Category: Olatunji Ololade

There was a furtive, disciplined cadence to his accent, which seemed a tad too serious for the event. But his folksiness pretty much reappeared as he began his inaugural address. President Muhammadu Buhari’s actual tenor was unmistakably formal, low in rhetoric but partial to political grandstanding; there was no harrumph to it.

Miles away, passersby at a local electronics shop in Agege, Lagos, stayed glued to multiple TV screens showing the event. They seemed too eager to catch a glimpse of history as Buhari delivered his inaugural speech at the Eagle Square, in Abuja.

About halfway through his speech, a middle-aged man intoned quietly, what seemed to be on everyone’s mind: “This is the change we voted for. Buhari should heal our pains” – not in those exact words in any case.

President Buhari is hardly tone-deaf. His inaugural speech as President, Federal Republic of Nigeria and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces addressed Nigeria’s major afflictions: “With depleted foreign reserves, falling oil prices, leakages and debts the Nigerian economy is in deep trouble and will require careful management to bring it round and to tackle the immediate challenges confronting us, namely; Boko Haram, the Niger Delta situation, the power shortages and unemployment especially among young people,” he said.

It was reminiscent of United States (US) President, Barack Obama’s “We are the change that we seek,” bromide. “I belong to everybody and I belong to nobody… There will be no paying off old scores. The past is prologue,” said Buhari in shinier poesy.

Buhari’s speech, no doubt, resonated the All Progressives Congress (APC)’s ‘Change’ ideology. Eight years after, several Nigerians dismiss his inaugural gospel of ‘Change’ as a corny sound bite. Several others accuse Buhari’s critics of desperate cynicism; certain positives can be deduced from his outgoing government, they argue.

And to assert these positives, the outgoing presidency has released a 90-page ‘Fact Sheet’ highlighting the achievements of President Buhari’s administration in the last eight years. In a statement issued by the Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to the President, Femi Adesina, the presidency listed the 37 bills signed into law, the 12 executive orders, numerous infrastructure projects, fiscal reforms, and the bilateral agreements, among the current administration’s achievements since 2015.

The bills include the 16 Constitution Amendment Bills – Business Facilitation (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 2022; The Defence Research and Development Authority Act, 2022; Nigerian Copyright Act, 2022; National Health Insurance Authority Act, 2022; Nigerian Startup Act, 2022; Electoral Act (Amendment) Bill, 2022; Money Laundering (Prevention and Prohibition) Bill, 2022, which repeals the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2011 and the Terrorism (Prevention and Prohibition) Act, 2022, which repeals the Terrorism (Prevention) Act, 2011 as amended in 2013.

One glaring failure of the Buhari administration, however, is its inability to resolve Nigeria’s electricity problem despite its significance to socio-economic development. There was anticipation that he would neuter the cabal controlling and profiting from the importation of fuel, generators, and other alternative power sources to the detriment of millions of Nigerians.

Buhari was expected to decentralise, deregulate and privatise the power sector, opening it up to healthy competition. Recall that his party promised to triple power generation to 12,000 MW by 2020. He was expected to resolve the problems of the oil and gas sector and the controversial subsidies paid to fuel importers who bring in petroleum products because of a lack of functional refineries.

The Buhari administration promised to transform the infrastructure in Nigeria’s power sector. The promises conveyed through its campaign manifesto tagged “the next level road map” were in four broad categories—generation, distribution, off-grid and rural electrification.

The administration failed to fulfill its promise to generate 1,000 MW of electricity yearly, and generated capacity reduced by 263 MW in 2020 and 925MW in 2021.

However, it scored admirably in off-grid and rural electrification. For instance, five out of the nine promised universities have seen the commissioning of solar-powered energy and recorded over 11,000 electricity connections through mini-grids.

Against the backdrop of these realities, new President-elect Bola Ahmed Tinubu (BAT) faces an onerous task leading the country. He has the next four years to actualise his gospel of “Renewed Hope.” Immediately after he is sworn in as President, Tinubu must contend with intense pressure and anticipation of progress from the citizenry.

Yet, there is something just a wee bit creepy about the citizenry’s messianic expectations of Tinubu’s leadership and its repudiation by his bitter critics – all in one breadth. It resonates an unrealistic hankering for quick-fix solutions by the former and a relentless doomsday cynicism from the latter.

Nigerians anticipate a miraculous recovery from hardships foisted on the country through maladministration, lethargic policy governance cum outright failure, and institutionalised corruption. These anomalies have been entrenched in the system by successive military and civilian leadership since Nigeria’s independence.

With severe socioeconomic, security and political issues plaguing the states, President-elect Tinubu and his cabinet face an uphill task of rebuilding and healing the nation.

 This is a cross that he must bear. Patronising segments of the citizenry believe he must have decided on a road map for resolving the country’s major afflictions and thus would hit the ground running.

