For President Tinubu, the honeymoon is over. The party time should be over and attention focused on delivering the axiomatic dividends of democracy.
By Emeka Alex Duru
Seven months after the inauguration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Nigerians are coming to terms with the realities of the day. Whatever cleavages erected by the leaders among the people, are falling apart. Hardship, more than any other factor, is bringing the people closer to one another. They feel the same pains, experience similar wave of bad governance at all levels and bear almost equal weight of economic challenges and uncertainties. Perhaps, more than any other period in recent times, Nigerians are more united than ever. While ushering in the New Year, Nigerians were united in lamenting hunger in the land and wishing for a better 2024. Ironically!
Nothing in contemporary history had torn the country apart and exposed her fault lines as the election that produced Tinubu. That was a particular contest that brought out the worst in the people and the beast in the leadership. It was one contest in which ethnic warlords of the South West who did not see any reason why any other candidate from any other geo-political zone would compete against Tinubu, rose against Nigerians of other ethnic extractions, casting aside years of friendship cohabitation. In Lagos, the likes of Bayo Onanuga, the then spokesperson of the Tinubu campaign organization, now Special Adviser to the President, took it upon themselves to ensure that the Igbo and even their fellow Yoruba kinsmen born of Igbo mothers, were prevented from voting or being voted for.
The election was one in which rigging was elevated to an art and given the status of national policy. The election and its outcome made a mockery of the so-called independence of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). That was an exercise in which the leadership of the electoral body cast aside any pretension of standing on its own. It rather gave out itself as a puppet, dancing to the tunes of the executive arm of the government. Nigerians thought that they had seen all that poll manipulations entailed until the Prof Mahmood Yakubu-led INEC hit them with the worst form of electoral heist.
The expectations that the obvious infractions of the elections would be corrected by the judiciary, were dashed. At all levels of the court – the Tribunals, Court of Appeal and Supreme Court, the judges delivered judgements that threw more confusion on the people and left them with drooping jaws.
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Elsewhere, what happened between February 25 when the elections commenced and October 26 when the Supreme Court delivered judgment on the appeals filed by the Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar and his Labour Party (LP) counterpart, Peter Obi, were enough to cause some upheavals. But not here. Some interpret the situation from the point of nothing moving us as a people, no matter how gruesome. That was the point by the immediate past Minister of Transportation, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, at TheNiche Annual Lecture on October 26, 2023.
Amaechi who spoke on the topic, “Why We Stride and Slip: Leadership, Nationalism, and the Nigerian Condition,” noted that nothing moves Nigerians, even in the face of extreme provocations. “Nigerians choose who to believe and who not to believe… Even if you come to a Nigerian man’s house and kill his mother, the father will continue his life. Nothing bothers you, nothing”, he said. That may explain the apparent docility in the country.
But it could be dangerous to read the situation from the surface and assume that all is well. It would be delusional for Tinubu and other leaders to conclude that the people have been clobbered out of contention by hunger and deprivation. The signs are rather ominous. Late Reggae crooner, Bob Marley was right that a hungry man is an angry man. Nigerians are hungry and angry. The cost of living is on the rise every day and the standard of living crashing. The national currency, the naira, is on free fall, losing value in comparison to the US Dollar and other major currencies. Unemployment is widening and youth restiveness on an alarming rate.
Violent eruptions in different parts of the country indicate the extent of anger in the land. In the latest mayhem in Plateau, the police had estimated the number of people killed in the Christmas eve attacks in some communities in the State at 96 and 221 houses burnt. Independent sources however put the figure at over 115. The attacks which were carried out in 15 communities of Bokkos and Barkin Ladi Local Government Areas of the state also left eight vehicles burnt. The villages affected included Ndun, Ngyong, Murfet, Makundary, Tamiso, Chiang, Tahore, Gawarba, Dares, Meyenga, Darwat and Butura Kampani.
There have been other clashes and unprovoked attacks in other parts of the country. They all point to the volume of frustration in the land and should be addressed before things get out of hand. Thus, for President Tinubu, the honeymoon is over. The party time should be over and attention focused on delivering the axiomatic dividends of democracy. The President has no excuses for not doing so. That was the kernel of the advice to him by the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Matthew Hassan Kukah, on Christmas Day. The cleric had noted that neither history nor God would forgive the President if he failed to deliver on his promises.
Kukah said, “Now, the government must devise strategies for achieving reconciliation, which has eluded us. Our injuries are not invisible. Now, you have what you prayed for, what you dreamt of, what you longed for. For the better part of over 20 years, you have plotted to be our President. For years, you campaigned for a new Nigeria through restructuring or overhauling the defective machinery of the Nigerian state…. For years, you have built networks with individuals, communities, and institutions. Now is harvest time”.
This is one piece of advice the President should not ignore. I had argued elsewhere on why Bishop Kukah should have been seen as a good friend to the former President, Muhammadu Buhari, contrary to the impression created by his image handlers. The same scenario is playing out for Tinubu.
Genuine friends, in this instance, need not be close. A good friend is not one with whom you indulge in orgies and oddities. He is not the type that humours you with a false picture of what you are. A good friend does not tell you what you wish to hear but what you should hear. He does not only criticise but proffers suggestions. Every King, it is said, needs a prophet. That was what Kukah represented in his Christmas outing. Tinubu needs to act to save the country. And time is of the essence!