President Bola Tinubu is showing he has no intentions of being a considerate, empathetic leader in a country filled with tens of millions of suffering Nigerians who have been told to endure the ‘tough decisions’ of his government. In barely five months of being in office, he has shown that he is tone-deaf to the realities of a debt-ridden, broke Nigeria as well as the hardships millions of people have to endure daily. More so as his leadership has so far failed to improve the quality of life for ordinary Nigerians, or at least stop making things worse.
Read also: Over 26m Nigerians face acute food shortage by August 2024 – Report
The President is living and still aspires to live in absolute luxury, seeking to rub opulence in the face of suffering Nigerians while they are asked to endure and sacrifice for the country. When he announced the removal of petrol subsidies, a tough but in fact, necessary decision, it was a blow to virtually all Nigerians. The subsidies were for many people, the only way they ‘felt an impact of government’. But President Tinubu claimed the wasteful subsidies would be saved and deployed to other critical areas of the economy.
His actions and wasteful spending so far make it clear that people were wrong to have believed him. The long-suffering Nigerians who are battling all-time-high inflation, yet worsening purchasing power did not think these ‘savings’ would be converted to purchase of luxury vehicles for the president, his wife, lawmakers and apparently, anyone in the corridors of power that feels like getting any obscenely expensive new toy.
His first budget that was submitted to the national assembly, a supplementary one nonetheless, as reported by BusinessDay, showed N28bn is allocated to adorning his office, including the purchase of vehicles for his wife worth over N1.5bn. Since the Nigerian constitution has no provision for the office of the first lady, the president effectively had lawmakers approve the purchase of luxury vehicles for his wife.
Speaking of his wife, Oluremi Tinubu, a former Senator, while speaking at a church service in Abuja, ahead of his inauguration in May, she claimed their family is so wealthy they didn’t need Nigeria’s money.
That President Tinubu is insensitive and lacks empathy is already settled, but the greed and callous scrambling to impoverish the country through predatory spending is wicked and shameful
“Nigeria’s wealth is the commonwealth of all. It belongs to everyone. God has blessed my family. We don’t need the wealth of Nigeria to survive but to do the right thing. And I promise you on this altar, that with your help, with the help of God, we will set this nation on the right path.”
Remi Tinubu’s claim that the family is so wealthy it doesn’t need Nigeria’s money, is either audio money, as a Nigerian singer once coined, or the family is hopelessly stricken with greed. That President Tinubu is insensitive and lacks empathy is already settled, but the greed and callous scrambling to impoverish the country through predatory spending is wicked and shameful.
The Tinubu family may not need Nigeria’s money to survive as Remi Tinubu once claimed, but clearly, it needs all the perks and luxuries that Nigeria can offer, even if these come at great cost to the country’s struggling treasury. But there is a good chance that the Tinubu family, members of this government and the hangers-on leeching away at the commonwealth do not care.
It was the same President Tinubu, whose entourage to attend the UN General Assembly in New York spent about N400 million on hotels, as shown by a leaked memo. The money was to be sourced by raiding an account meant for wheat grain levies. It was as good as raiding a child’s piggybank to satisfy the cravings of an addict parent.
While some of Tinubu’s supporters are still able to chant ‘Renewed Hope’, for millions of ordinary Nigerians, the last five months have been renewed suffering for them. But the worst part is that the man occupying Aso Rock as president is more concerned about living large and enjoying every privilege the presidency has to offer. Not a single care about making sacrifices to match the sufferings of the people he was elected to serve.
We call on President Tinubu and those hanging around him to drain the country’s scarce financial resources, to remember and learn from the story of Rome’s rulers, who fed fat at the expense of their people, getting detached from reality until the empire was sacked by Germanic tribes. It is not too late to give a semblance of purposeful leadership, one that is not desperate to milk the country dry for the gains of only those at the corridors of power.