President Buhari said last October that he would end the controversial fuel subsidy in 2023. Thus in this year’s budget, the federal government set aside N3.36trn ($7.5bn) for petrol subsidy until June. According to the NNPC, the government spent N2.91trn ($7bn) on petrol subsidies between January and September 2022.

Tinubu is expected to implement the subsidy removal, something he described as “anti-poor” to Kaduna-based Freedom Radio in early January and promised to “re-channel the money to the people who truly need it.”

But can Tinubu ever fully deliver the prosperity he promised? Or would he simply gift Nigeria yet another semblance of growth from the margins?

Pre-election, a recurring theme in his manifesto was his intention to build a new, prosperous country anchored on an enduring economic rejuvenation drive. Titled ‘My Vision for Nigeria,’ Tinubu promises in the document, “A vibrant and thriving democracy and a prosperous nation with a fast-growing industrial base, capable of producing the most basic needs of the people and exporting to other countries of the world.”

He promised the citizenry access to all their “basic needs, including a safe and secure environment, abundant food, affordable shelter, health care, and quality primary education for all. A nation founded on justice, peace, and prosperity for all.”

From his inauguration, on May 29, over 200 million Nigerians would expect a magical turnaround of the country’s fortunes as well as their individual and collective fates.

There is certainly much to be done as the masses have outgrown the pageantry of his hard-fought victory. President-elect Tinubu staged an upset none of his rivals envisaged. Because of him, the 2023 elections unfurled like the greatest show on earth.

In Tinubu, many who despaired have found a new champion, others a new foe. Frustration has given way to excitement and excitement to manifest trepidation as the ongoing transition winds down to the May 29 handover of power.

Going forward, Tinubu must get it right with public appointments, policies and his relations with the opposition. And having wooed the electorate with a melody of prosperity, Nigerians are eager to see the dividends he promised manifest in their lives.

Right now, they fasten their fates to his gospel of “Renewed Hope.” Some with infectious enthusiasm, some with curious resignation.

For the love of country” is still our sexiest lie. The curvaceous plague of Nigerian politics. Everybody cops a feel.

Government and the governed; oppressor and the oppressed; bourgeoisie and long-suffering proletariat; the old and young: the gbenudake and soro soke generations; all partake in the prurient rite. They all identify as patriots too.

Politics, however, fades to melodrama where the patriot misinterprets his role. In his struggle to usurp privileges and power, he inflicts misery on ordinary citizens, those whose predicament supposedly triggered his defiant ‘wokeness.’

“For the love of country” becomes his arrant lie, the falsity that incites his passion. Thus, this minute, the random youth pulses to duplicitous love.

Belligerent, cocksure and digitally-woke, social media is his brothel, the virtual bordello of his dreams, where pimps of strife and courtesans of the witless caress his manifest and furtive lusts. Ultimately, it slakes his unarticulated sinful thirsts.

If Facebook is his weakness, Twitter is his vice. A new breed of youth currently prowls social media. He is less inhibited, less courteous, and inhumane. He considers every alternative opinion a declaration of war even as he mounts the soapbox just to spout off and be seen; his rant passes the stink that smelly suds make in an ocean of mental squalor.

It gets scarier where their ignorance, intemperance, and rage, enjoy the caress of a dubious demagogue. They launch like loose canons at the slightest provocation. Left to their devices, they are feckless and sterile. Armed with their digital devices, they pose anything to their homeland: motley blessings and applause in one minute and despicable threats in the next.

Nigeria won’t forget in a hurry, the 2023 presidential elections; several youths supporting the Labour Party, in particular, conducted themselves like the goons used to perpetrate the #EndSARS criminality; through the mayhem, nationhood careened at the crossroads where patriotic spunk unfurls to ignorance, fake news, and mischief.

Some have blamed their toxic demeanour on infernal youth and conceit even as many more flay the political class for inciting their worst aspects through bigotry and rhetoric.

The youths, again, betrayed lack of a visionary plan for political participation. Thus, a large swathe of the youthful electorate turned what was supposed to be a peaceful process into a toxic exercise. The political campaigns eventually got hijacked by mischief makers: shady clerics, failed aspirants, and criminal coalitions at home and abroad – united in spite and all having a score to settle with one candidate or the other.

Amid such clime, the 2023 polls dawned scented with prospects; the streets huffed with partisan charm, slogans, and expectations of the people. Never had electorate ire become so banal; spruced with the anticipation of clashing mobs, voters waving party flags self-identifying as Obidients, the ATIKULATED, and the BATIFIED, engaged in a conscious rite of citizenship to elect Nigeria’s new president and federal lawmakers.

En route to the polls, Nigeria contracted and splayed to a blitz of pomp, adrenaline and wild drama as political actors clashed in a frenzied surge for votes.

From the tenor of the campaign to the sweep of votes, the election triggered an outlook of something sinister, and then calm; in the end, every permutation pointed to the fact that the eventual winner of the presidential polls may no longer stir the jubilance deserving of the keenly contested office.

