The stage was already set from Day One of his administration that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu would be talked about long after he would have left the saddle. It wouldn’t matter if he spent four years or the constitutional limit of eight years as Nigeria’s president.
President Tinubu would probably be considered “the issue” in any future national discourse, not in the mold of Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB) but in the mode of a man who, as Nigeria’s president, affected his country in more fundamental ways, never seen among the pantheon of past Nigerian presidents.
The “Jagaban Borgu” would be central to our national conversations not because of his profundity of thoughts and ideas in the mold of a man whose lofty ambition for a greater and more perfect Nigerian nation was stopped in its tracks only to be described in death as “the president Nigeria never had,” but his audacity to tread where the most fearless General with war epaulets cringed, let alone willing to tread.
More importantly, Tinubu would not be quickly forgotten because just when Nigerians thought that the familiar haphazard, tentative, unimaginative, and lethargic approach that their past leaders had always interrogated their country’s developmental paradigm was the only alternative, he happened upon them with a vision and exertions of presidential authority that he showed them that there are better and sustainable alternatives to the country’s growth and development that must necessarily be disruptive and painful in the short run. And he went to work.
Tinubu’s presidency will, undoubtedly, go down in history as the most talked about as the man who disrupted governance as we know it in a way never imagined with unprecedented policies that were at first deemed punitive and confounding but became clearer even to the blind as time goes on to the extent that the saying that you cannot eat an omelet without breaking the eggs is beginning to make much sense.
The irony in this, it should be noted, is that a significant number of Nigerians who have gullibly been swayed also insist that they do not want any part of the president’s heavy lifting on their behalf because they have been conditioned to live for the moment as tomorrow is not guaranteed. Yet, tomorrow always happens to them. It doesn’t get more paradoxical than that.
We shall not be detained here by the president’s fidelity to his economic programs and policies, which have begun to yield positive results and have positioned the country for sustainable growth and development in practical terms. A few examples of this socioeconomic transformation, such as the subsidy removal, forex regime harmonization, student loans, and minimum wage increase, just to mention, but a small fraction of these accomplishments, will suffice here because this legion of verifiable accomplishments is already in the public domain.
Without mincing words or any fear of contradiction, Tinubu is undoubtedly the only president (civil or military) with the most accomplishments (take it or leave it, some of which are unprecedented) in less than two years in the saddle than any government since the beginning of the Republic.
The question now is; if Tinubu is doing this much heavy lifting—-a phrase Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi probably misconstrued to mean running around a stadium to prove that he too was also capable of running the Nigerian nation during the run-up to the presidential primary election in 2022—-one wonders why there has been no let up in the president’s criticisms from a section of the county’s elite most of whom, with incontrovertible evidence, criminally ran this country aground in the past when they were in the position of power and authority?
What has now become glaring, if one must take a cue from the strident opposition mounted against him more from within than without from the very first day he publicly declared his intention to seek the presidential seat, is that it is either the concept of development is not monolithic and therefore violently contradictory among the geopolitical regions or perhaps some warped decision may have long been made that if development must come to Nigeria, it has to be on the terms of those who contributed in no small measures to its ruination. Or both.
Tinubu’s deliberate and necessary subversion of the dominant paradigm, most certainly to the chagrin of these latter-day disjointed and incoherent opposition groups whose only interest is holding on to power for its sake, is what they cannot live down. They cannot imagine anything otherwise as they’re morbidly fixated on leading all aspects of our national life from relative obscurity even when they’re out of power, however temporary. This is what peeves them to no end because Tinubu cannot be detained by their fixation on their opaque and counterproductive utilization of power.
It is, therefore, not surprising that anything and everything would be thrown at the president, including their kitchen sinks, perhaps more ferocious now than before his election victory.
It must be mentioned that some of the “anything and everything” already here with us and others yet to come are the familiar Northern marginalization and the so-called “Lagos Boys” bugaboo.
The false accusation that they’re yet again holding the short end of the winning stick that allowed Tinubu to gain power despite the votes that were donated to him cannot be supported by the facts on the ground. There’s a significant inclusion and participation of members of the northern geopolitical regions in the Tinubu administration.
What’s causing this lip-biting, it must be said, is the president’s audacity to include northern minorities in the top echelon of his government, which has never happened before, even when they were in power. The One North scam is now in greater danger as far as they’re concerned.
There is perhaps nothing as capable as destroying this country’s oneness and unity, not to talk of its stability that this set of people had continuously violated with reckless impunity than their glib talks about the North’s marginalization in the governance scheme of things in the Tinubu administration. It is a reckless and irresponsible accusation that has been insidiously designed to call the dog a bad name in order to prepare it for the slaughter slab. It is a red herring.
The reference by these elements—-whose disgruntlement also stems from the fact that they lost out in political appointments—-to Tinubu’s administration as being populated by his “Lagos Boys” was invidiously crafted for and specifically targeted at the president’s ethnic nationality. It is a mind game that has been let loose to create the us (Yoruba) versus them (Lagos Boys) mentality. It is meant to draw a wedge between the people of the Southwest geopolitical region and nothing more.
Buhari’s government was a fantastic failure (admittedly an oxymoron) because his several attempts to clinch the presidential seat, which eventually manifested with the support of an unsuspecting Tinubu, were anchored, though discreetly, on a single agenda of territorial expansion of his ethnic stock and to deposit them in all the nooks and crannies of Nigeria from anywhere in the world he could find them. And he made good, to some extent, on that.
His government, aside from the aforementioned, was bound to come to grief because, it would be recalled, Mrs. Aisha Buhari lamented that her husband did not know and never met most of his ministers and others in the top echelon of his administration. Is this what they want Tinubu to repeat?
A Chief of State who’s acutely aware of his vision and mission for the greater good of his people cannot afford to employ into his team people he hardly knew their antecedents, demonstrable skills, and professionalism necessary to drive his vision and mission. These “Lagos Boys” immensely contributed to the Tinubu success story in Lagos. Only an insane coach changes his winning First Eleven.
The administration should brace itself for these and many more false narratives that would be weaved with inordinate ferociousness in the hope that they would become the Gordian knot that would be difficult to cut going into the general elections. But cut it must.
Malam Nasiru El-Rufai, the diminutive ethnic irredentist reputed for not batting an eyelid when it comes to manufacturing alternative facts, has already taken on the role of the master weaver of the false narratives of the so-called grand opposition party that’s expected to birth. The intensity of these false narratives can only get more brutal going forward.
We are already in interesting times!
By Femi ODERE
