By Iliyasu Gadu, Ilgad2009@gmail.com
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Hastily arranged cultural festivals; flurry of meetings with traditional rulers and clerics; conflicting statements from security personnel; threats from military commanders; dodgy and questionable court order, rented crowds; sponsored counter protests; arrests and intimidation of protest organizers and leaders.
This is the smorgasbord of desperate measures that the administration had taken to stave off the nationwide protests against the dire socio-economic situation in the country brought about by the harsh economic policies of the President Tinubu administration which took place anyway on Thursday 1st of August across the country.
For many who can recall, it is ironic that President Tinubu who spent a good part of his life as a political activist organizing and leading protests against military dictatorship and against the civilian administration of President Goodluck Jonathan would now be the one trying to prevent Nigerians from doing the same thing he did. And it would further compound our senses that the very issues that have brought Nigerians out in the streets, removal of subsidies and devaluation of the naira, were the same issues he called and led the ‘’Occupy Nigeria” protests against President Jonathan in 2012.
When Tinubu led protests in 2012 against President Jonathan apart from the deployment of security personnel to protect lives and properties which was a normal expectation, there were no desperate, panic measures taken by the government of the day to prevent the protests from taking place. Even when inciting and incendiary statements emanating from Tinubu and some of the protesters calling on President Jonathan to go and a revolution in the country, there were no attempts to stop the protest from running its full course.
Nigerians recall too that in the end President Jonathan was to give in to the demands of the protesters and reversed some of the policies he had embarked on which signalled a victory for the protest movement.
So, why does President Tinubu now at the receiving end of what he dished out to President Jonathan, find it difficult to do what the latter did?
In defence of the Tinubu administration, some have pleaded that he met an economy that was damaged by previous administrations especially the Buhari government which preceded it such that there was need to allow the measures introduced by the administration more time to begin to yield desirable results. One year in office it is said, is barely enough to bear the necessary fruits of the measures taken by the administration.
But in 2012, same arguments which were made by the spokesmen of the Jonathan administration were brushed aside by Tinubu and the protesters who did not even give President Jonathan the grace of over one year that the present administration had been given by suffering Nigerians. Tinubu and his protesters in 2012 gave President Jonathan just a few days grace from the day he announced the increase in the pump price of petroleum products. They could not give him up to a month grace to see how the effect of the increase registered. They hit the streets of Lagos and converge at Ojota and Compos square in central Lagos until President Jonathan relented.
But President Tinubu has had a full reign of over a year foisting harsh economic measures on Nigerian for which no comprehensive economic plan has been enunciated. What Nigerians see and feel is hardship with no end in sight while on the contrary the president and his cronies have been living it up lavishly in opulence and in-the-face nauseating indulgence.
Whereas President Jonathan’s case may have been that of a genuine attempt at economic reforms, that of President Tinubu is palpably anything but. Jonathan’s policies were meant to be gradual with empathy and consideration for the effect on ordinary Nigerians. He introduced poverty alleviation programmes like Sure-P to help lift Nigerians who were willing to start businesses and also to cushion the effects of the programmes he brought about.
President Tinubu’s policies by contrast have been brutal and uncaring and designed as personal compensation or entitlement for what he believes Nigeria owes him for his political endeavours. A caring leader will not remove subsidies in the way and manner President Tinubu did, leading to mass hunger and deprivations in the land. The ruse he calls reforms are designed to skim off revenues to him personally from revenue generating points in the system just as he did when he was Governor of Lagos. What he did in Lagos he wants to do in Nigeria in his vantage position as President.
Predictably, President Tinubu is now facing the push back from his ill-considered harsh and self-centred policies that have taken a toll on Nigerians. By this he has now earned for himself the dubious symbol and culprit for all that is currently wrong with Nigeria and he must take vicarious responsibility rather than seek to evade it.
Now that despite all attempts to prevent the people from registering their anger at his policies have failed it is up to Nigerians and President Tiniubu himself to draw the appropriate lessons.
In the discipline of Economics, President Tinubu’s case can be likened to the backward leaning supply curve or better still, the law of diminishing returns. This is the point at which a rising supply chart in a graph begins to bend after reaching its peak. In Spiritual and Philosophical terms for Tinubu, this is the Karma point where what goes around comes around. In Public Relations, when a well packaged image or object can no longer be sustained, we have a blowback in the form of public relations cream puff. And in common every day terminology, we often say the chickens have come to roost.
That about eighty per cent of Nigerians actively and passively gave President Tinubu’s administration the bum rush, some by coming out to actively protest and some by staying at home across the length and breadth of the country, should tell the President that Nigerians no longer repose any trust or confidence in his administration.
In 2012 when Tinubu led protests against the President Goodluck Jonathan administration, that was the point that the clock against the administration started to tick till it finally fizzled out inevitably at the 2015 elections. Now that similarly, the Nigerian people have defiantly came out on August 1, 2024 to protest against President Tinubu’s administration, I recommend to the president to read the tea leaves and know what is in store for him going forward.
In the days of the ancient Oyo Empire, it is at this point that the Oyo-Mesi the council of titled elders of the land led by the Basorun will present a calabash to the Alaafin, the paramount ruler of the Empire. I believe President Tinubu as a titled Yoruba elder, knows what I am talking about here and what he needs to do.
Iliyasu Gadu, a former Foreign Service Officer who served at the Nigerian Missions in Germany and the United Kingdom (UK), is a columnist with Daily Trust