In the most wide-open presidential election Nigeria has seen since 1979, Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) polled 8,794,726 votes to defeat 17 other candidates including former Vice President Atiku Abubakar (6,984,520 votes) of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and former Anambra Governor,Peter Obi (6,101,533 votes) of the Labour Party (LP).

President-elect Tinubu, in an apparent show of sportsmanship, extended hands of fellowship to his rival candidates, Atiku and Obi, among others, stressing that, “Political competition must now give way to political conciliation and inclusive governance. During the election, you may have been my opponent, but you were never my enemy. In my heart, you are my brothers…Any challenge to the electoral outcome should be made in a court of law, and not in the streets.”

He also charged his supporters “to let peace reign and tensions fade. We ran a principled, peaceful, and progressive campaign. The aftermath of our campaign must be as benign.”

The new president-elect described physical and verbal assaults as “unacceptable and antithetical to democratic ethos” stressing that elections should be a celebration of our maturing democracy and freedom of choice and ought not to be moments of grief.

While Tinubu’s admonishment clearly captured the mood and tenor of partisanship pre and post-election, it barely addresses the sludge of despair and doom-mongering that succeeded the outcome of the polls, especially among LP chieftains and supporters.

Their post-election conduct mirrors the buildup and aftermath of the ill-fated #EndSARS protest; it shows that demagogues still call the shots and use the youths as disposable pawns. The latter guzzle on spite and sound bites without proper introspection or recourse to reason. It would seem that too many among them simply adopt any movement that’s anti-government and anti-Nigeria.

Too much of duplicity is discernible in the exploits of many, whose ‘hardcore’ agitation had been seen to extinguish soon after they got ‘settled’ by the ruling class or power brokers aligned to the former.

Ferocity manifests as crucial aspects of their passion; the clique culture, cancel culture, authoritarianism, and sense of entitlement characteristic of the ruling class actually manifest among the youth across class divides. It’s a precursor to rite of Nigeria’s rape cycle.

If the 2023 elections have taught us anything, it is that the ’woke’ voter, in his youth, is politically illiterate and morally ambivalent. He pays lip-service to patriotism even as his provocative ‘purity’ incites filth in its wake. Stripped of his slogan, his passion betrays neither breadth nor depth. It is barely individuated from the insensitivity and grotesqueness resonant of the primeval gladiator arena.

His passion connotes moral emptiness. What Paglia would liken to the still heart of a geode, rimmed with crystalline teeth. His platitudinous chant is disguised as a series of soothing gestures, like rubbing a lantern to make a genie appear.

In truth, he weaponises a dark sentiment, luring the masses into a dark cycle of sadism. His exaggerated gestures and confessions of love are an assertion of savage lust. He moots no selflessness or sacrifice, only refinements of domination.

Beneath the glitter and ire of his platitudinous chants subsist a frantic hankering for privileges and spoils of power. For instance, some of the celebrities that led the #EndSARS and who eventually became the faces of the Labour Party’s campaign train could never pass as Nigeria’s finest nationalists or moral compass despite their declarations otherwise.

The 2023 presidential election has also taught us that compromised state actors, tribal and religious jingoists would always fail in their charge against a charismatic, detribalised leader – just as conspirators behind the contrived currency scarcity and fuel shortage failed against Tinubu.

The 2023 election taught us that realism would always triumph over rhetoric and that we need a peaceful country to successfully fight and defeat corruption, governance failure, power outage, infrastructure collapse, substandard health and education among others.

It equally asserts that if the youths truly seek positive change, they must achieve a unity of minds and common purpose by constructive participation in the political process.

It’s about time the Nigerian city achieved rural sweep. We must begin to profit from what we grow. Right now, our cities deify baubles and digital enlightenment that remains superfluous to the country.

This is why social life and commerce get grounded in the heat of a crisis; at the outbreak of the coronavirus, for instance, economic activities in most cities got grounded – it was as if the metropolis and the wheels of industry didn’t matter.

Before the advent of big tech; before our cash crops and wildflowers got decimated by murderous herdsmen and their ruck; before pastoral farms frothed with pesticides and fishes floated belly-up in Ewekoro and the oil creeks in Niger Delta, we grew what we ate.

Cities don’t produce food. They depend on the countryside to provide it. Save their food distribution systems, cities can quarantine, shut-in, and shut-down, so long as the countryside doesn’t.

A deeper look at our fate through the pandemic revealed how worthless the Nigerian city is, with its parade of glitz and chug-chug of industry. But for the country’s agricultural economy, Nigeria would starve.

President-elect Bola Ahmed Tinubu has his work cut out for him. His agricultural policy must manifest beyond passionate pronouncements and gazetted intent.

The wellspring of wealth is agricultural surplus, the ability to feed more than one with the labour of one. Agricultural surplus built the groundnut pyramids of the north and the cocoa plantations of the southwest.

