Tag: tinubu

As the victor in unarguably the most bitter and competitive presidential election in the country’s history, it is unsurprising that those who were opposed to the emergence of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu as President continue to dislike his administration intensely and wish that his failure would justify their skepticism as regards his candidacy. This is even as those who admire and support him remain fervent in their faith in the President despite the hardships engendered by some of his reform policies.

Tinubu was the most abused, traduced, insulted, savaged and pilloried politician ever in the country’s history on his rough route to victory in the February 25, 2023, presidential election. But his constancy in remaining focused and refusing to be distracted during his campaign is an attribute the President needs even more critically now as his adversaries continue to work, directly and indirectly, for the failure of his administration being still unable to come to terms with the reality of his electoral triumph.

President Tinubu’s challenges are made no easier by the tough policy measures he has had to make to confront the country’s unhealthy economic realities particularly the removal of the fuel subsidy which had become characterized by large scale fraud as well as the merger of the parallel exchange rate markets that had made it possible for those with contacts at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to obtain dollars at cheap rates at the official window only to sell them for a fortune at the parallel market with no industry or productive activity whatsoever.

Although neoliberal institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have lauded these reforms believing that, if followed through, they will lay the foundation for the country’s future economic buoyancy, millions of Nigerians are bearing the brunt of the hardships caused by the resultant astronomical inflationary spiral as well as the negative implications of the massive devaluation of the Naira on our heavily import-dependent economy. The preponderance of opinion before the 2023 elections was that the fuel subsidy benefitted only a parasitic minority who criminally reaped billions from substantially exaggerated refined petroleum imports. Thus, all the notable presidential aspirants had declared that they would remove the subsidy. Indeed, the Labour Party (LP) candidate, Mr Peter Obi, on a Channels television interview programme had described the fuel subsidy as a fraud saying he would remove it on his first day in office.

This is exactly what President Tinubu did during his inauguration for which his so clearly hypocritical critics have sought to crucify him. To his credit, renowned human rights lawyer, Mr Femi Falana (SAN), was one of the lone voices who called for the retention of the subsidy and rather advocated the elimination of the fraud associated with it. My friend and brother, Mr Mobolaji Sanusi, lawyer, journalist managerial psychologist and former MD of the Lagos State Signage and Advertising Agency (LASSA) in our innumerable conversations was of the same view. But that is easier said than done. Contrary to the contention of the World Bank, IMF and neoliberal economic experts, it was not just a minority of fraudulent importers of refined petroleum that the fuel subsidy benefitted.

The relentless escalation of prices of essential food items, transportation costs and other necessities indicates that the fuel subsidy indeed impacted the lives of millions of Nigerians positively. But the removal of the subsidy has significantly increased the revenue receipts into the Federation Account making more money available for distribution to the three arms of government. The challenge of the President is to ensure that this translates into enhanced welfare for the vast majority of the Nigerian people.

True, the effects of Tinubu’s economic reforms have created very harsh existential conditions for millions of Nigerians. This has understandably generated strident criticisms of the administration. But those that blame a barely eight-month old administration for an economic crisis rooted largely in decades old structural defects, entrenched negative behavioral orientations and misplaced priorities by successive administrations are being less than intellectually honest. Much of the criticisms particularity from the opposition political parties, stem from grievances as regards the outcome of the last presidential election. But then, President Tinubu is not unfamiliar with this kind of situation. His first two years in office as governor of Lagos State were stormy and tense.

As his Chief Press Secretary at the time, I was alarmed at the large number of adverse columns, editorials and feature articles published in diverse newspapers and magazines in a negative assessment of his first 100 days in office. The Labour unions led by the late fiery Ayoadele Akele, were up in arms against the governor’s insistence that he would pay the new federally imposed national minimum wage of N7,500 only after he had re-engineered and improved the revenue profile of the state. The workers were opposed to the administration’s introduction of the Oracle Software for the computation and payment of salaries, an initiative that eliminated ghost workers and enhanced the efficiency and integrity of the payroll system.

The administration that was then barely three months in office was even blamed for the towering heaps of refuse that had come to define the landscape of Lagos as far back as the early 1980s. Yet, after eight years in office, Tinubu left in a blaze of glory. The same workers who had previously been implacably hostile to his government gave the governor a rousing farewell reception at the Adeyemi Bero auditorium at the State Secretariat, Alausa. The story can be the same for Tinubu even now but a lot will depend on the President.

