By Ikeddy ISIGUZO
PRESIDENT Bola Ahmed Tinubu is hungry. He is also angry that many Nigerians do not understand his sacrifices for us. What a people!
Imagine daily sacrificing for a complaining people. They keep shouting all over the place, “We are hungry,” in different tongues, thinking he would hear them. It is not for nothing that the glasses of those glimmering, glistening limos are always wound up.
Only TV stations that bring “good news” are permitted around him. For instance, NTA would cast news of how Tinubu’s arrival two years ago has renewed the Argungu fish festival with bigger catches and spread happiness throughout Kebbi and surrounding States. Nobody dares mention “renewed” insecurity except if they are reminding Governors that they are failing in their States as “Chief Security Officers”.
The President’s most recent sacrifice was while in Rome for the Pope’s mass. None of us acknowledged Tinubu avoiding winging to Paris, just two hours away, to rest after the heavy schedule in Rome.
We dismiss his sacrifices for a better tomorrow by accusing Tinubu of living his today in obscene opulence. Would that explain why he lives in 2027 when we are stuck in 2025 with its problems?
Tinubu is hungry. His hunger is worse than ours. His own hunger is for power. Hunger for power is worse than not having food. For Tinubu, power firmly in his grip, is the food he wants. Nothing else.
Before Tinubu is a menu with one item – power for him, by him, in his own terms. Thoughts of anyone taking away his food are giving him sleepless nights. Before this though, one of his aides had said the President barely slept. How much worse it could be by now.
We do not live in the same hunger spectrum with Tinubu. We do not speak the same language. We are differently hungry.
An agitated Tinubu wonders why anyone with an understanding of the workings of democracy should contest the 2027 election with him. Tinubu the democrat now supports one party state.
His hunger for power spells desperation, trust deficit. He trusts only himself having swam seas of deception, a sphere where expertise expires swiftly.
We see election in 2027. Tinubu wants to quench his hunger well before then. By his admission, his party’s current control of 22 States through “elections” is inadequate. He wants more.
More Governors are falling over themselves to do his bid. If Tinubu is available, before June journeys far, three more Governors would have joined APC, not counting Delta and Rivers that have already fallen in line.
A simple agenda is to see at least APC Governors in 28 States before 2025 eclipses. Once achieved, Tinubu would have scaled the hurdle of 24 States, the constitutional requirement of two-thirds of States of the Federation, and winning in Abuja is seemingly guaranteed by loquacity.
Why is Tinubu in a hurry to reach the milestone? Like anyone really hungry, especially for Tinubu’s type of food, creation of more options, denying others opportunities, are critical weapons. The disappearing 2026 ploy is to spend that whole year dispiriting opponents with the weapons available to APC.
“We do not take your patience for granted. I must restate that the only alternative to the reforms our administration initiated was a fiscal crisis that would have bred runaway inflation, external debt default, crippling fuel shortages, a plunging Naira, and an economy in a free-fall,” Tinubu’s second anniversary speech read.
Nigerians are facing what Tinubu claims to have managed in the past two year. His world is different from that of millions of Nigerians who are facing the biting cruelty of those measures.
Whatever happens, don’t panic. An old magazine advertisement, about 40 years ago, issued that advisory that was meant to market an alcoholic beverage. It was an admission of the legion of matters that could trigger panic. It is an acceptance, not only of the situation, but how to deal with it. The better reaction would produce better results.
Two years of Tinubu’s renewed hope agenda was not expected to be an elixir for Nigeria’s challenges. Were our expectations too high, too ambitious, for a Chicago-trained financial management expert, who worked with international consultancies, and whose financial skills were credited with keeping a global oil giant in business?
Abundant explanations confound things. Tinubu has crashed below the low standards he set for himself. In two years, he boasts of roads that lead to nowhere – yes, nowhere.
His roads are not just dangerous from poor attention to safety details; road trips today are almost death sentences. The level of banditry, kidnapping, and terrorism that occurs on those roads, and our forests, debase them as achievements.
Renewed hope agenda arrived drained of content. Without content, there was nothing to renew. Not surprisingly, the agenda has birthed two years of hopelessness that have also left many helpless.
Are Nigerians disappointed in Tinubu. Yes. The disappointment is mutual too. Tinubu wants Nigerians to lower their expectations. He wants us to make more sacrifices for tomorrow. Tinubu, most importantly wants Nigerians to unquestioningly entrust him with their future after he worsened their present.
He talks of a future that means his re-election.
Tinubu chooses his sacrifices. We do not have the luxury of deciding how badly we live, now, today, not to talk of the tomorrow bench-marked on Tinubu being President again.
“Nigeria can’t rely on borrowing; Nigeria must stop borrowing” – November 2023. “Nigeria needs more borrowing; Why FG is borrowing” – November 2024. These positions are from Chief Wale Edun, Minister of Finance. The headlines indicate the dynamism of Tinubu’s economic policies.
“Security shall be the top priority of our administration because neither prosperity nor justice can prevail amidst insecurity and violence. To effectively tackle this menace, we shall reform both our security DOCTRINE and its ARCHITECTURE. We shall invest more in our security personnel, and this means more than an increase in number. We shall provide, better training, equipment, pay and firepower,” Tinubu promised during his inaugural, two years ago. Is this promise meant for 2027?
The presidency is both food and air to Tinubu.
“With full confidence in our ability, I declare that these things are within our proximate reach because my name is Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and I am the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria,” he rounded off his inaugural speech.
Nigeria is not about a President who thinks his name is a magic wand to whisk challenges away. Tinubu has failed to realise that in the past two years.
Perhaps, it is time for another Paris vacation while Nigerians must work hard to retrieve by 2027 the shreds of the country that Tinubu fought for at all costs, grabbed, snatched, and ran with it in 2023.
Finally…
THE newer race to endorse Tinubu is fast, ferocious, and colour-blind. Distinguished Senator Orji Uzọ Kalu has ensured that. His appearance at the Senate in an all-red attire, except his shoes and wrist-watch, has commenced the race. Red appears more like retained parts of Orji’s PDP days.
OUR future is not about our children taking examinations in darkness. We are not bothered by armed bandits firing shots in examination halls, with examinations in progress, to scare our children away from school. The future that matters is Tinubu being re-elected.
Killings continue in different parts of Nigeria. The crimes would be dealt with in future when the proposed beneficiaries of tomorrow would have become a distant past.
*ISIGUZO is a major commentator on minor issues