Nigeria was a leading agricultural economy in the 1950s, being the largest producer of palm oil, groundnut, cotton, and cocoa globally. The sector employed over 70 percent of the labour force and accounted for as much as 62.3 percent of the nation’s foreign exchange earnings.

Over the last four decades, however, the yield of most key crops has declined, in particular, cassava, cocoa beans and wheat – a reflection of low utilisation of improved seedlings, agrochemicals and poor adoption of technology, according to a recent Price Water House report.

The yield of rice on the other hand has increased steadily, resulting from

government’s increased support for rice production, by providing subsidised agrochemicals and credit facilities through various intervention funds.

In contrast to yield, land usage in Nigeria has increased across key crops, like cassava, cocoa beans, rice paddy and wheat. This has been primarily driven by an increase in the population engaged in farming, although production remains at a subsistence level.

For most key crops, Nigeria’s share of global production has remained low. However, the rate of consumption has outstripped production. The deficit has been met largely by importation, making the country a net importer. On average, between 2011 and 2015, N1.4 trillion has been spent on food imports with wheat, milk, rice, sugar and malt extract, constituting the bulk of Nigeria’s food import bill.

Consequently, Nigeria is vulnerable to changes in global agro-commodity prices, with a significant impact on inflation and foreign reserves. Between 2011 and 2015, agro-processed exports declined by 41 percent to N143 billion. These exports, which accounted for an estimated 20 percent of Nigeria’s non-oil exports in 2015, were mainly leather and processed skin, alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages, tobacco and cocoa derivatives.

According to the FAO, Nigeria is estimated to have lost US$ 10 billion in annual exports of agriculture and agro-processed commodities including

groundnut, palm oil, cocoa and cotton as a result of the decline in production of these commodities.

In addition, the Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC) attributed the decline in food exports to non-compliance with regulatory and documentation requirements for food imports to the European Union and the United Kingdom.

Also, the World Bank estimates that Nigeria and other developing countries could have lost as much as US$ 6.9 billion in 2015, as a result of food export rejection.

These challenges have stifled agricultural productivity, affecting the sector’s contribution to the country’s GDP. It has also led to increased food imports amid skyrocketing population and declining levels of food sufficiency.

For instance, between 2016 and 2019, Nigeria’s cumulative agricultural imports stood at N3.35 trillion, four times higher than the agricultural export of N803 billion within the same period.

Of its 92.4 million hectares, Nigeria boasts 82.0 million hectares of arable land; so far, just 34 million hectares of it have been cultivated. With population explosion and government’s renewed drive to boost food security, agriculture has become increasingly crucial to our survival as a nation.

Understandably, President Muhammadu Buhari sought to revivify the country’s agricultural economy at his assumption of office in 2015, and then, in 2019. Despite his rural preachment, the country’s fixation with oil rendered her a whited sepulchre, sullied by wastefulness and vice, the soot that will not out.

Nigeria needs agriculture. Agriculture employs about 70 percent of the country’s population thus it can be used to drive sustainable growth prospects through a value chain that turns raw commodities into processed goods for domestic consumption or export.

New President-elect Tinubu must fund diversification of agriculture to make it more appealing to a vast youth population that is spiritless about farming but might be attracted to processing, marketing, and other business opportunities along the value chain.

The food emergency in northeast and northwest Nigeria brought on by the Boko Haram insurgency, banditry, infrastructure deficits, and the government’s response to them emphasises the need to expand the agricultural sector to guarantee food security and nutrition.

Until then, the Nigerian city will subsist as a plague; it is diseased because its sensuality is both morbid and commercial. It’s hidden graces unclad, like the proverbial harlot, self-exiled from the village but always returning under cover of night to stalk and prey on the countryside.

The Nigerian city does too little for the countryside. Knowing this, President-elect Tinubu announced his decision to resurrect the country by endowing its agricultural economy with remarkable fillips. To achieve this, he must ensure that both his team and tools, unlike Thel’s worms, aren’t pathogens miming his curative mantra.

Tinubu must understand that his government cannot achieve agricultural boon simply by pronouncing passion to resources. He must thoroughly examine if resources are pronounced to his passion.

While the rationale for prioritising agriculture is sound, many reforms will have to be enacted if the sector is to flourish. These reforms must also include measures to save rural Nigeria by the sheen continually sponged off its greenery by the city.

It was hay that allowed populations to grow and civilizations to flourish among the forests of Northern Europe. Hay moved the greatness of Rome to Paris and London, and later to Berlin and Moscow and New York, writes Dyson.

Hay was responsible for Nigeria’s first brush with economic glory. Between 1962 and 1968, Nigeria’s major foreign exchange earner was the agricultural sector where palm oil and groundnut made up around 47% of the country’s exports. However, Nigeria’s position as an agricultural powerhouse declined through its oil boom.

Caught between the womb walls of the crude oil creeks and digital tech, Nigeria lives imprisoned in starvation’s bower. Yet government recites fantastic stories of agricultural rebirth – thus rejecting the strife of contraries by which Nigeria convulses.

