By Paul Onomuakpokpo
Having crashed from the
dizzy heights of the grand dreams of prosperity and equity of the All
Progressives Congress (APC) government led by President Muhammadu Buhari, the
citizens who are desperately in search of succour are faced with the danger of
snatching whatever promises to ameliorate their plight. What is amply being
demonstrated now is that the citizens’ straitened circumstances could blur
their capacity to make a distinction between those who really love them and are
genuinely committed to their well-being and those who would gleefully turn
their blighted condition into a populist stunt to leverage their social and
political capital.
*Tinubu and President Buhari |
The citizens who have
been left in the lurch by the APC government after winning the presidential
election may agree with Bola Tinubu that what Minister of State for Petroleum
Ibe Kachikwu owes Nigerians is a public apology and not smugly applauding
himself from an Olympian height for how much he has deployed his
ingenuity to supply the citizens fuel amid highly discouraging
odds. Yet, the citizens must take cognisance of the need to avoid being
corralled into a turf war that is not actually designed to benefit them. We
do not need to probe how much love of the people Tinubu demonstrated while
he was the governor of Lagos State . What we observe now from his
position as a leader of the ruling party is enough for us. He was
instrumental to the emergence of Buhari as president. It was apparently to
avoid indicting himself that Tinubu would not like to blame Buhari for the
failure of his government. For Tinubu cannot really say that he found in Buhari
administrative genius that compelled him to recommend him to Nigerians as
the best presidential material last year. In this regard, we are
reminded of the attempts by former President Olusegun Obasanjo to divorce
himself from the crises sired by the inability of his successor Musa Yar’
Adua to govern effectively after being hobbled by an illness that he
never recovered from.
To be sure, the
nation’s fuel crisis is aggravated by the erratic supply of electricity. This
is a sector managed by Babatunde Fashola whom Tinubu
imposed on Lagos State residents for eight
years. On account of Tinubu’s newfangled love for the well-being of the
citizens, he should have issued a statement bristling with rage at
Fashola’s abandonment of his responsibility of providing the
citizens improved electricity. Or does Tinubu not consider it revoltingly illogical for
Fashola to compel the citizens to pay more for electricity they
are not provided? Which should come first, the provision of meters for the
citizens or their paying more for electricity? Would the citizens not readily
pay their bills if they were metered and they were convinced that they were
paying for what they consumed?