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Emmanuel Umohinyang, social commentator and activist was one of those who rallied support across the country for the election of President Bola Tinubu, using the structures of the Re-elect Buhari Movement (RBM)
He speaks on the administration and other contemporary national issues.
Excerpts:
How will you rate the Tinubu administration so far?
I think I can say the government has done fairly well. Let me also say it has been a bumpy road. The government started with polices that successive administrations have been running away from. If you know Tinubu as governor of Lagos State, he took some of the toughest decisions ever taken by his predecessors. In fact, he made nonsense of the Federal Government led by Olusegun Obasanjo. One of these was the ocean surge at the dreaded Bar beach which the Federal Government was using to milk the treasury of the country back then. They used to sand fill the place every three weeks and shortly after, the ocean comes to clear everything. It was Bola Tinubu’s initiative to involve construction giants to deal with the issue by creating wave breakers.
Today, you can attest to what Ahmadu Bello way has become, a place liveable by Nigerians and foreigners, unlike in the past. Yes, the Tinubu administration started with some very stringent policies that has not made the administration popular in eyes of Nigerians. One of these is the removal of fuel subsidy which he announced on the first day of his inauguration and the forex equalisation where the official and black-market rates were merged.
Naturally, those two policies will affect the purse of the common man. And the President had said if he had any other better option, he would have taken such option. I also remember the issue of fuel subsidy has always been unpopular. In 2012, I was one of those who occupied Ojota against the Jonathan administration. People have always mistaken that protest against the issue of subsidy. We never protested against removal of fuel subsidy. We protested against the corruption embedded in the subsidy regime, where many of those importers were doing round tripping in connivance with corrupt customs officials at the ports. Unlike in the past, governors are now going home with large chunk of billons monthly. If we had a well-structured system at the State and Local Government levels, the humongous resources available to them today would have impacted the people positively.
But the Federal Government has also been extravagant in spending, buying aircraft, Yatch and Exotic vehicles. What is your take on that?
I think the misconception has always been what people want to hear. I am not aware that there is any budget of the Federal Government that the issue of Yatch was ever referred to and people must come to understand that what was presented was a Yatch that was propagated by the naval authorities and people claimed the President wanted a Yatch for his comfort. That is not true. It was part of the equipment the Navy needed to function. People have also made reference to the presidential jet. I think the President was not really interested in any presidential jet. It is because of the state of the available aircraft. The aircraft are what you will not even want your enemy to fly in. It is a case of having many aircrafts with none in a flying state. What he did was to sell some of the aircrafts to buy a replacement. What was even procured was not a brand-new aircraft.
Many opine that the President’s many reforms are killing, what is your take?
Honestly, I am one of those who has seen pain in the lives of Nigerians. So many Nigerians are struggling to feed on a daily basis. This is reality. I have visited the markets myself and I have also shared what the government should do in this new year. I think Mr President is working at that.
We can also not do without the partnership of the State and the Local Governments. The issue of hardship is real, the issue of poverty is real, the issue of suffering of Nigerians is real. The government is doing everything to take them out of pain. Insecurity is expensive because it requires a lot of money to contain. what is most important is the judicious use of available resources because there is no substitute for human life and the President has a constitutional duty to maintain lives and property, so anything the government of Bola Ahmed Tinubu will do to protect the lives of Nigerians, he will do, no matter the cost, no matter what it will take.
What is your reaction to the opposition to the tax reform bills?
I think the resistance has to do with knowledge gap. There is a misconception from some of our brothers from the North. It is not the North as a region because those resisting are minute in number, powerful though. The tax reform is targeted at improving the life of the common man, whether in South or the North. A lazy Governor will definitely resist that tax reform. why? Because the tax reform is premised on hard work of individual States. If you are bringing so much to the table, that reform favours you, but for Governors who want to go to Abuja for allocation and go back home and relax without doing anything, such Governors will not be happy. When you look at the context of that tax reform bill, you will see that it speaks positively to the average man on the streets.
