Pharaoh in Trouble

Chidi Amuta

Order in every credible democracy is a balance of compassion and hard policy choices. The hard choices, often of a reform nature, which confront new leaders only make sense if they are for the common good. Otherwise, a  barrage  of crushing reforms with no tinge of compassion can suffocate the afflicted citizenry and cast the reformer in a bad hue. In that situation, even the best intentioned reformer could become a mindless autocrat. Democracy then breeds, not a charismatic leader but a mindless authoritarian. The equation is somewhat like this: the pain of reform must be balanced by the appearance of compassion. The tough committed purposeful leader who is both feared and capable of being loved.

President Bola Tinubu insists that he has unleashed reforms to make Nigerian better. Not everyone of his compatriots agree. Contrary to the chorus of his Abuja choir, most citizens now contend that today ‘s Nigeria is beginning to look more like a training ground for cruelty and a practice field for apprentice authoritarians. Many are swearing that Mr. Tinubu may have turned his back on the ways of democracy and popular governance and now faces a frightening direction. I am among those who are very frightened to live in this place. An assumed democracy has replaced sweetness with bitterness, citizens are now afraid of the very government they went out to elect only a few months ago.

The far sighted and perceptive never  expected Tinubu’s tenure to be any different from what is unfolding before our eyes . When he chose his inauguration podium on May 29th to mouth ‘fuel subsidy is gone!’, sensible people expected a balancing reassuring statement. None came immediately or any time afterwards. Instead,  more draconian acts of serial wickedness have been heaped on citizens like burning coal. For all these, the government insists that it is on a reform path.

The Naira was floated with no scientific benchmark. An astronomical tax was heaped on electricity. Pump prices of gasoline headed to the sky and have been shooting upwards ever since. Taxes on practically everything followed: basic food, basic medications, transportation costs, house rents, cooking gas, basic banking transactions etc have since last May shot up beyond the rational.

When gasoline prices shot up and the Naira was shredded in value,  organised labour raised the urgent matter of a commensurate national minimum wage. The public supported labour’s pressure for an increase of the national minimum wage. A series of negotiations and arm twisting manipulations led to an agreement on a contentious N70,000. While workers at federal and state levels are still waiting for the promised minimum wage, a new vortex of new gasoline prices have been allowed to kick in. The public is confused and has been thrown into a further life support mode. Predictably, the  latest Increase in fuel pump price has taken its toll in the wrong places. Schools can hardly resume because of high transportation costs. Edo , Kano and Borno states have postponed the resumption of schools for the new school year. Other states may follow suit.

Since May, 2023, hardly any pleasant news has come our way except for announcements about bags of rice scattered in a few states. The government that took away our little sweetness has responded with rice and noodles. A myriad taxes have followed. The rice of offer has turned out a mirage. By its nature, rice is a tax-laden palliative. If you give people rise, they need money to buy meat and fish, oil, onions and other ingredients. In short, a gift of free rice reminds people of their immense poverty. So, people desperately access the free rice as an article of trade, something to be re-sold to raise money to douse the ravaging poverty. That has led to fierce warfare in locations where rice is being shared. People who went out to fight for rice returned in body bags as the fierce battles were  do –or- die duels. 

The pursuit of cruel reforms and draconian levies and taxes has created a country of numerous precedents.  Nigerians living today may have seen far too many precedents in our national life already. In one life time, we have seen more new milestones than any other generation. We have seen the  highest inflation rate- 43%  ever. Since its introduction in the early 1970s, Nigerians have seen the most abysmal exchange rate for the Naira in national history. We have seen the highest poverty rate in our national history, leading to the creation of Nigeria as the world’s poverty capital. For the first time in our life time, hunger has become a widespread national affliction, graduating into an object of nationwide protest and massive street brawls between hungry mobs and armed security personnel.

