Tinubu: Democrat in search of democracy: Nigerians are fine democrats. BAT’s greatest challenge is inventing a corresponding democracy. In other words, BAT is on a self-appointed mission to create a democracy to accommodate the brand of democrats in Nigeria. That makes him a democrat in search of a democracy. Let’s pray for him so that he doesn’t get consumed in the search. If he does, his epitaph will read something close to this: Here lies the Great Jagaban who did everything to undo himself.
By Abraham Ogbodo
Maybe we are forgetting that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and BAT for short, is a fine democrat. He is also a man of enormous means who knows how to use what he has to get what he wants. Part of the credentials that qualified him for previous and current roles is fighting so hard to achieve this democracy that we have today. In fact, it is his only claim that has not been serially challenged in court. Other aspects of his pedigree, like his academic qualifications, career history, state of origin, age, parentage, etc, etc, have been vigorously contested by busybodies in regular courts or courts of public opinion. Everybody manages to agree that the man fought, and very hard too, for democracy.
And since he became President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria on May 29, 2023, BAT has been working so hard as a democrat. He has worked to democratise everything that was hitherto held back from free expression. The exchange rate has been democratised. BAT has also worked tirelessly to free the pricing of petroleum products from the stranglehold of autocratic forces. As we talk, the exchange rate and pump price of petroleum products are free to express themselves as obtainable in a democracy. Nobody gags them. They now move freely from south to north and from east to west and can even decide to freeze at longitude or latitude zero degree and nothing will happen.
It shouldn’t actually bother the President if some hard-to-impress folks decide to understate his efforts. God is seeing all the good things he is doing for this country. What else do we want from him? Here is a man who has democratised poverty and converted it from vice to virtue. In today’s Nigeria, wealth creation runs on abnormal parameters. Being rich and wealthy, invokes associated imagery of criminality instead of hard work and creativity. Gone are the days when people make it big by just working hard and smart. Outside kidnapping, ritual killing, illegal oil bunkering, banditry, politics and corruption generally, wealth creation is becoming increasingly impossible by other means. This is why it has become more honourable for people to remain poor. Which other President in the history of this country has had the courage to make poverty go round like a merry go-round?
Ensuring peace and order is an integral part of the democratic process. Again, President Tinubu stands tall on this score. See for instance what he has just done to restore order in Rivers State. The state had been in turmoil because the immediate past Governor who has assumed a new sphere of influence in Abuja and the incumbent could not agree on a sharing formula. The President had fatherly advised Governor Siminalayi Fubara to stoop to conquer. He did not however state how low the Governor should stoop to do the conquest. The Governor just went to the frontline to do the stooping he understood. Conquest did not follow.
And this, sometimes, is the problem with BAT. He could be very indeterminate. Depending on what is up for determination, he could choose to project his gliding avian capabilities or remain in the steady mammalian mode. He speaks too much in tongues and one will not have a clear understanding of what he says or does not say and what he wants or does not want if one is not deep in the spirit. Perhaps, what President Tinubu meant was for Governor Fubura to go home, take off his elaborate Ijaw costumes, lie flat and roll on a wet ground, until he conquers. The Governor underperformed in this all-important assignment of stooping to conquer. He flunked badly. Even at that, observers believe that the so-called Rivers State crisis was a scintillating comedy of manners which got re-plotted into a high tragedy to fit into a narrative. Early in the day, some literary minded person in the Governor’s team should have sourced and given Fubara a copy of Oliver Goldsmith’s “She Stoops To Conquer” to study for proper guidance.
READ ALSO: Ihedioha: A dogged political fighter @60
That did not happen and it became too late for Fubara to re-strategise to stem a collapse. The storm that followed last Tuesday did not just force him to stoop but press him underneath. Nobody can come and spoil this democracy and presidency which Tinubu fought tooth and nail to procure. The President said so in his proclamation. “There is no way democratic governance, which we have all fought and worked for over the years, can thrive in a way redound to the benefit of the good people of the state” he noted. He has asked the Governor, his deputy and the House of Assembly members to give up their jobs for six months, in the first instance, to enable him bring back democracy in Rivers State. He has done very well. This is something that all the stakeholders in Rivers State could not do in many months. But because BAT knows how to convert demonstration of craze into democracy, he got the problem solved with a stroke of the tongue.
Like a good theatre director, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation Lateef Fagbemi (SAN) followed later to explain the script. In dramaturgy, there is something called the willing suspension of disbelief. It was a coinage by the 18th Century English poet and philosopher, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It simply means the willingness of the audience to push against their senses and believe the fictional representation on stage. It is a technique that belongs more to the artistic director than it does to the script writer. It seeks to create a poetic faith in the audience in a situation of apparent void and unreasonableness.
