Beyond The Economy, Why Is Tinubu So Unpopular? It’s Arrogance Of Power!

 By Olu Fasan

Recently, Indermit Gill, the World Bank’s chief economist and senior vice-president for development economics, wrote an article in the Financial Times urging Nigerians to embrace the economic reforms of their president, Bola Tinubu. “The country’s elites must forge a political consensus in support of these reforms,” he said.

*Tinubu

Like every seasoned policy expert, Gill knows that without a political consensus, no reform, especially a radical one, can succeed. However, what he failed to say is why there is no political consensus in favour of Tinubu’s economic reforms. Yet, addressing that point is, in part, key to understanding why Tinubu is so unpopular, and why few embrace his “reforms”.

Shettima Goofs: No Forces Want To Pull Down Nigeria!

 By Olu Fasan

Ahead of last year’s general elections, I wrote a piece titled “2023: Shettima Unfit To Be Nigeria’s Vice-President” (Vanguard, September 22, 2022). I argued that despite his education and seeming bibliophilism, Kashim Shettima suffers from negative parrhesia, expressing indecorous views freely without aforethought.

*Shettima

I wrote: “With Shettima’s inherent tetchiness and truculence, he would be gratuitously provocative. And with his uncouthness and indiscretion, he would be utterly divisive and toxifying.” Well, since he became vice-president, Shettima has done enough, with several infuriating comments, to validate my opinion of him. 

When Will Buhari Be Quizzed Over His Stewardship?

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi

Clapping back at the former Minister of Justice, Mohammed Adoke, who recently criticised former President Muhammadu Buhari for running “the most incompetent government we have ever seen in this country,” Mallam Garba Shehu dismissed him as corruption personified.

*Buhari and Tinubu
Adoke was scathing in his criticism, not only labelling Buhari the most incompetent president Nigeria ever had and will never have again, but also said his ruination of Nigeria was enabled by a set of political morons he personally assembled. That was a total take down.

Why All Eyes Will Continue To Be On The Judiciary

 By Emeka Alex Duru 

I cannot recall where, between Benin and Kano, that I first came across the hashtag “#AllEyesOnTheElectionTribunalJudges,” powered by Diasporas for good governance. But I read in it that Nigerians had not lost interest on the last general elections and all that played out in the exercise. Indeed, they should not and ought not! That was a particular election that Nigerians of all ages and classes, especially the youth, saw as one that would change many narratives in the country. 

It was one election which the organisers – the President Muhammadu Buhari administration and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) – advertised as the best that would happen to Nigeria. Buhari, in fact, boasted that the success of the election would stand as a legacy and point of reference for his regime. INEC chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, equally assured the whole world of conducting an election that would mark a radical departure from the past that was characterised by manipulations. 

As Nigeria’s Judges Get Set To Begin Voting

 By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

This week, the opening salvo will be fired to signal the onset of the final round of voting in Nigeria’s electoral marathon. This is not a reference to the state-level ballots that occurred around the country on Saturday, March 18. I refer instead to something far more consequential.

Democracy may be about choices and decisions by citizens in theory. As practised in Nigeria, however, citizens are mostly spectators. In every election, Nigeria’s judges have the final votes.

Tinubu’s Chatham House Farce And Attack On Free Press

 By Olu Fasan

About two months ago, I received a call from a loyalist of Bola Tinubu, presidential candidate of All Progressives Congress, APC. The caller, an old acquaintance, asked if I could advise on how Tinubu could secure a meeting with the new British monarch, King Charles III. I was flabbergasted, stunned!

*Tinubu

Okay, I was a UK Government adviser but advising on how a foreign politician could meet the monarch was well above my paygrade. Besides, was he not reading my columns? Did he not know I believed, still believe, a Tinubu presidency would be monumentally disastrous for Nigeria? 

A Chatham House Of Horror

 By Don Pedro Obaseki

Chatham House, while trying to repackage and market Bola Ahmed Tinubu, ended up de-marketing itself. While trying, albeit strenuously, to rebrand Tinubu, Chatham House ended up eroding its own brand persona. Its brand equity went bearish, like a bad stock cascading down the index on a bad day on the FTSE or the New York Stock Exchange.

*Tinubu

Tinubu’s handlers not only trashed Chatham House, but also ridiculed the Nigerian nation and her people before the global community. At best, Tinubu’s Chatham House odyssey was a public relations  disaster!

