Tinubu’s Own Goals

DIALOGUE WITH NIGERIA BY AKIN OSUNTOKUN

Given the guardian angel role he has taken upon himself to play in the affairs of Nigeria (since he left office), and a prior not too good disposition towards incumbent President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, there was a sense of inevitability about the present altercation between former President Olusegun Obasanjo and Tinubu. 

What is of significance to the Nigerian public is that, objectively speaking, there is hardly any detached observer of the Nigerian situation (presented with the same evidence as Obasanjo) who can come to different conclusions. 

We cannot, in all honesty, find the critical assessment and surveillance rendered by the former President as lacking in objectivity and merit. What is it that Obasanjo said that has not been repeatedly tendered by unbiased interrogators of the Tinubu presidency? 

Obasanjo was not speaking as Yoruba and would take umbrage at being classified as such but several Yoruba commentators have expressed the concern that there appears to be a growing conspiracy of silence (by the Yoruba) on the obligation to call out Tinubu on the critical inadequacies of his government.

Moreso, when the Yoruba were always at the vanguard of holding previous governments to account.

Said Babafemi Ojudu “Now, I pose this question to my Yoruba brothers, many of whom shared the struggle with me: What has changed? Is it because we now have a Yoruba president that dissent must cease, and those who oppose the current order must be labelled as dangerous troublemakers and foreign invaders?”. 

But beyond the governance aspect of Tinubu’s presidency, there is also the political dimension. In this regard, If you were his political adviser, how would you counsel him to manage Obasanjo and his other predecessors?. 

Many moons back I once occupied the position of the same description. So I might as well ask myself the same question. 

My recommendation is that on getting to the presidential villa, he should, metaphorically, knock on the doors of all his predecessors and greet them ‘ẹ ku iwaju o’ (I acknowledge and greet you as my predecessors) even if he is not on all fours with everyone of them. 

Even if you think the worst of Obasanjo 

there is a pertinent Yoruba realpolitik that counsels “Ẹ ba je kafi obi fun osika, ko fi enu ara re wure (let us prevail on the wicked to lead the prayers so he will be compelled to wish us well). 

It would cost the president next to nothing to initiate a three minute goodwill telephone call with each of his predecessors. You would then have, in a manner of speaking, fulfill all righteousness and put the ball in their courts to acknowledge and respond in kind. 

Where Nigeria is concerned, Obasanjo is a tough customer to please. In the same breadth and being human, the probability is that he would pull his punches and criticise you tongue-in-cheek, in the customary honeymoon interlude. 

Despite an earlier indication to heed this counsel, the President ultimately chose to call the bluff of all who believe his political purposes are better served by warming up to a personality with capacity to do damage.

My position is that a newly elected President is obliged to honour his predecessors with at least a courtesy telephone call once he resumes office. This is good etiquette, moreso in the context of Yoruba culture where the younger party is expected to defer to the older. 

I was surprised to see that an acclaimed master of political pragmatism could not transcend personal reservations in such a situation of realpolitik. Partisan differences, notwithstanding, when one has attained to his ultimate ambition, it is in the enlightened self interest of the oga-at-the-top to cultivate stoic consciousness and the doctrine of no permanent foe.

The big elephant in the room is that for nearly all the Presidents Nigeria has had, it is difficult to speak objectively about any of them without it looking like a deliberate and hostile take down of their government. 

And If there was anything worse than the obasanjo take down of the President at the Yale university, it was the response from the Presidency. Amongst other infantile diatribes from the Bayo Onanuga riposte was this stand alone embarrassment. 

“The current economic crisis the All Progressives Congress administrations have been battling since 2015 is the product of the poor choices in economic management made by Obasanjo and the two successors from his party. Obasanjo prides his government on paying the $15 billion debt owed to the Paris Club. Still, it was not a wise decision as it was done when the country’s critical economic infrastructure across sectors was in shambles”. 

In a few months from now it will be ten years since the APC assumed the reins of the Nigerian Presidency. If the abysmal record of General Muhammadu Buhari is the standard to which Tinubu holds itself, this will be the worst indictment of his eighteen months stewardship. 

For that matter, in the course of once addressing himself to the nation, the President made this oblique reference to his predecessor, “after darkness comes the glorious dawn”. 

It is a measure of the gross incompetence and escapism of the ten years old APC government that they are still seeking extenuation for their failure in this pathetic blame game. 

