Is Nigeria in a gathering storm, metaphorically speaking, or already in a crisis foretold? Like a prophet who foresaw tomorrow, Mr. Peter Obi, the Presidential candidate of the Labour Party in the 2023 election did warn about this present danger, and urged the Nigerian electorate to vote wisely and elect a president who has character, competence, someone well-prepared for the job, somebody who doesn’t see the office of the presidency as a prize to be won, but a duty to perform. But, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, did otherwise. It must be said that the present crisis in the country is the outcome of unheeded advice foretold. That, in short, is why President Bola Tinubu is losing it.
At this critical juncture in our democratic dispensation, we need people of courage to speak truth to power. The Sultan of Sokoto and Chairman of the Northern Traditional Rulers Council, His Eminence Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar III , last Wednesday, presented exactly that grim reality, a foreshadowing of upcoming danger, if things remain the way they are in the country today. Speaking at the 6th Executive Committee meeting of the Royal fathers in Kaduna, the Sultan recounted in cold anger, the trouble and trauma that Nigerians are going through under the Tinubu presidency, and declared emphatically that, “Nigeria is sitting on a keg of gunpowder”. “This is not the time to hide anything”, he said, because “Nigeria has reached the level where people have become agitated, hungry and angry”. His statement is like firing a shot across the bow. It was an unambiguous, bold comment about the hardship in the country that has reached alarming proportions.
He added, matter-of-fact that Nigeria has now entered a new cycle of leadership, with some new state governors coming on board, while some are having their second-term , and still, Nigerians are faced with high levels of insecurity, poverty and unemployment. Today, most of the citizens don’t have basic sources of livelihood. He reminded everybody who cared to listen, “I have said it so many times, and at so many fora, that things are not okay in Nigeria, and of course, things are not okay in the North. It’s not only in the North, even though the rate of poverty, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) is far more in the North. We shall come to that soon. Truth is, every part of the country is experiencing an unprecedented crisis of sort that requires emergency response.
The Sultan’s shot across the bow came just few days after the Emir of Kano, Aminu Ado Bayero, told the First Lady Remi Tinubu, who visited his palace in Kano, to tell her husband that the level of hardship in the country has become unacceptable and needs urgent attention. “I know your government inherited it, but something more seriously should be done to address the situation, and you are in the best position to relate the findings about hunger, insecurity and other concerns of the people to the President”, the Emir told the First Lady. But will the President listen? Statistics show this stark evidence of a nation in a cliffhanger. According to 2022 World Bank Report, Nigeria was ranked 103 out of 121 countries in the Global Hunger Index(GHI), a position that signifies that the level of hunger in the country is too serious. The report ranks countries by ‘severity’, and gave Nigeria a score of 27.3 percent – a hunger level that falls under the ‘serious’ category.
If the survey is done today, it will surely set off the alarm bells. The NBS 2022 report on poverty also showed the North in the top list, with the North West 45.5 million, North East 20.5m, North Central 20.2m, South South 19.7m, South West 16.3m, and South East 10.9m. National poverty level was put at 133million, with rural poverty level at 106m, and urban poor people at 27 million. The figures must have doubled or tripled by now. Within the same period of 2022, the World Bank Poverty and Prosperity report showed that Nigeria contributed 3 million people to global extreme poverty, and “home to a large share of the global poor”. Nigeria has overtaken the number of the extreme poor in India and China combined, and is currently the “Third most terrorised” country in the world. What a shame for a country endowed with abundant natural resources. This is the sad story of Nigeria in less than nine months of Tinubu presidency.
But don’t be surprised to see many politicians who are profiting from the present harrowing experience of millions of Nigerians who will scoff and sniff disparagingly at the concerns expressed by the Northern monarchs about how this government has mismanaged the economy and put the country on knife edge. Watch out to see how the president’s men will unleash attacks on anyone who has a different opinion from theirs. One thing is certain: lies do have expiry date. These days, it has become convenient for the president’s aides and APC Governors to adopt the denial mode, asserting that such-and-such has not happened, that there’s no hunger in the land, that the PDP Governors who compared Nigeria with Venezuela, “should be arrested”. When evidence is incontrovertible, the APC and its surrogates take refuge in feigned ignorance. As late South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said, ‘if yesmen surround a leader, who will tell him he’s not doing the right thing’? If President Tinubu wants to hear unvarnished truth, Nigeria is collapsing under his watch. He policies have given the opposition the cudgels to attack him at will.