His legendary gaffes got amplified before a global audience that either watched the horrid display on television or via live streaming on the internet. Tinubu’s infamous, yet half-expected comedy of errors turned an otherwise revered platform into a “Chatham House of Horror” or(to bring the adjective closer to home), the “Chatham House of Commotion”.

Weep Not for Tinubu, But Nigeria

 By Dele Momodu

Call it what you will, what happened at Chatham House London yesterday was a complete charade… The Bola Tinubu handlers fumbled, and bungled it big time… They showcased him like a packaged invalid. It would have been better to present him as a brilliant politician and administrator, warts and all, who’s capable of independent thoughts. No man is perfect. His gaffes would have been more pardonable and acceptable… He was expected to sell his own vision and mission…

Tinubu speaks at Chatham House, London

But what we saw yesterday was a theatre of the absurd. It brought back memories of our great President Alhaji Umaru Yar’Adua and how he mysteriously disappeared from radar and some of his aides governed by proxy. I was one of those who led the Enough-is-Enough protest against the Yar’Adua cabal in Abuja in 2010. What was unacceptable then is even more unacceptable now with benefits of hindsight. Our country should be placed above friendship. 

2023 And Southeast Presidency: Quislings Beware!

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi

This is an election season like no other. Everything is defying logic. For instance, how does one explain the fact that when the All Progressives Congress, APC, decided to sell its presidential nomination form at a whopping N100 million, an amount so outrageous in an economy where the minimum wage is N30,000, and many thought the only reason for the ridiculous hike was to scare aware “unserious” aspirants, that was when every Tom, Dick and Harry, joined the fray.

With the latest declarations on Wednesday of Senator Godswill Akpabio, Minister of Niger Delta, in Akwa Ibom, and Dr Kayode Fayemi, Governor of Ekiti State, in Abuja, there are now at least 14 aspirants jostling for the APC ticket.

Buhari And APC Are Corrupting Democracy!

 By Mike Ozekhome

The staggering sum of N100 million fixed by the APC NEC for its presidential nomination form has rightly sent shock waves of righteous indignation across the country.

The APC had fixed N30 million for the “expression of interest form” and N70 million for the “nomination form”, making a total of N100 million. The party hopes to rake in N1.5 billion from the 15 aspirants that have so far declared interest in the presidential race. By this singular act, the APC has shown a shocking insatiable bacchanalian propensity to corrupt democracy, and democratic ethos, and also scam the entire country.

*Buhari, APC Chairman Adamu and other party leaders

The vulgarity of this exercise lies not just in the abominable fee prescribed, but more in the party’s pretentious mantra of fighting corruption, using a well-orchestrated and carefully oiled Hitler’s Goebel’s propagandist machinery of dubious pedigree. It is the more abhorrent when we realize that this is miles apart from (indeed more than double) the price fixed by the party’s whipping child, the opposition PDP, which has fixed it at N40million (N5 million) for the nomination of interest; and N35 million for the nomination form. The N100m is also over 100% of the N40 million fixed by the same APC for 2018, presidential nomination form.

Of Parliament, Poverty Of Debates And Corruption

By Dan Amor

In mid 2007, at the emergence of the Mrs. Patricia Olubunmi Etteh as first female Speaker of the Federal House of Representatives, a very close friend of mine who was then covering the Lower Chamber of the National Assembly for a top flight national newspaper called me on phone. His message: "Dan, Nigeria has elected a Speaker who cannot speak." My friend, a honed history scholar-turned journalist, is a thorough-bred professional most interested in written and spoken words and their applications. And his message was loud and clear. He spoke against the backdrop of Etteh's alleged legendary grammatical inadequacies.

*Speaker Dogara and Senate President Saraki

As beneficiary of the old Nsukka tradition of history and intellectual erudition, my friend had lamented the complete absence of a culture of informed debate on the floor of the House of Representatives, and even the Senate.  Poor him! He had thought that our politicians would cultivate the habit of formal debate which is the hallmark of the parliament anywhere in the world and which is as old as education itself. It dates back at least in the invention of dialectics and more specifically to Protagoras of Abdera, who introduced this method of learning to his students nearly 2,500 years ago.