There is this Yoruba aphorism that if you take all of ten years to threaten that you are going to go mad, then for how long will you be able to practice the insanity. 

Right in the thick of the rough and tumble with Obasanjo, came another evidence of the capacity of this government to self-destruct. 

In addition to an already bloated assemblage of a media task force comprising two special advisers and about seven senior special assistants and special assistants, Daniel Bwala was appointed another special adviser on publicity. It was a recipe for cacophony and so it quickly manifested in public altercation between Bwala and Onanuga. 

How does this self-abnegating 

display of incoherence, chaos and mindlessness speak well of the Tinubu presidency. Should anyone be in doubt about this tower of babel, the first assignment Mr Daniel Bwala, took upon himself was to initiate a turf war and thereby provoke Onanuga to a Bolekaja skirmish in the marketplace.

This follows in the tradition of the philosophy of governance (by spiritual revelation and impulse) that the President himself enunciated at his inaugural ceremony where he declared that “oil subsidy is gone”. According to the president, this policy pronouncement was a product of nothing more than ‘a spirit of courage that momentarily 

washed over him. 

This is the culture of the illogic of the pronouncement of policies and appointments before thinking them through. For instance, as we speak, nobody has been able to articulate the rationale behind the national Anthem fiasco. What is the thinking that necessitated the switch and the emergency nature of the passage into law.?

Since he assumed office as President I have not made any effort to see him but the grapevine has it that it is easier for the camel to pass through the eye of the needful than make a succees of any contemplation to visit the president.

Explanations of this Inaccessibility will be found in the limitations his alleged poor health has imposed on him. Such limitations invariably breed power vacuum which will be filled by cabals whose agendas are often than not at variance with public service. 

Notable among those who took this position was Pat Utomi ‘I would not be seeking public office at his (Tinubu) age,.. I told my children to confine me if I’m running around after 70’.

‘it’s a personal principle, I’m not saying it should apply to everybody. But our country has suffered so much from having idle leaders’. 

‘Tinubu is not fit. You can see he is ailing. Let’s not lie to ourselves. Let him go through a medical (checkup) like they do in the US,”

This Umaru Yar’adua syndrome wrought a devastating effect on the Mohammadu Buhari government, where anything that could go wrong, went wrong. Apparently, there is a linkage between the peripatetic nature of Buhari and increasingly that of his successor. 

This is at a huge cost to Nigeria not just in terms of the medical bills incurred but more importantly, the governance void that a country suffers when the president is frequently missing in action 

As the 2027 general elections looms so are we looking at a consequential worsening of the socioeconomic situation of Nigeria. If Tinubu is going to seek reelection, he would begin the race next year and this distraction would further impair his capacity to grapple governance. 

Generally, incumbents are most vulnerable when seeking reelection, especially, in the manifestation of corruption and abuse of office. Given the implausible prospect of an economic turnaround from its dire straits in the near future, the worse it all gets for Tinubu and Nigeria. 

He will be running against the backdrop of the bitterness of the most critical constituency that brought him to office without the compensation of an equivalent replacement. 

He has deeply offended the far North by serving them the bitter taste of the medicine that his predecessor liberally served others, rampant nepotism and parochialism in favour of his Moslem North redoubt. 

In a similar manner, Tinubu has brazenly cultivated the habit of prioritising and overcompensating his Yoruba constituency. 

In the prevailing dispensation of economic depression and alienation of the far North he has his task cut out for him. 

When this push comes to shove, any attempt to rationalise and foist a rigged election is guaranteed to foment a gigantic crisis 

Good night, Asabi

With all the enveloping despair and hopelessness at the Nigerian front compounded by the disastrous relection of Donald Trump as American President, I thought the cup of iniquity was full and overflowing. How tragically wrong was I?

There followed a swift escalation of the rainfall to a massive downpour. 

Asabi was my junior sister. Her regular name was Jumoke but when we were young, my grandmother called her no other name than the pet name she gave her, Asabi. I grew up liking the name so much that I inherited its usage.

Since the tragic news broke out on Monday I now woke up dreading I will never hear from her again. What makes her passage doubly tragic was the inexplicable human errors that worked together to terminate rather than save her precious life. I pray that God will fill the vacuum that has been created in the lives of her children, Tunde, Isaiah and Elizabeth.

It is now time for me to say sayonara, fare thee well.