The Sultan of Sokoto captured it more succinctly. Nothing is normal any more in Nigeria. In both scale and scope, the ominous signs are everywhere for any discerning mind to see. Before they start throwing tantrums at the Sultan, and accuse him of ‘working for the opposition’, he also called former President Muhammadu Buhari to order when insecurity in the country was getting out of hand. Between 2020 and 2021, he fiercely criticised Buhari and told him that the issue of insecurity ought to make his government have “sleepless nights”. In August 2021, he cautioned the administration against pardoning “repented” terrorists. The message is simple: What leaders do while they are trying to get political power is not necessarily what they do after they have it. That’s where Buhari failed. And Tinubu is following the same path that often leads to downfall.
This much is clear: whatever President Muhammadu Buhari made worse for Nigeria and its citizens, Tinubu presidency is striving to make things breathtakingly much worse in all ramifications. If Buhari was, for want of a better word, a dull and clueless President, Tinubu is careening dangerously towards making Nigeria a ‘failed state’. It’s not unkind to say that this administration lacks the ability to put ideas and concepts together. It lacks the amplitude and presence of mind to realise even its own agenda. The red flags are staring us in the face. Didn’t we see this coming? Were we not warned? Look at the man’s performance so far. Everything seems out of joints. Months ago, the London- based Financial Times, said that Tinubu’s “economic policies are going awry”.
The nation’s currency, the Naira is almost as worthless in value as the Zimbabwean currency under Robert Mugabe. The purchasing power of the people is gone. Cost of living is getting beyond the reach of ordinary Nigerians. Multinational companies are exiting the country in droves. Insecurity is squeezing everyone to a corner. No place is safe any longer. Unemployment, is at all-time high, inflation rate is now 29.9 percent for the month of January, a record high. Nothing is certain in Nigeria anymore. All of this has revealed both the President’s real character and his shortcomings. It calls for all hands on deck to save the President from himself. This has become critically important because, as historians will tell us, without a vision beyond a leader’s own selfish agenda and advancement, a leader is almost paralyzed once the goal had been achieved. We warned when Buhari embarked on this cynical, self-destructive ambition, but it was not heeded. And this is where he left Nigeria, in the worst rung of leadership scale, and the people in poverty, a collapsed economy and misery never experienced in a very long time.
In the case of President Tinubu, what we are witnessing is the temperament and behaviour of the most ambitious, cynical political player adept at amazing power that is at odds with imaginative visionary required to make great things happen for Nigeria and Nigerians. And I ask, where is that Midas touch that Tinubu was prided to possess? Where is that extraordinary political ability to identify talents who can turn things around? Please, help me answer. Yes, Buhari made terrible things happen in 8 years. Didn’t Tinubu tell Nigerians during the campaign, and after he won the election, that he would continue where Buhari stopped? And, now, blaming Buhari for all our present crisis as the deposed Emir of Kano Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, and Sen. Adams Oshiomhole laboured in vain last week to convince some people, makes no sense. It is the shortest path to cozy up to the President.
Well, same thing that the Buharists did, blaming everything that went wrong in Nigeria on Dr Goodluck Jonathan. When a leader takes his eyes off the ball, and begins to cut the trees and leave the forest, he loses focus. And you ask: Is a president not elected to solve problems? Or was he elected to eat Amala and ewedu? It is only in Nigeria that you hear such vacuous arguments from the likes of Sanusi and Oshiomhole to advance selfish agenda and ‘retaliate’ a perceived wrong done to them by the former President. Tinubu should realise that he owes Nigeria and its citizens a simple debt of obligation that only him can discharge. It’s good performance that will translate to good welfare and security of the people. He cannot do this through surrogates.
Take a hard look at the President’s nine months in office. What you will see is a nuanced picture of the man in the mirror. It’s his nature, the complexities of his overweening ambition. Having acquired that power he so craved for, Tinubu feels, and perhaps truly so, that nothing is beyond him to get in Nigeria. This is also evident in all his political career, and the numerous battles he had fought to get where he’s today. But at what expense now? This President needs reminding that the essence of presidential power, according to Grant McConnel, the author of “The Modern Presidency”, is the ability of a leader to appeal to both large and wide different constituencies at the same time. A week, according to experts , is a long time in politics. In other words, Tinubu can still correct his missteps. He should begin to see problems as opportunities, and a test of his ability to deal with them, not pass the buck. It’s high time he began to heed this timely advice or risks running aground in the office. Nobody wishes him evil. Truth is, if he succeeds, Nigeria succeeds.