In fact, the rudiments of dialectics emerged from the misty past, when grunts grew into language and men discovered that language could facilitate both the making of decisions and changing them. Debate as a medium for policy-making came into being in the first crude democracy when words as well as force became tools of government. In its maturity, it prevailed over the city-state of Greece and the republic of Rome, where skillful debaters such as Demosthenes and Cicero moved empires with words. Aristotle himself considered rhetoric to be the first and most important art. The highest purpose of debate is to develop, as Emerson described it, "man's thinking in the total milieu of society and the world around him." Ultimately, debate attempts to improve a man by laying a foundation for a better understanding of himself and those around him, to inculcate habits of mind, breath of interests, and enlargement of spirit. The process of debate, therefore, becomes as important as the issues contained within it. Lest we deviate, it was this process of intellectual confrontation that my friend said was lacking in Etteh's House.

Buhari: Worst President Nigeria Ever Had?

By Ikechukwu Amaechi

I have two confessions to make from the outset.

I am an incurable optimist. I am a firm believer in the maxim that no matter how dark a tunnel may appear to be, there will always be some ray of light at the end.

Of course, this presupposes that for you to encounter this light, you must not stand still at the darkest end of the tunnel. Therefore, the philosophy underpinning this belief is that for you to get to the bright end, you must keep moving away from the darkest end.

*Buhari 

You must stay the course; perseverance is the watchword. Don’t quit because quitters never win. Here, pragmatism is an inevitable companion.

This conviction also informed my reaction to the socio-political and economic developments in our country in recent times.
I strongly believed that no matter how starkly the national augury may seem to tilt south, we shall overcome as long as we have a leadership that is prepared to put on its thinking cap, prepared to listen, be pragmatic and innovative in handling the myriad of problems confronting the nation.

The last thing we need right now is a leadership that is in denial, a leadership that revels, like the ostrich, in burying its head in the sand, thinking that nobody is seeing it. The last thing we need in this country is a leadership whose only solution to the problems is to point fingers of blame at others. Unfortunately, this is the leadership we have right now.

My second confession is that I am really afraid for this country’s fate under President Muhammadu Buhari’s watch.

My worry was not informed by the frightening numbers released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Wednesday, August 31, which finally confirmed what many already knew – that the economy had slid into recession or that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth at a woeful –2.06% performance did worse than expected. It was –0.36% in the first quarter.
The fact that $1 exchanged for N425 last week with a potential of going beyond N500 before the end of the year, while inflation rose to 17.1 per cent in July from 16.5 in June is scary, but didn't worry me much.
Ditto the unemployment figure which increased to 13.3 per cent from 12.1 per cent and investment inflows which dropped to the lowest levels at $647.1 million from $710 million.

These figures are the natural consequences of the otiose and impractical monetary and fiscal policies of the Buhari administration. Discerning Nigerians and members of the international community didn’t expect anything different.

But as grim as they are, what worries me most is the puerile antics of some chieftains of the All Progressives Congress (APC), including Buhari, and APC National Chairman, John Oyegun.

It baffles me that those who claim to be our leaders can actually indulge in such laughable political shenanigans.

Gov Okorocha’s Christmas Tree And Other Tales Of Political Vanity

By Moses Ochonu

Political vanity is a particularly Nigerian affliction and has been an ancillary scholarly interest of mine. I published an academic article in 2004 on the subject, citing several examples from Nigeria’s then fledgling experiment with civilian rule. The article dwelled extensively but not exclusively on the cases of late former governors Abubakar Audu of Kogi State and Mohammed Lawal of Kwara State.

*Okorocha

The former had an obnoxious penchant for naming every government project after himself and his family members. The latter was so consumed by a need to personalize his power that all mass transit buses belonging to the Kwara State government during his tenure were boldly marked with the moniker “UP LAWAL.”

Since the publication of that article, similar examples of personalized power and political vanities in high places have proliferated. I am reliably informed that in Kayode Fayemi’s Ekiti State, a remarkable record of infrastructural investments was marred by an inexplicable insistence on naming all projects after the former governor and his wife.

Public office holders in Nigeria adorn their offices with all manner of silly award plaques. One former minister, God rest her soul, had an entire wall of her office covered in awards from all manner of organizations — some of them concrete, others clearly made up by sycophants to curry her favor. She liked to take pictures against the background of this wall of vanity. The pictures made it to newspapers and then to the Internet, where they live to date. It was a vulgar form of political narcissism, a kind of self-deification.

The said former minister was so in love with her own image that she invested energy, time, and resources feting and garnishing herself in awards and other accouterments of self-validation. She built a shrine to herself, reveling in her own proclaimed greatness. Fortunately, she was a largely effective, achieving public servant, so her political vanities didn't matter that much. She could be forgiven for her vain indulgences.