This was the lot of AGF Fagbemi as he struggled to create legal meanings from apparent unconstitutionality. Even though we say the law is an ass and can be pushed through all directions, it does not mean the law can be pushed through a brick wall without occasioning an implosion. The real hunter is the conscience not the intellect. Fagbemi, as President BAT, sounded as if the River narrative was entirely driven by a protagonist without an antagonist. And so, the days ahead will surely see the AGF doing a lot more tutorials on the Rivers Emergency Proclamation to cause the willing suspension of disbelief among the bemused national audience.
But today’s outing is not about the AGF. It is about a democrat called BAT and his diligent search for democracy. Before Rivers State, there was Lagos State. We all know the popular story around modern Lagos. It is said to have been built solely through Tinubu’s administrative wizardry in eight years. The feat is the number one benchmark against which Tinubu’s strength is measured in national politics. In fact, the charge is for BAT to replicate the Lagos wonder at the national level.
In a manner of speaking, Lagos is Tinubu and Tinubu is Lagos. Therefore, when some overzealous state legislators voted to impeach the Speaker of the State House of Assembly, Mudashiru Obasa, without express clearance from the landlord, the impeachment collapsed after 49 days. Obasa complained in high quarters that the manner of his impeachment was not democratic and Tinubu who doesn’t like anything undemocratic had advised a return to status quo ante.
I guess the problem is in our unwillingness to give Tinubu his due. Whether you agree or not, the man has deepened democracy. Democracy is managing plurality and dissension. And if you look around today, there is so much dissension in all the political parties. The PDP is pulling apart in all directions; same as the Labour Party where the only stable coefficient is the party’s presidential flag bearer in the 2023 general election, Mr. Peter Obi. Even the ruling APC is refusing to be calm in spite of the enforcer-in-chief. This is democracy in action and it is all as a result of the excellent work of President BAT.
Also, there is something very important that Nigerians do not understand about Tinubu. He alone has the anointing to speak and act the truth at any point in time. In dealing with him, you don’t search beyond the current circumstances for the truth. It doesn’t matter what he said yesterday or previously. What matters is what he is saying now. If for instance he said yesterday that removal of fuel subsidy was bad and says today that same is good, you stay with his last statement in searching for the truth. That is how it has been in this emergency whatever in Rivers State.
Some people are erroneously standing on what Tinubu said in 2013 when President Goodluck Jonathan wanted to declare State of Emergency in the three Northern States of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa. Back then, the provisions of the constitution that deal with the subject matter of emergency proclamation were quoted generously by BAT and his supporters, including lawyers and journalists, to guide Jonathan on how to go about his own version of the declaration of a state of emergency. Jonathan chose to be guided. The summary, then and now, is that no provision in the 1999 Constitution, as amended, empowers a sitting President to pull down democratic structures the way Tinubu has done in Rivers State.
That was the truth then which has since changed. It is to add that in the search for democracy and good governance in Nigeria, President BAT represents the way, the only way, and nothing more. No other way leads to destination. He is also the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Against him, truth loses its permanence and becomes a variable that has to be realigned to fit. He thinks strength is sense hence every opportunity for engagement is interpreted as supremacy contest.
Under President Mohammadu Buhari, then Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu had talked of ways of reducing the subsidies on fuel. He said that the situation was such that only magic could sustain the continued payments of subsidies by government and that since magic was not part of the training he had in school, there was little or nothing he could offer to help things. Tinubu was angry. He felt the minister’s statement was insensitive. He saw in this an opportunity to showcase his populist credentials. He called a press conference to defend Nigerians against Dr. Ibe Kachikwu. He accused the minister of adding salt to the injuries of Nigerians. He said Kachikwu was appointed minister by Buhari to solve problems of product pricing and non-availability and not to lament.
Before then in 2012, BAT, fighting on the side of the suffering masses of Nigeria, had supported public protests to prevent President Jonathan from adding to petrol pump price beyond N65 per litre. The truth however changed on May 29, 2023. On that day, Tinubu said removal of subsidy was good and the best public policy that could ever happen in Nigeria. That has remained the truth pending when the next statement by BAT on the subject matter will be released.
As a pro-democracy activist and later Governor of Lagos State, he maintained that something called true or fiscal federalism was all that was needed to solve Nigeria’s problems. That was the truth. He tested it against former President Obasanjo in the matter of creation of additional local government areas which were later converted to Community Development Centres (CDCs) in Lagos State. I cannot say for sure the true position of that truth since BAT became President in 2023. He had also called for the convocation of a national conference to discuss the great questions in Nigeria. That was the truth. But when time came for one in 2014, the truth changed and a conference to discuss the basis for Nigeria’s continued existence was tagged diversionary by him. Diversion to where?
Notwithstanding, BAT means very well. We only need to understand him better. Nigerians are fine democrats. BAT’s greatest challenge is inventing a corresponding democracy. In other words, BAT is on a self-appointed mission to create a democracy to accommodate the brand of democrats in Nigeria. That makes him a democrat in search of a democracy. Let’s pray for him so that he doesn’t get consumed in the search. If he does, his epitaph will read something close to this: Here lies the Great Jagaban, who did everything to undo himself.