At the outbreak of COVID-19, our fabled artifice collapsed in hysterical retreat as the country leapt from its tinsel perch and dashed, shrieking back to its native valleys.

What was hitherto regarded as an underprivileged fetish, and a peasant preserve, became our major source of sustenance and rebirth. Nigeria weeps but does not recognise her own tears.

A wolf disguised as a sheep would not be discovered simply because it bleats badly but because of the “shit’ it leaves behind. No matter how rhapsodic any politician waxes about wresting his allegedly “stolen mandate” from the proclaimed winner of the 2023 elections, Nigerians must examine his claims with a quizzical mind.

The election has been lost and won. It’s about time we moved on. But whoever feels he was “robbed” must seek redress through the law court. The provisions of the law are quite clear on the issue.

Hence it becomes worrisome to see failed candidates in the just concluded elections incite their supporters to anarchy. Such characters must not be spared by security agencies. It’s about time their excesses are curtailed.

There is a tragedy inherent in politicians’ customary lamentation every time they lose an election; many of them resort to conduct unbecoming of the nation builders cum messiahs they professed to be en route to the elections.

Such characters are extremely dangerous. For instance, since the conclusion of the presidential elections, certain aggrieved candidates have been braying for war.

Mayhem is the anthem that we should shun. It is the fruit of dissent that we need to be wary of and I will continue to say this hoping the prospective tools – the youths – by which the masterminds hope to actualise their selfish plots, would listen, and let the anarchists commit themselves and their families to the chaos they incite.

The biggest misconception about insurgence or whatever the anarchists choose to call it is that it could be progressive and that its end result would be the actualisation of their allegedly stolen mandate.

It’s all dirty, greedy politics; the anarchists want the youths to fly the flags of their rebellion against the rule of law. They want everyone to brandish a bumper sticker that bellows: “Death to the Federal Republic of Nigeria!” simply because they lost an election albeit deservedly.

They call anyone holding contrary counsel or view, a traitor or whatever colourful adjective suits their rage. Then they promise the youths a prosperous future and a better fate under their leadership.

Sadly, youths that ought to know better buy into their farce and they all begin to dream and talk of the great uprising that would set them free from the living hell Nigeria has become. Truly, it is a sad thing that these anarchists enjoy the “obedience” and support of youths, whose eyes cannot see and whose mind cannot discern their selfish plots.

Thus the affected youth wastes his passion recycling hackneyed rage and fomenting trouble for the sake of shady politicians; for the latter’s sake, he perpetrates ethnic and religious intolerance with devastating results.

He engages in bootless pursuits at the end of which he accomplishes too little or nothing. For himself, he probably accomplishes some individualized goal – the satisfaction of a sentiment or material gain perhaps – which to him is everything. But for Nigeria, he accomplishes nothing.

Eventually, he grows into the prototypical average, disgruntled man on the street, who suddenly realizes in his twilight that he has squandered God’s greatest gifts to him: his intellect and time.

Then the smokescreen of youth and hastily prized platitudes begin to peter out and he realizes that his rhetorical talisman is a paltry plated coin, not fit to pass around even as a contemptible kobo.

The attempt to conceive imaginatively, a better ordering of Nigerian society away from the pitiless chaos in which the nation has sunk is by no means modern, it is at least as old as Plato, whose “Republic” set the model for the Utopias of subsequent philosophers and self-styled revolutionaries.

The anarchists contemplate a new Nigeria in the light of no ideal: they claim to feel a great sorrow by the evils that characterise the country, and they claim to be driven by an urgent desire to lead the country to the realisation of the collective good.

It is this desire that has been the primary force moving the pioneers of anarchism and horrid tyrannies as it moved the creators of “ideal” commonwealths in the past.

In contemporary Nigeria, such an ideal incense suspicious politicians claiming to fight for an allegedly stolen mandate and their right to rule the country. In this, there is nothing new; what is new and unpardonably offensive is the pretension of such characters to heartfelt patriotism, shared grief and identity, and hankering to alleviate the sufferings of the masses.

This has enabled their cynical, anarchist political movement to grow out of the frustrations of the people.

Such characters exploit the hopes of the youth, in particular; a political demography comprising predominantly impressible youths whose thought processes are anything but politically conscious. And this makes the agitation of the anarchists worrisome and markedly dangerous to the survival of the country.

It is no doubt the stock in trade of such rabble-rousers to refer to violent uprisings in Egypt, Libya, Sudan, Iraq, Zanzibar, Tanganyika, India-Pakistan, Mali and parts of Asia among others, as worthy indicators of Nigeria’s need to follow suit.

Whenever they dazzle with such commentary, tell them to lead the charge of the mayhem they advocate with their wives, children, parents and concubines. It is interesting to note that such individuals and their cohorts in civil society have their beloved wives and children tucked safely abroad even as they goad clueless youth at home to their doom.

