Editorial
Courage or conceit? Questions over Tinubu as THISDAY’s ‘Man of The Year’
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
It began less than 10 minutes after taking the oath of office. In his address to the nation, he uttered those three-letter words – subsidy is gone. The ink with which he signed the documents declaring him President was yet to dry.
That was it. From that moment, Nigerians have known nothing but poverty, tears and death. It was a declaration that came out of impulse rather than articulacy. It was not even contained in his original speech prepared for the occasion. But it sprouted out – from a rash, unthinking and impetuous mental construct.
But the effect was instant, the impact direct. From that moment, Nigerians have never known peace. Every thing took a cue. Minutes after, the news broke that the price of Premium Motor Spirit, otherwise known as petrol had jumped from N189 to N550. It was that instant. Today, it hovers around N1,500.
The effect: Within minutes, transportation cost quadrupled. So too, commodity prices. Caught unawares, marketers, who had earlier thought it was a day of the rains as customers rushed to their shops, soon became suspicious and then got wiser – these were not ordinary customers but smart alecs playing a fast one on them.
They stopped selling, retrieved the items they could from those who had not disappeared with their goods and closed shop to study the situation properly. Hours after, they responded. A plate of eba and soup, went up from N200 to N1,000. Prices hit the rooftops.
In fact, the vehicle transporting what used to be Nigeria, which had been moving at a horse and buggy pace in the days of Muhammadu Buhari, stopped abruptly, engaged the reverse gear and began galloping backwards. That has remained the ugly, parlous tale of the Tinubu days, since May 29, 2023.
Now, the expectation would be that the President and his government that wrought such a horrendous punishment on the polity, would themselves take some blows. But nada! Instead, the opposite was the case. Within months of plunging the citizens into the untold hardship Tinubu went on a binge, spending money – in the words of Olusegun Obasanjo, former President – like a drunken sailor.
Few weeks after, as Nigerians were reeling and gasping in pain from the impact of their new situation, 469 newly-minted Sport Utility Vehicles (SUVs), rolled out from factories in Japan, where they were produced into the premises of the National Assembly for the just inaugurated members.
Put the cost at N100billion – that is N160million for each unit, plus other charges. Reason: The lawmakers needed the vehicles because of their good suspension system, to navigate the so many bad roads in Nigeria. Yes, you heard right. How could they think well and make good laws after the hassles of the bad roads? Tinubu saw reasons, acquiesced and voila!
But it did not end there. Tinubu suddenly realised that Kashim Shettima, his deputy, needed a new home “befitting” his new office. Pronto! A voucher of N21billion was raised and he had it. Till date a haze still hovers over the project.
The last news that was heard was that Number Two refused to take residence because the entire environment, including the toilets was wired to the teeth to monitor him. And Number Two needed privacy.
Again, in the same weeks, Oga Patapata, also realised that Madam needed to transport more comfortably. Pronto! It was arranged. Another voucher was raised for cars for the Office of the First Lady. Cost N1.2billion. Of course, madam needed the comfort for peace at home.
Naturally, since transportation is not done by land alone, he also took care of that. For the sea, a yacht was procured. Cost N5billion. Because the birds in the presidential fleet were not good enough, Tinubu did the needful.
He enriched the fleet with the one befitting of his status and had it transformed to mimic the US Air Force One. To complete the status symbol project, he also added a replica of The Beast, the US presidential automobile.
Ironically, the funds used in procuring these luxury lifestyle, came, not out of productive ventures of Nigeria, but through borrowing. Today, Tinubu has practically borrowed Nigeria blind, doubling or even tripling that of his predecessors.
Meanwhile Nigerians had upped the ante from mere groaning and skreiching. Citizens, unable to take it anymore, now stop their hitherto sleek vehicles on the Third Mainland Bridge and plunge into the Lagos lagoon to end it all. The option is now more rampant than remote and occasional.
Many others, taking the Socrates option, now drink hemlock and many more simply sleep off without any intention of waking up. That is where we are. That is the new Nigeria – the Tinubu Nigeria. But there is more.
Terrorists and the landlords of the forest, having now discovered that the Commander-in-Chief has other fancies than security and welfare of the people – the constitutionally-declared primary purpose of government and scant regard for the citizens, have practically gone haywire. They have taken over and established their authority.
Presently, outside those wantonly slaughtered or butchered in their homes like animals at the abattoir, incinerated alive while sleeping on their beds, among other forms of decimation, many more citizens are now spending months, going to years as victims of captivity with them in various forests in Nigeria.
In their rampage, the terrorists have since broken all barriers considered out of place hitherto. One of their escapades is the present videos of the school children and teachers taken from Oyo State. The gory imagery captures the current Nigerian story.
For instance, on Thursday, just as the sound of heavy celebration was going on in neighbouring Ogun State as the world marked the Ojude Oba yearly carnival, two of the victims, one of them with a toddler on her back, were pleading for their lives, as others went through various forms of torture, including heavy whipping like beasts.
Don’t forget that the terrorists had earlier slaughtered one of their colleagues. In the new video, the totally terrified women, informed that they had chosen another victim to be similarly eliminated. Yet, no word about rescue! Terrible!
