President Bola Tinubu’s tottering steps, missteps, and the burden of an unpopular government have raised concern about whether Nigeria will ever surmount her problem of having inept, unresponsive, incompetent, and corrupt political leadership.
Till now, our prayers and quest for a competent, visionary, responsible, and responsible government have not been answered. It is sad that Nigeria has not got her politics right, since it became a sovereign nation-state on October 1, 1960. Our politicians’ political misadventures caused military incursions into our politics. And the military adventurism in our politics did more harm than good to us. The military governments we had in the past stalled our national development.
Thankfully, now, we’ve been enjoying democratic rule for twenty-four unbroken years. And one political party had handed over the baton of political leadership to another political party, seamlessly and peacefully. And the country did not descend into fratricidal civil war as many people had expected and feared. Rather, the smooth and peaceful change of government, which we have been experiencing in Nigeria for the past twenty-four years, is a landmark achievement given Nigeria’s fragile peace and unity.
But apart from the fact that we have always had a peaceful transition from one civilian government to another, our past successive governments had recorded no significant achievements. Rather, Nigeria is assailed on all fronts with monumental problems, which are not incapable of causing her disintegration.
For example, the economy, as we know, is in dire straits, with our currency, the naira, weak against the American dollar. Because our economy is distressed, millions of Nigerians have been reduced to sub-humans. And they are living below the breadline now. And the security challenges facing Nigeria seem to be intractable. In addition to that, Nigeria is bedevilled with infrastructural rot.
So the incontestable fact is that Nigeria needs urgent fixing and remaking. That Nigeria is troubled as well as hobbled by infrastructural rot, distressed economy, and security challenges is obvious to us all. So millions of disillusioned Nigerians, who were disenchanted with the Buhari-led government cast their votes in the last 2023 general election with the hope that they would elect a new government that is responsive, responsible, competent, and visionary.
However, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu took the reins of power on the heels of a fractious presidential election, which amplified Nigeria’s ethnic and religious fault lines, and deepened the Igbo-Yoruba age-long battle for political supremacy. And he has inherited a broken and disunited country, whose economy is in utter ruins.
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But President Bola Tinubu’s membership of NADECO, past leadership experience, and familiarity with our country’s multifarious problems should aid him in his leadership of Nigeria. Weren’t he a member of NADECO, the implacable group that fought Sani Abacha to a standstill for the revalidation of Chief MKO Abiola’s stolen political mandate? Didn’t he serve as the governor of Lagos state for eight unbroken years?
However, surprisingly, President Bola Tinubu ad-libbed the removal of the vexatious fuel subsidy on the day he was sworn in as our president. But did he give much thought to the consequences, which would result from the removal of the fuel subsidy? Had he given it a thought, he would have put some palliative measures in place to cushion the effects of the removal of fuel subsidy on the people.
Now millions of Nigerians from many different walks of life are groaning under the burden of economic hardship caused by the removal of fuel subsidy. While the salaries of government workers have remained static, the cost of transportation and prices of essential food commodities have increased, astronomically.
Again, criticisms have trailed his proposed education loan for indigent students in our tertiary institutions. The proposed education loan scheme has drawbacks which hinge on how to ascertain those eligible for the loan and the guarantee that the beneficiaries of the loan will repay the loan. That education loan scheme of his strikes me as a political moonshine, the implementation of which will breed more problems than it can solve.
In addition to these steps he has taken to address our economic and educational problems, his appointment of service chiefs and the Inspector General of Police is a laudable act aimed at re-jigging and repositioning our security architecture for its better performance.
We expect that the new Inspector General of Police and the service chiefs will breathe new life into our security apparatchiks so that they can solve our crippling security challenges. Eradicating crimes in Nigeria is pivotal to the economic prosperity and growth of Nigeria. A safe and crime-free Nigeria will attract foreign investors to our shores. And they will not demur regarding setting up their businesses in our country because Nigeria is safe and secure.
The Presidential Election Petition Court had heard the cases of electoral fraud purportedly committed by President Bola Tinubu in the February 25, 2023, presidential election. His main challengers in the electoral petition cases are Mr Peter Obi of the Labour Party; and Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of PDP. But can Tinubu surmount this hurdle of electoral litigation placed on his path and continue his leadership of Nigeria? The answer to this question blows in the air.
The stark fact is that the long-suffering Nigerians, who have diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds, want the best for their country. They want a national leader, whose government is not troubled by the problem of legitimacy. But the bottom line is this: the apex court’s final verdict on the presidential electoral litigation will give the veneer and seal of legitimacy to the government of whoever wins the presidential electoral litigation.