The process of re-sensitizing the youth away from the establishment of chaos and possible genocide advocated by the anarchists must be quickly accelerated by the incoming government from the get-go.

President-elect Bola Tinubu has got his work cut out for him; while his triumph at the polls may be attributed to his impressive track record and his choice of realism over rhetoric throughout his campaign, he has to contend with opponents in the People’s Democratic Party and Labour Party who deployed cheap rhetoric and lies to earn votes.

The latter fueled the angst of a large swathe of ethnic and religious bigots, using mainstream and new media. Even after suffering defeat, they and their supporters have adopted to the garb of sore losers indiscriminately calling for the cancellation of the election while wishing doom upon the country.

President-elect Tinubu must disabuse the minds of the mob who are unfortunately taken by the platitudes and poetics of such dubious characters.

Pre-election, a recurring theme in his manifesto was his intention to build a new, prosperous country anchored on an enduring economic rejuvenation drive. Titled ‘My Vision for Nigeria,’ Tinubu promises in the document, “A vibrant and thriving democracy and a prosperous nation with a fast-growing industrial base, capable of producing the most basic needs of the people and exporting to other countries of the world.”

He promised the citizenry access to all their “basic needs, including a safe and secure environment, abundant food, affordable shelter, health care, and quality primary education. A nation founded on justice, peace, and prosperity for all.”

The only way to assuage frayed nerves is for him to fulfill these promises. From his inauguration, on May 29, over 200 million Nigerians would expect a magical turnaround of the country’s fortunes as well as their individual and collective fates.

There is certainly much to be done. As his supporters outgrow the pageantry of his hard-fought victory, his virulent rivals would heal from the venom of defeat perhaps.

Peter Obi’s groupies liken him to a revolutionary. En route to the presidential polls, they touted him as Nigeria’s only hope. The 61-year-old proclaimed himself the voice of the youth. Thus several youths romanticised his candidacy.

In their fantasy, Obi transfigures by revolutionary ecstasy and defeats all the odds; he defeats the incumbent political class, which he had always been a part of but from whose misdeeds he is curiously exonerated, for inexplicable reasons. Then he becomes Nigeria’s president.

The February 25 election was supposed to herald his ascent to the presidency. But Obi failed, coming third, in a fiercely contested election. At his defeat, his supporters, that is, the self-acclaimed ‘obidient’ herd, released a volley of threats, promising that Nigeria would implode.

They would rather burn the country to rubble than forfeit the presidency to the rightful victor by the ballot, President-elect Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

This “headless mob” as Anambra Governor Charles Soludo would say, expressed stupefaction over Obi’s defeat, screaming that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had rigged the election for President-elect Tinubu.

Against the backdrop of his supporters’ bloodcurdling threats, Obi held a press conference where he shed crocodile tears and declared himself winner of the presidential election.

That was the same election in which President-elect Tinubu polled 8,794,726 votes to defeat his closest rival, Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), who scored 6,984,520 to emerge second. It’s a curious thing, however, that Obi who scored 6,101,533 to emerge third has declared himself the rightful winner of the election.

Obi craftily approached the court, urging his mob to eschew violence and await his victory through litigation. If wishes were horses, Obi would ride.

Thus he has filed a petition to challenge Tinubu’s victory. He also charges the court to either declare him the president-elect or nullify the election and order a fresh one.

Obi alleged that the election was characterised by irregularities, citing the non-qualification of Tinubu and his running mate, Kashim Shettima, to contest in the polls.

At least, for all its worth, Obi started a guileful albeit desperate struggle to sustain the support of his mob, hoping to reap by it a few governorship and state assembly seats for the Labour Party (LP) at the March 18 gubernatorial polls.

His plot, however, falls flat on the face as the LP suffered a dismal outing at the gubernatorial and state assembly polls. Obi’s party has only managed to win one state (Abia), more than 72 hours after the March 18 governorship elections.

Due to his impressive showing at the presidential election, many Nigerians had anticipated that Obi’s LP would clinch a number of governorship seats, having won 11 states and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, in the presidential election on February 25.

However, the results of 25 out of the 28 governorship elections announced at press time, show that the LP’s hope to produce at least one governor hangs delicately on Abia State – being one of the four remaining states where winners are yet to be declared by INEC.

So far, the APC has won 15 States, the PDP, eight, while the LP and New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) have won one state respectively.

Notwithstanding his party’s dispiriting performance, Peter Obi will sustain his theatrics until his mob’s patience eventually peters out and they learn to accept the reality of his loss.

In truth, Obi has accepted defeat. He envisaged his shellacking. Thus his post-election antics are merely calculated artifice, a frantic theatre worthy of his supporters’ addiction to the pseudo-realism of his victory.

There is no gainsaying the ‘obidients’ are victims of repressed outrage, which is inordinately being fondled by their idolised demagogue. History may perhaps absolve them of righteous outrage and blame. After all, many of them have lived through tumult watching Nigeria wilt from policy failure, unemployment, nepotism, and insecurity.

