A few days before the announcement of President Bola Tinubu as THISDAY Man of the Year (MoTY) for 2024, the crew hosting The Morning Show, a breakfast programme on Arise News network, had informed their viewers that a joint project was in the works between the two sister organisations towards making a credible choice. Do not forget that both organisations are owned by the versatile media mogul, Prince Nduka Obaigbena.

When Tinubu was eventually named, on January 31, 2024, Reuben Abati, the alter ego of the Arise News branch in that joint team, made a job of work of it, with a clear attempt to exonerate the television network from the decision. Instead of the previous announcement that it was a collaborative project with a sister body, he sent an unequivocal message – this is the handiwork of THISDAY Board of Editors.

To the discerning, this explanation, seemed to have underscored the level of debate which might have gone down between the two tendencies in the THISDAY-Arise house to warrant the latter pulling out. Mind you, this ubiquitous THISDAY Board of Editors, a body supposedly embodying the intelligentsia arm within the leadership of The Nigerian Newspaper of Record, arguably one of the most authoritative Nigerian publications for decades, is not new to controversy. Rather, it has since established an uncanny reputation for taking positions on national issues, which many consider totally at variance with the reality on ground if not outrightly insensitive.

Recall that notorious stance of the same team on the likely outcome of the 2023 presidential election, which eventually turned out embarrassingly vacuous in the end, despite the load of work and research the team claimed to have invested in reaching to its conclusion.

Advertisement

That the Arise News team, quickly beat a retreat by taking the Pontus Pilate option of washing its hand of the choice of Tinubu, is not only quite revealing, but instructive. Only very few would fail to notice its implication either.

The reverberating echoes trailing the announcement, from a groundswell of the Nigerian public, tells the rest of the story. That the fire ignited by that singular outing, has refused to dim, not to talk of extinguishing, attests to the criticality of its impact to the polity.

Like many Nigerians, we find this outing quite nauseating, to say the least. Yes! The idea of MoTY, is global as it is common knowledge. We agree that it is usually not an endorsement of right or wrong and that the recognition is given to a man or woman that has made the greatest impact to the society within the year in question.

But in this regard, THISDAY was clear and unequivocal on how it got to the choice. We therefore base our total aversion to the choice of Tinubu from its own mouth. Unfortunately we declare that not a single submission, argument or reasoning for reaching this strange conclusion is agreeable in anyway, because they do not reflect the realities on ground.

We neither agree with the direction Tinubu is headed nor his ideas of salvaging the ruins Nigeria has become over the years could be achieved by further leading the country into the dark alley filled with gloom or doom or plunging it into the bottomless pit of hopelessness where abject poverty and sustained hunger has become a daily singsong before his own idea of of Eldorado comes to pass.

Advertisement

What is more? It would have made more sense if the President is also embarking on the same journey with the ordinary Nigerians. Unfortunately, he is not. Rather, everything suggests that he is living his best life, having achieved his life-time ambition of grabbing, snatching and running away with the nation’s number one job. Like millions of other Nigerians, we are not blind to witness the sheer opulence surrounding him and the lavish lifestyle he leads alongside his acolytes within and outside the Aso Rock precinct.

Yet, no leader, military or civilian has driven Nigeria into the level of poverty, misery and hopelessness as the country is currently undergoing under the President. He has struck Nigeria with the deadliest blows and the hardest times in its six-decade history.

So, how could such a man be mentioned even in passing, let alone being conferred with such a rewarding recognition using the superlative terms the THISDAY Editors, employed to arrive at their decision – terms like courage, daring, doggedness or resilience? Of course, these terms, if used in the negative sense, would have made more proper meaning in today’s Nigerian reality. Out of all these accolades, the term courage, seems most disconcerting if not outrightly annoying.

Pray! What is the courage in punishing your country deliberately, simply because you possess the powers to do so? Is it courage or indiscretion that a surgeon would deliberately refuse to apply anesthesia before putting his patient under the knives knowing the sure outcome? What manner of a surgeon would that be?