The continuing unrelenting opposition in some quarters to his administration can serve as a tonic to spur Tinubu to confound his critics, disprove those who assail him as well as strengthen and widen his support base. As the great political scientist, Harold Laski, wrote of the time in which he lived in his classic, ‘A Grammar of Politics’, the old Nigeria is dying and a new Nigeria is struggling to be born. Tinubu May be destined to midwife the birth of a new Nigeria. But there can be no birth without birth pangs. After rain comes sunshine said the great sage, Awolowo, and after darkness comes the glorious dawn.

A character in Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka’s novel, ‘Season of Anomy’, evokes the image of the dentist who, to extract a painful tooth, has to inflict a measure of pain on the patient. It is Tinubu’s historic responsibility to ensure that the current hardships being endured by Nigerians are not in vain. During his campaign, he described his desire to be the country’s President as a life-long ambition. He must make it an ambition with a purpose. If that is to be, the President must be prepared to step on toes and treat no member of his administration as a sacred cow.

One of the greatest challenges President Tinubu must confront frontally and decisively is insecurity. If the spate of kidnappings, banditry, herdsmen attack on farming communities and mindless ritual killings do not abate very quickly, the menace will make absolute nonsense of whatever the President may achieve in other areas. People must first and foremost be alive before they can utilize social services, earn a living or enjoy other benefits. The President obviously understands this and thus made security a key issue in his emergency meeting with state governors on Thursday.

Among the decisions reached in this regard were the establishment of a committee comprising governors and representatives of the federal government to explore modalities for instituting state police as well as presidential endorsement of training and equipping of forest rangers by sub-national governments to safeguard human and material resources in local communities. These are steps in the right direction but a greater sense of urgency is required in my view given the gravity of the situation.

The setting up of the proposed Forest Rangers, which incidentally was one of the President’s campaign promises, must be speedily done and it ought to be a full-fledged federal outfit to police and secure the country’s vast forests. Much of the kidnappings and banditry plaguing the country are linked to the forests where the criminal elements not only reside in but also take their victims to while negotiating for ransom payments.

It may take quite some time for the idea of state police to be actualized. There are a number of problems raised by the question of state police that cannot be out rightly dismissed. One is the issue of possible abuse of such outfits by power drunk state governors who may turn them into terror machines against adversaries and opponents. For example, even without state police, a governor had the temerity to pull down his state’s House of Assembly complex to prevent his impeachment. What would such a governor do if he had control of his own state police? Again, how many states have the financial capacity to establish and run state police institutions although this problem can be solved by adjusting the revenue allocation formula to make more funds available to states?

Rather than jump in one fell swoop from the extant undesirable and ineffective unitary policing system to state police, it is perhaps more pragmatic and realistic to have, in the interim, regional police networks based on the existing six geo-political groupings. These include the Amotekun Corp in the South-West, Eastern Security Network in the South-East and the Joint Police/Civilian Task forces in the group-political zones of the North. The existing bodies only need to be better trained, numerically expanded and better equipped. In parts of the South-West, for instance, the Amotekun Corps has performed remarkably well even when they are only rudimentarily equipped and have to confront criminals armed with sophisticated weapons.

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Such regional security outfits will be responsible to at least six or seven governors in the region who may belong to different political parties and so May be less vulnerable to to being utilized to intimidate and terrorize political opponents. The regional police will also facilitate better inter-state collaboration on security in territorially contiguous states. The President should also engage the governors as regards the need for greater transparency and efficacy in the utilization of their security votes the magnitude of which is unknown to the public and for which there is no accountability whatsoever.

During his eight years in power, former President Muhammadu Buhari, only reluctantly effected changes in his military high command and top security hierarchy. He appeared to have prioritized regime security over the safety of lives and property of the citizenry. Buhari was content to hold ceaseless Security Council meetings after which he gave ‘marching orders’ to his security chiefs to respond to repeated security breaches. This bred complacency on the part of the top security hierarchy who believed that their jobs were safe irrespective of how insecure the country had become. President Tinubu cannot afford to follow this path. Every member of high Security Command must be made to understand that his retention in office is a function of demonstrable performance.

One area where the President ought to pay particular attention to is that of the intelligence services. The absence of effective intelligence gathering and utilization over the years has been a key factor in Nigeria’s continuously deteriorating security situation. Criminal cartels plan and actualize the most heinous atrocities many of which could have been nipped in the bud with an alert and vigilant security network. The Department of State Services (DSS) and the intelligence arms of the various arms of the Defense forces need to be urgently overhauled, their needs ascertained and met particularly in the areas of up to date training as well as the requisite equipment and state of the art technology.