Consequently, they conclude that the incumbent ruling class has led Nigeria to the precipice. They accuse the aging leadership of holding tenaciously to power, never letting go; and that when they do let go, they re-insinuate their interests in the corridors of power via their children, indebted stooges, and sworn associates.

Amid the malady, the youths romanticised the emergence of a ‘young’ presidential candidate. The fable persisted through the 2019 elections with abject failure. En route to the 2023 elections, the youths had another opportunity to coalesce their dissent to produce a youthful candidate of their dreams. But they blew it and instead chose to scream shrilly from the sidelines while familiar oligarchs consolidated their hold on power.

The LP mob, for instance, vilified INEC and rival parties for Obi’s loss. In their curious calculation, Obi scored decisive and fair victories in areas where he won but the election was rigged against him everywhere he lost.

Subsequently, they attack and threaten perceived “enemies” on and off social media for supporting any other candidate but their ‘saintly’ Obi.

The obidients liken themselves to revolutionaries. But they aren’t. Revolutionaries share much in common with devout puritans, irrespective of their flaws. They hold fast to a vision whatever the odds stacked against its attainment. They espouse humane politicking as a moral imperative, even if the hope of success is slim and at times impossible. More importantly, they embrace flexibility and recourse to rapprochement where obstinacy fails to yield.

Obidients, unlike the true revolutionary, however, lack that progressive yet humane characteristic of patriots. They are unwilling to accept deprivation and self-sacrifice, and they are inordinately obsessed with the attainment of victory at any cost.

Patriots are driven by profound empathy, even love, for the vulnerable, the persecuted, and the weak. Not the ‘obidients.’ In the wake of Obi’s loss, many of them scattered in disarray and crawled back dejectedly into toxic dens – from where they unleashed macabre threats on Nigerians of contrasting politics and ethnicity. This is hardly the way to live in an adult world.

Were Obi’s mob firmly heeled and well-founded, the Labour Party wouldn’t record such a dismal outing in the gubernatorial polls. It is inconceivable that a supposed ‘third force’ that scored 6,101,533 votes in the presidential election could only muster less than 700,000 votes nationwide in the governorship elections.

Elections aren’t won on a sweepstake. They require conscious planning, adventurous maneuvering, and commitment to justifiable ideals. No individual or group may commit to a general election nine months before the polls and expect to score massive victories. The best they could ever muster is discernible in the fate of Obi’s LP and his exploited traumatised mob.

The ongoing chaos in Nigeria surpasses blistering bigotries. It bristles between those who are amenable to reason and function in the real world of roots and consequences, cause and effect; and the petrified mob goaded by denial and desperation, now seeking meaning in a fabulous world of emotions – a universe of petulant lust and impulse, a world of magic and delusion.

The elections have been lost and won. Let all parties rise above nettlesome whim and hubris. Obi won’t win at the courts. He is simply play-acting to rankle and soothe his over-exploited herd. It’s a dodgy and reckless maneuver.

It’s about time Nigerians of vast vision, hope, and patriotism joined hands to salvage what is left of our homeland, guided by loftier purpose, maturity, and unflagging fervour.

Bola Ahmed Tinubu makes history as the most maligned presidential aspirant perhaps. En route to the polls, he suffered the affliction of powerful foes within and outside his own party, the All Progressives Congress (APC).

But like an old warhorse inured to trials and plots fostered by known and unknown adversaries, he emerged victorious. Victory sprouted in fields of tumult as he laboured against aggressive charges: the assault of wildly cynical and combative media, the charge of partisan pastors leading a vengeful religious mob to “punish” him for choosing a fellow Muslim as his running mate.

Lest we forget the curiously contrived fuel scarcity, the shady currency redesign and naira swap enforced by the Godwin Emefiele-led Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and its resultant naira scarcity – all contrived to incite the electorate against Tinubu and cost the APC a large percentage of anticipated votes at the February 25 polls.

But through these hostilities, he marched in virtual lockstep with his dreams, undisguised in candour and integrity of intent. His consequent victory and emergence as Nigeria’s new President-elect echoes his previously hard-worn victory at his party’s presidential primaries, few months earlier at the Eagle Square in Abuja.

Through the fire and the furnace, Tinubu emerged as APC’s flagbearer commanding elegant tributes to his politics. There is no gainsaying his victory at the presidential election reorders the chaos of political play.

His foes were  right to be wary of him. His victory at the 2023 polls excites defiant idealism and commands a new class of political patronage. No more shall a crafty coterie of oligarchs afflict Nigeria perhaps.

Tinubu may cancel them out, like the Sphinx that devices and answers his own riddle. Against the shadowy cabal’s run of play, the President-elect manifests as both a titan and a remarkable man of alchemy.