Tinubu is wont to remind Nigerians that the pain in the country is like a woman undergoing childbirth and the joy would come after successful delivery. But which woman would survive a Cesarian Section delivery with the doctors cutting her up without first sedating her to kill the pain?

Advertisement

That is exactly what Tinubu has done with his subsidy removal and floating of the Naira, the two major policies that are central to his much-trumpeted reforms idea, which has left the remaining citizens yet to die in near-death pains and the same economy he claims to be salvaging gasping for breath out of asphyxiation.

It is even more tragic that the President has continued pushing on despite the excruciating agony in the country. Is it too difficult for Tinubu or those egging him on to see the number of people dying as a result?

No! Far from it! It is not courage for a man to beat up his wife or any woman for that matter because he has the powers to do so. It is rather an act of weakness, if not cowardice. It is also not courage to beat up a man in a wheelchair or be flogging a sick horse or even a lion with broken legs. These are akin to what Tinubu is doing to Nigerians.

In fact, the All Progressives Congress (APC), government of the past 10 years or so, has so dealt with Nigerians through the systematic bastardisation of every segment of the polity that there is hardly any breath left in them for any fight. They are now like a sick horse lying prostrate on its stomach – an easy pick for any prey.

It began with Muhammadu Buhari, who practically disembowelled the entire polity and left the citizenry decapitated, dishevelled and disoriented. From being dubbed the biggest in Africa and one of the best investment destinations of the world with most alluring climate for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), the fortunes of Nigeria under him plummeted to the unenviable position of the poorest country in the world.

Advertisement

That was the country Tinubu met and now preying on. So, what is the courage in further plunging the same people into more poverty and worsening their misfortune, knowing that they neither possess the energy nor the resources to fight back? What is daring about it? Do you dare a hungry man who has not eaten for months and is lying helplessly on his belly to a fight?

That he has gotten away with the two deadly policies is not a function of any sort of courage, nerve or bravery, more than it is a testament of the vanishing tigritude in the Nigerian tiger from the continuous pummelling it has been getting daily over the years. That is why Tinubu can afford to prance about with cavalier abandon. It is therefore neither an acceptance or endorsement of those policies. Nigerians are simply bemoaning their fate silently, waiting to be saved somehow or accept their sure death someday. Simple!

Besides, what is left of their fighting spirit, has been taken away by the instrumentality of the almost completely weakened national institutions, which are now clearly turned against them. Citizens’ dissent, a veritable tool of holding government accountable has not only been outlawed but defiance is met with brute force.

In a situation where the police, the army and other security forces are there to put down any form of demonstration and where public protests have become so risky that demonstrators are lucky to get home with their lives and limbs intact, what else is left?

With what happened in the 10-day #Hardshipprotest, of August 1-10, 2024, where many of the partakers barely escaped the brutality of the security operatives unleashed on them in the streets while scores of others spent months in detention dungeons, including children on charges of treason – a hitherto heavy, scarce crime – which has now become an everyday mantra for even the mildest disputes found in civil cases like Dele Farotimi’s defamation trial, no one is left in doubt as to where Nigeria is headed today.

Advertisement

Perhaps, the eggheads at THISDAY, were confusing recklessness and heartlessness, undue obstinacy needless stiff-neckedness for courage. That is the only other plausible explanation for their strange choice. We do not want to join in imputing other motives

Otherwise, leadership courage, as a phenomenon is not difficult to discern. Many other leaders before him, had shown clear examples. From Keneth Kaunda, Nelson Mandela, to Robert Mugabe, Africa has a surfeit of great men and women who went into the trenches to liberate their countries and others who took definite stands in various forms that became demonstrable evidences of courage.