Today ‘s Nigerians have seen the highest price per liter of gasoline ever. In some parts of the country, there are reports of prices of up to N1,500 per liter. Similarly, Nigerians are seeing the highest cost per unit of electricity even as darkness envelopes  the land. Nigerians are seeing the most expensive cup of garri, beans, corn or millet  in their life time. It is the worst of times and the most trying of times.

It is also the most dangerous of times and the most precarious of times. Never before in peace- time have Nigerians seen such a high  casualty rate as this. People are being killed needlessly on an industrial scale everyday. In no other nation’s peace time do so many people die needless deaths. Peace time Nigeria is ranking shoulder to shoulder with Sudan, Syria, Somalia and other dangerous places in the world on a scale of insecurity. The English language has run out of terminologies for describing the variants of Nigeria’s bad state and its architects: terrorism, banditry, abduction, kidnapping and other unnamable crimes.  At no time in our national history have we lived in a more dangerous country, not even in the civil war years.

Youth is ordinarily the time to hope, to look forward to a long life stretched ahead of you. The youth dream dreams and cherish longings. As youth, death and mortality was far and remote from us. But in today’s Nigeria, death has become the constant refrain in the language of youth. Our university campuses have become common grounds for suicide among our youth. Our children are being killed or are killing each other because the landscape beyond is bleak and hopeless. We are living in a place where suicide has become an easy escape route for frustrated youth.

Other silly and laughable precedents have also been created in Nigeria under the Tinubu presidency. For instance, we have never seen such extensive motorcades trailing men of power as are being displayed by Akpabio and Tinubu. Nor have such humongous sums been spent on luxury items at the apex of power anywhere as in today’s Nigeria. Nor have we seen single civil construction projects of such magnitude as the Calabar-Lagos highway (N18 trillion!). No previous president so prioritized his personal comfort as to purchase a different presidential jet in under two years in power without parliamentary appropriation or any known budget provision. These are clearly precedents in national profligacy! 

Democracy devoid of compassion or prudent consideration for the welfare of the lowly runs a clear risk. When a democracy proceeds with reckless impunity, it runs the risk of drifting into authoritarianism, a routine insensitivity to the common feeling. The feelings of the people begin to matter less. The state carries on as though it is a self- empowering entity.

At the moment, Mr. Tinubu’s bumbling embrace with power is by far a greater threat to Nigeria’s democracy and survival than anything else. When a democracy fumbles, its readiest temptation is to be attracted towards dictatorship. The Tinubu government is beginning to arrest journalist for no stated reason. Labour leaders are not immune either. Innocent people who went out to protest their own hunger and poverty have been arrested and are being prosecuted for disturbing the peace of the rulers. Of course, it is easier to arrest people than to manage them in freedom. It is also easier to clamp down on dissenting voices than to loosen a million free voices. People who cannot afford expensive  lawyers to defend them or speak English to state their rights are easy to put away until the jail houses are filled with those who should be voting at the next election.

Compassion is an issue when the common good is of concern. But the  common good is an issue when power is wielded on behalf of the people. But when power becomes an end itself, the common good recedes into the background and becomes a concessionary  afterthought. The pursuit of power, its consolidation, warehousing and monopoly becomes the end of state power. It does seem that barely one and half years after Tinubu’s ascendancy, we are down to that level where the values of democracy are being goaded towards the route of authoritarianism.

A Nigerian authoritarianism under a rule like Tinubu’s will be untidy. Our power hegemony is never evenly spread. It usually wears a sectional ethnocentric color. Already, Tinubu has erected what is easily the most blatant and unabashed Yoruba ethnic hegemony in Nigerian history. Name any strategic segment of national life and it stares you in the face. Open. Shameless. Even disgraceful to the dignity of the otherwise decent and sophisticated Yoruba nation. We are faced with an impending calamity. Nigeria’s democracy is about to give birth to an ethnic authoritarianism. It will be a sad day when we descend from today’s increasing repression to the hounding of political opponents into political exile out of fear for their own safety. Over and above today’s japa droves, we may soon witness swarms of political asylum seekers heading in many directions. The freedom which our people trooped out to welcome in February is slipping away under our very eyes.