This is my heartfelt belief, prayer, and hope about new President-elect Bola Ahmed Tinubu. But while we anticipate his visionary leadership, not a few cynics question his capacity to actualise excellent governance at Nigeria’s centre and federated units.

Many more nurse dire notions about him. Has he emerged to sustain the business of lacklustre governance? Or would he be the bridge to the replenishment of Nigeria’s famished tracts? What hope subsists in his emergence for Nigeria’s disillusioned youths?

In a show of concern, the new President-elect acknowledged in his acceptance speech that “there are divisions amongst us that should not exist. Many people are uncertain, angry, and hurt; I reach out to every one of you. Let the better aspects of our humanity step forward at this fateful moment. Let us begin to heal and bring calm to our nation.”

And to the youth, Tinubu said, “I hear you loud and clear. I understand your pains, your yearnings for good governance, a functional economy, and a safe nation that protects you and your future.”

En route to the polls, he highlighted in his manifesto, seven core areas of concern to his government, if elected; he promised to actualise a 25 percent annual budget for education and a 10 percent annual budget for health. He offered to decentralise the police, introduce the commodity exchange policy, total deregulation of the oil market and building of national storage to sustain supply, stimulation of production and manufacturing for export, and the actualisation of 15,000MW generation and distribution of electricity

He promised to do all these while creating hundreds of thousands of sustainable jobs simultaneously. A recurring theme in his manifesto was the pronouncement of intent to build a new, prosperous country anchored on an enduring economic rejuvenation drive.

Titled ‘My Vision for Nigeria,’ Tinubu promises in the document, “a nation transformed into greatness, the pride of Africa, a role model for all black people worldwide, and respected among all other countries.

“A vibrant and thriving democracy and a prosperous nation with a fast-growing industrial base, capable of producing the most basic needs of the people and exporting to other countries of the world.”

Tinubu promised a country with a robust economy, where prosperity is broadly shared by all irrespective of class, region, and religion. “A nation where its people enjoy all the basic needs, including a safe and secure environment, abundant food, affordable shelter, health care, and quality primary education for all. A nation founded on justice, peace, and prosperity for all.”

As far as lofty visions go, Tinubu excites vistas of a new era of infrastructure growth, economic prosperity, peace and security. To achieve this, he appeals to the goodwill and harmonious efforts of everyone, especially the youth, whose efforts are crucial to the remodelling of Nigeria into a prosperous and habitable homeland.

This could never be achieved by mere rhetoric. Nigerians should give him a chance and so doing give us all a chance at redeeming our badly afflicted country.

To achieve this, we must divest our hearts of learned and inherited contempt. We must disgorge the darkness within and positively reengage with our country.

At the moment, the cult of self commands our politics. This cult thrives on the sinister quirks of sociopaths: superficial charm, grandiloquence, and conceitedness; a hankering for praise, a penchant for violence, crass sentimentality, sophistry, the inability to feel guilt or remorse, and an inclination to kill.

These much was visible in the recently concluded presidential election, where Nigeria pulsed to demons interred in our dysfunctional social complex. The maladies are deeply cultural and hardwired into the Nigerian psyche.

Call it our affliction by unfettered fanaticism, the preoccupation of partisan zealots.  On its receiving end was Tinubu; the celebrated statesman and two-time governor of Lagos suffered thunderous and inexplicable malice by the machinations of secret and established covens of political adversaries.

A fanatical mob split between the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, Atiku Abubakar, and Labour Party (LP)’s Peter Obi, persistently maligned him in a series of coordinated attacks across mainstream and new media en route to the elections.

Every contrary voice attracted wild rage and vitriol from this mob; besides hurling death threats at Tinubu’s loyalists, Obi’s supporters aka Obidients, in particular, physically assaulted Nigerians who voted for Tinubu in parts of the southeast. A few viral videos attest to this fact.

This is our reality. A society in which the social space inhibits the growth of diverse, independent voices; a space where citizens foster a vicious, poisonous echo chamber that reinforces selfish whims and doctored truths.

Any truth that conflicts with our views of ourselves is deemed maleficent, unfair, and untrue. Any perspective that bashes bigotries and imparts unpleasant truths to us is deemed abhorrent.

The death threats and physical assaults meted to citizens holding differing political views, among other things, reveal us to ourselves. They accentuate our affliction by mob tyranny.

The cult of self would be our greatest undoing. Already, its manifestations are rife. It is the misguided belief that one is always right and everyone else got it wrong; it is the conviction that homicidal bias and personal interest, mistaken for individualism, are the same as patriotism and democratic rights.

In fact, homicidal bias, discernible in our distaste for the view of others, has become the highlight of perverse citizenship and inclination to stifle others.

Violence and angst, a sense of victimhood and a monopoly of morality become their justification for threatening and inflicting chaos on anyone whose opinion contradicts theirs.

It is against such deficiency of citizenship that Bola Tinubu emerges as Nigeria’s new President-elect. Not an enviable job apparently.