Indeed, courage could only come by confronting greater obstacles like David challenging Goliath and not vice versa. The Goliaths of Nigeria are there for all to see. They are the vested interests that have led Nigeria to its prostrate state. They are the powerful and the mighty, not ordinary Nigerians. These people are not affected by subsidy removal. Their state of the art cars have not disappeared from the streets like those of the ordinary Nigerians. They still fill their tanks at filling stations and still throw lavish parties.

They are the ones to be targeted. Instead of the whimsical announcement – subsidy is gone – through which he plunged Nigeria into the progressively catastrophic state it has witnessed since the last 20 months or so, Tinubu would do well to direct his gaze towards the Niger Delta for instance. There, he would find the powerful men that would match him force for force. He should go and defeat them. That would qualify him for the glorious crown of bravery.

A courageous leader would stand toe to toe, staring eyeball to eyeball with the behemoths that are believed to still be diverting half of the proceeds of the nation’s oil production into private pockets till date. If that massive pillaging of the commonwealth is ended, the production capacity ramped up by another half and the proceeds therefrom added to the national coffers, who would quarrel even if Tinubu is dubbed the modern-day Caesar?

Advertisement

In recent years, some parts of Nigeria have become totally inaccessible by the ordinary folks due to banditry and terrorists, said to be funded and armed by foreigners with vast interests in illegal mining operations and other criminal activities.

Courage ought to push President Tinubu to look in this direction and confront the monster, local and foreign. That way, farmers would return to their farms to produce food with attendant domino-effect of curing the malaise of food insecurity and attendant social vices. That way, citizens, including those in refugee camps would join in hailing and decorating his cap with the golden feathers as the New Nigerian hero.

What stops Tinubu from being spotted in Lagos boarding a local flight to Abuja, or driving himself in the street of Lagos or travelling incommunicado on Lagos-Ibadan, Abuja-Kaduna or any other federal highways? What stops him from alighting from his vehicle to listen and assure those women, who cheered him as Jagaban, now crying, ebi n’pa wa?

That is how to be daring. That is how to be courageous. That is how to exhibit rare leadership. That is how to win the hearts of the people. That is how to win the MoTY in a positive sense. Anything else is not only the inapposite, it is fraud.

Courage is not about making quirky, uncanny, impulsive, spur of the moment declarations. It is not a function of using any means necessary to sustain mindless, insensitive and callous policies including shutting down voices of opposition.

Advertisement

You can only be lionised as a hero for acts of bravery or valour. In that case, you must either have fought a lion with bare hands and defeated it, or more at home, at least fought your equals on fair ground. Tinubu has not done any of these. Famished Nigerians are not on fair grounds with him.

Further we say and further we maintain, unleashing untold hardship on citizens earns Tinubu no badge of honour as the THISDAY Board of Editors, tried to infer. The two policies, which sustenance this body hinged their decision on, are nothing but rash, instinctive and insensitive, if not reckless, foolhardy and outrightly wicked. No more no less!

Millions have died already due to hunger, starvation, disease and stampede. Many have jumped into lagoons, hung themselves on trees or quietly ended it all by taking poison. Many have killed their brothers or engaged in other malevolent acts to survive. Millions are going to die this month and in the months to come. How many more need to go before reality dawns?

Advertisement

An American President is the most powerful man in the world and every other leader must approach him with a lot of caution, Olusegun Obasanjo former Nigerian President said on Monday, as he warned President Bola Tinubu, to bear this in mind in his relationship with the incoming government of Donald Trump that would commence in about two weeks’ time.

A guest of The Morning Show, a breakfast programme on Arise News television, Obasanjo, Nigeria’s longest-serving leader, with 11 years to his credit – three as military Head of State and eight as a civilian President, who dug into his experience in office as well as a global leader, cautioned that it did not matter what constituted Tinubu’s views about the person of the would-be POTUS, the fact that he would be occupying the most powerful office in the world, equally transformed him as the most powerful man as well capable of wielding the big stick or being a source of great relief to countries.

