The jury is still out on whether the day the All Progressives Congress [APC] came into being is a blessing or a curse for Nigeria. Even as the ultimate verdict is awaited, it must be said, with the benefit of overwhelming evidence, that APC, as a ruling central government, has offered more of a horror experience than comfort to the majority of Nigerians.
The stretch of the party’s first eight years in government, led by a man that neither cared for accommodation nor regarded the Constitution, was an unmitigated calamity. Even the party hierarchy is gradually beginning to accept the validity of the woeful scorecard.
The second outing of the party at the same central control tower, birthed in less than noble circumstances is, to a large extent, still mired in controversy, contending with issues of legitimacy, among others.
Even for all this handicap and foundational issues, it is not surprising that a party faithful will see renewed hope where many others see bleak prospects.
Nkechi Nwogu, former senator representing Abia Central senatorial district, is one such party faithful. Encountering the senator with her optimism and belief in the good prospects Tinubu represents, can be interesting. The Senator is definitely engaging, understandably so. With a solid background in banking before venturing into politics, she has a good grasp of issues that border on finance, administration, international affairs and local politics, among others. She had also served as chairman of the governing council of a federal university. She talks with conviction. But then, she is a politician. That, no doubt, explains her reading of the realities, prospects and policies of the Tinubu-led APC government, which seem to verge on credulity.
Where the predominant socio-economic experience on the ground presently reads uncertainty, Senator Nwogu is seeing an emerging foundation for better days, a sunny side of better days on the horizon. When shall this morning materialize? Soon, is the senator’s assurance. It helps not to forget at any juncture that she is a party stalwart, a believer in Tinubu’s capacity, which remains unproven, it must be added.
One of Senator Nwogu’s prime pitches, which seems to be an emerging line of argument by the Tinubu government officials, is that the government inherited a bankrupt economy from its predecessor. This, Senator Nwogu said, is one of the factors holding the Tinubu government back from moving at the pace it intended to. This, of course, is a very intriguing pitch. For so long, the Tinubu government, an off-shoot of the Muhammadu Buhari administration, by all means, found it difficult to come clean with the record of what it inherited from the Buhari government. The dismal scorecard of that government is an open record.
Nigerians live the impact of the bankrupt policies and performance of that government. The bankruptcy of the Buhari government does not refer only to the economy. Whether the focus is on security, or education, or power generation, or the petroleum sector, or conduct of election, or management of Nigeria’s plurality, the score reads of the Buhari government is the same F9. Tinubu himself scored it so during the heady days of his campaign. Coming to government, he elected, for obvious reasons, to play pretend. Now they are talking of inheriting a parlous economy.
When Senator Nkechi Nwogu defends Tinubu and asserts that there is need to be pragmatic in expectation from his government, because of the lean purse he inherited, the question cannot but be promptly asked about when the Tinubu government discovered the handicap.
Her assertion and expression of hope, that Tinubu has good support from multi-lateral institutions and therefore, can leverage on that to draw support to boost his government’s development initiatives, is yet to be seen. The reality is that Nigeria’s foreign policy in the recent past has been weak, if not non-existent. Relationship with foreign nations and institutions that has been defined more by a mendicant disposition, with representations that often lack clout and depth, cannot be expected to foster respect and worthwhile reckoning.
It is true that Tinubu has appointed a number of visible women in his cabinet, a point Senator Nkechi Nwogu makes with understandable excitement. She points at this as a mark of the government “moving on the right path, considering that women have a track record of playing less politics and focusing on delivering result”. Of course, she asks for more. If women will offer redemption to APC and the Tinubu government, so be it.
There is a repeated, albeit fuzzy declaration by Bola Tinubu’s acolytes that part of his qualifications to be president derives from his bona fides from “being in the trenches”, a reference to pro-democracy activities leading to the restoration of democratic order in 1999. This has become a most indeterminate claim. Come to think of it, Muhammadu Buhari must have been in deeper trenches in the course of his life, as well. What happened when he was brought up to level ground?
It was necessary to request Senator Nkechi Nwogu to leave that being in the trenches matter, for now. That can hardly be a meaningful pointer to where a leader, to whom people expect prompt, fair and honest action, is headed to. She had, of course, made to deploy that point to buttress her point that Tinubu knows what ails Nigeria and therefore, cannot, but pursue policies that will address the aggravated problems of ordinary citizens.
She was also enthusiastic about the flurry policies the Tinubu government has thrown up across the sectors, quite a number of which are still not properly honed and defined, though. She sees these rash cascade of policies as indicating a “foundational government”, that is in a hurry to correct existing problems. May be. The hope and prayer for Nigerians at the moment remain that they survive the crushing poverty in the land and live through the pervasive hunger and rebounding poverty-induced insecurity, to meet the rosy future being prepared by the said foundational policies.
Encountering Senator Nkechi Nwogu is, indeed, interesting. She comes across as a diplomat, a committed marketer of the Tinubu government and policies. There are two ways to receive her unrestrained optimism about what the government, this contentious government, represents and offers. One, is with cynicism. She is a politician, after all, of the APC stock, a Tinubu acolyte. The second is a wish, that her tales of a sunny future can, even to a little fraction, come true.
But then you remember; this is APC, the same party that subjected the whole society for a long time, to a tedious exercise of trying to read the body language of the president they threw up. In the fullness of time, that body language reading task yielded no meaningful result. Indeed, it was a wasted exercise. Now, Senator Nkechi Nwogu dares to say it is different this time around, this one is heading somewhere meaningful. Finding those to believe her is the challenge.