buhari learnt the ropes from Umaru Yar’Adua. One thing is sure, these
are early days. Tinubu’s disappearance acts can only get worse.
*Amaechi is the publisher of TheNiche
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