Hear him: “Whether anybody likes it or not, the American people have decided that Trump will be their leader, and Trump being American people’s leader, will lead America for the next four years.

“He will be the leader of the world, because America is the greatest country in the world, for now. It may change in a few years’ time, maybe China will take over and become the largest economy. Maybe China would surpass America in technology, maybe in military power. But as of today, America is that country, and we cannot say we have nothing to do with Trump. Trump is here and will be there from the 20th of January for the next four years.

Advertisement

“We have to find a way of letting Trump know that what he calls shit house is not entirely shithole, that there are some decent houses in Africa, and we have to make him understand that. I believe that there will be policymakers around him that we can reach and we can also talk to.

“America has enlightened interest in Africa, we should make that known to Trump and to say, look, this is your interest and don’t ignore it, we are ready to work with you. Give us our respect and dignity that is due to us.

“Respect our citizens that are in your country, and let us work together for a peaceful world that is secure, a world that is stable, and a world where prosperity will be shared and where security will be common. But I believe that Trump will understand.”

Advertisement

An ecstatic President Bola Tinubu, on Monday, showered profuse praises on the management of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), for the feat of revamping the Warri Refining and Petrochemical Company (WRPC), calling it a special 2025 New Year gift.

Conveying his sentiments through Bayo Onanuga, his spokesman in a statement, the President, said the development, which he noted had upped the ante in his energy and security plan for the country, had strengthened the hope of Nigerians in his administration.

The President spoke on the day Mele Kyari, Group Managing Director and Chief Executive of the (NNPC) who led a delegation of stakeholders in the nation’s oil industry to the refinery, told Nigerians that the coming alive of the facility had proved doubters wrong.

The statement, quoted a palpably elated Tinubu as saying of the development: “Today, the Warri Refinery returned to operation weeks after NNPC Limited restarted the 60,000 Barrels per day at the Port Harcourt Refinery in November. With Warri Refining and Petrochemical Company (WRPC) going into operation after several years of inactivity, President Tinubu has once again expressed his administration’s determination to ramp up local refining capacity and make Nigeria a hub for downstream industrial activities in Africa.

Advertisement

“The All Progressives Congress-led administration of President Muhammadu Buhari awarded the contract for the complete rehabilitation and overhaul of the four state-owned refineries. President Tinubu noted with confidence that with the 125,000 (bpd) Warri Refinery now operating at 60% capacity, his administration’s comprehensive plan to ensure energy efficiency and security is entirely on course.

Praising the Kyari-led management of the NNPCL for working hard to restore Nigeria’s glory and pride as a major oil-producing country, he was quoted to have added: “The restart of Warri Refinery today brings joy and gladness to me and Nigerians. This will further strengthen the hope and confidence of Nigerians for a greater and better future than we promised. This development is a remarkable way to end the year following the feat recorded earlier with the old Port Harcourt Refinery. I am equally happy that NNPC Limited is implementing my directive to restore all four refineries to good working condition.

“I congratulate Mele Kyari and his team at NNPCL for working hard to restore our national pride and make Nigeria a hub for crude oil refining in Africa. President Tinubu enjoined NNPCL to accelerate repair work on Kaduna Refinery and the 150,000 (bpd) second refinery in Port Harcourt to consolidate Nigeria’s position as a global energy provider.”

On his part, the NNPCL boss, said: “WRPC will focus on producing and storing critical products, including Straight Run Kerosene (SRK), Automotive Gas Oil (AGO), and heavy and light Naphtha. We are taking you through our plant. You see the reality yourself. This plant is running. We have not completed 100 per cent. We are stimulating the other part of the plant as we progress. But currently, this plant is running. You will see what is happening now and we are bringing products to the market.

“There are many people who don’t think this is real. As you all know a lot of media talk all over the place that people don’t believe real things can happen in our country. We believe that this is right for our country, and all of us have a stake, including the media, so this can become a greater place as it is already happening. I just want you to know that everything you see is real.”

Advertisement