Interestingly, if not painfully, Tinubu’s response, in the few cases he bothered, was to see the crisis through the politics lens. His most recent reaction was to tell the world that the harvest of attacks and carnages ravaging the country, were sponsored by his political enemies, intent on shoving him out of power. That to him was all that mattered.
Now, where are your powers as C-in-C? They are mostly found in the most disgraceful economic and political acts of impunity. Nigerians now waking up to hear of the award of brain-dazing contracts such as the N15trillion Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway and Badagry-Maiduguri Highway – with scant regard for official regulations, is now becoming more common than rare.
Few days after one of the teachers was beheaded and the video of the hideous act made to circulate on the social media, the President and his All Progressives Congress (APC), party, rolled out the drums of his winning the party’s ticket to contest the 2027 presidential election.
To say that it has been three years of weeping, wailing, mourning and gnashing of the teeth, is a clear euphemism. There is no starker way of putting it than calamity – pure, unmitigated catastrophe – disaster.
Then comes the big question. Nigeria is already breasting the tape of these ruinous years of the first term. Suppose Tinubu succeeds in renewing his tenure by January next year? Will Nigeria survive five more years of a life like the last three? What will be left of Nigeria? Is there a way out, outside shouting – God forbid!?
Now that Nyesom Wike, Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) has fully executed his plot against Siminalayi Fubara, Governor of Rivers State, where would it be placed in terms of identity, nuances, ethos and history? Where would it be placed in democratic arrangement and value? In other word, by what name would it be called?
So, this is what President Bola Tinubu’s much-advertised democratic credentials is all about? This is what being listed among the arrowheads in the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), the body that fought relentlessly against the late Sani Abacha and his henchmen has finally come to?
Is this where “The Last Man Standing” – apologies Tony Elumelu – has ended up? So, after wedging an epic battle for and through Lagos State, against then President Obasanjo and practically defeating him, even if perceptibly, in all the struggles – such as running government without federal allocation for years and surviving the political onslaught that took away other South West states like a tsunami, it has come to this?
Don’t forget that it was this selfsame Tinubu that served as the bastion of opposition in Nigerian politics from when he was Governor of Lagos State, not only standing up against Obasanjo, but undertaking the relentless battles that led to the All Progressives Congress (APC), winning the war eventually in 2015.
So, this is what all the struggles, the speeches, the colloquia, the meetings and the strategies have come to – the end result? So, the definition of democracy, to Tinubu, is selling the dog to buy a monkey – replacing democratic bad-behaviour with democratic-heist? So, this is it?!
Make no mistake about it. What you saw play out in Rivers is nothing but Tinubu at work. It is all about him, it is for him. Never make the mistake of adorning Wike in the toga of a powerful man. That would be a fatal error of judgement. Every power he exercises, real, imagined, inferred or contingent belong to and are exclusive to Tinubu.
Take away the President and Wike would turn to a political meek-lamb or a jellyfish. Fubara would have eaten him for lunch a long time ago. So, Tinubu it is – the reason the klieglights must be beamed on him. That is why he must carry the can in this odious construct in Rivers in particular and the entire Nigerian political scenario in general.
With the picture that assaulted Nigeria regarding the APC primaries that have just held, what is different from the edition we saw in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) of old? Is it not worse or the worst in real and imagined terms? What then has Tinubu been fighting all these years?
Incidentally, where we have Wike today, we had Lamidi Adedibu, the Amala Politics exponent, Tony Aneni of the Mr. Fix-it fame and the Uba brothers in Anambra to whom the political firmament in Nigeria once bowed, among many plethora of examples.
So, there is nothing really new about the development, but for the fresh dimension that has been introduced into the narrative by the Wike phenomenon, which is totally novel. Before now it was a case of one behemoth in a political party rampaging the system.
But today, it has gone beyond that. Wike has developed the penchant for taking no prisoners. In his own strange construct, he has now coalesced the entire APC and PDP structure into his shoulder basket, from where he dispenses favours.
Imagine Kingsley Chinda, purchasing APC governorship election form, as a PDP federal lawmaker without first resigning from his original party. That is how wacky it has become. Wackier still is that nobody – not even the APC apparatchik has been able to raise a finger. Why? Obvious answer – the Tinubu factor.
Now, here is the danger. By the heist in Port Harcourt adding to the sequence of political oddities and absurdities since the Tinubu years, it has become obvious that Nigeria is headed towards a Paul Biya’s Cameroun, a Yoweri Musaveni’s Uganda and Zimbabwe under the late Robert Mugabe.
Tinubu, has shown obvious incapacity to tackle the parlous economic crisis in the country with 150 million Nigerians plunged into multidimensional poverty and many more growing the list daily, while also displaying uncommon powerlessness towards addressing the debilitating state of insecurity.
Under his nose citizens are daily being forced from their homes into the forests by terrorists, with some of them taken from their crutching positions, positioned before the camera and slaughtered – heads cut off like animals at an abattoir and video images freely displayed on social media.
Yet, by what has now happened in Rivers State, it has become obvious that Nigerians are not being factored into the whole equation and if they were, scant regard is paid to their opinion, ending in their powerlessness to change the situation. That is the tragedy!
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