EXPRESSO_PRESIDENCYWatch》》By Steve Osuji
Let’s call it Tinubu’s epiphany. The year 2024 finally debunked President Bola Tinubu. To put it in perspective, this is not about the hoi polloi and the raucous politicians who mischievously claim Tinubu is the master strategist who built Lagos, the fifth largest economy in Nigeria. No.
This is about rational Nigerians who hoped upon hope that there was yet some magic wand somewhere in Tinubu’s inner pocket to be pulled out at some point to salvage Nigeria.
Sorry, there’s no such wand. Tinubu has no magic after all. This year, 2O24 is the proof positive that even if Tinubu is president for 80 years, he will achieve nigh nothing. Tinubu lacks the requisite qualities for leadership: Vision. Ability. Capacity.
We say this because Tinubu has just completed a full budget cycle from January to December , 2O24. There’s no more excuses to be made. The last excuse we heard was that Buhari didn’t budget for subsidy, so that partly explained why fuel subsidy had to go abruptly. January to December 2O24 is Tinubu budget. What do we have: Zero!
For a man fabled to have prepared for this job for over two decades, 2024 was the year to prove his mettle. He had removed fuel subsidy and devalued the naira, two factors supposedly hobbling the economy. What’s the excuse now? Absolutely none.
Tinubu failed woefully going by performance indicators.
The year, 2O24 is a debacle… It’s the year of ebi n pawa (we are dying of hunger). It’s the year to be remembered for HUNGER PROTESTS AND END BAD GOVERNANCE!
Never in history had Nigerians taken to the streets wailing for food. It happened in 2024 at the peak of President Tinubu’s reign. Nigeria is not at war yet people are dying in serial food ration stampede like starving refugees.
NOTHING TO REPORT: The other day, the President presented yet another budget. But he wasn’t forthcoming on the current budget which ran into a miasma from the outset. The 2023 appropriation was mired and meshed into 2024. So is 2O24 being muddled up and merged with 2025.
SAD STATS: But whichever way you may wangle your numbers, there are always the critical indicators to contend with. A leader’s primary duty is to increasingly make life better for the people. Secure them, ensure availability of basic needs, including amenities, food and sustenance.
But through 2O24, things changed for the worse for Nigerians. The economy recorded negative movement all round.
Headline Inflation increased from 29.90% in January ’24 to 34.6% in December.
Naira was at N1445 to a dollar in January, but today, it’s N1686. (Among the worst currency in Africa today.)
Fuel price rose from N668 in January to N1025 today.
Rice price is probably the best cost of living index in Nigeria. In January 2024, a 50kg bag of rice (Red Bull) was about N42,000. Today, the same bag costs almost N100,000.
The direct import of these numbers is that the economy has been in sharp decline over these 12 months and the populace have been vastly impoverished and debased. The World Bank in its current projection thinks that about 10 million Nigerians have been plunged below poverty lines in the last one and half years of Tinubu’s administration. But the reality must be far worse.
UNICEF also projects that additional two million children now suffer acute malnutrition mostly in the north. In other climes, this is an emergency situation! Not here…
Another stark statistics: Nigeria paid N2.3 trillion as ransom to bandits in one year ending April, 2024.
About 2.2 million people kidnapped and over 56 million crimes committed in one year under Tinubu’s administration, so says the National Bureau or Statistics (NBS).
Meanwhile, the CEO of the NBS was plucked from his office and systems disrupted and office shut by men suspected to be Department of State Services (DSS) officials. This is reminiscent of Gen. Sani Abacha soldiers marching down on newspapers in 1994!
During Buhari’s administration, Dr. Yemi kale was Statistician-General of the Federation, he produced and presented his Statistical surveys and for eight years. They were negative in the main. Not for once was it reported that Kale was reprimanded by Buhari nor harassed by the security agencies. This says a lot about the two Presidents.
And by the way, security officials have abducted more journalists and right activists in Nigeria under Tinubu in less than two years than under Buhari in eight years.
Need we say more about the security situation in Nigeria in 2024?
EVEN DANGOTE MAGIC FAILED TO HELP: The first sign that President Tinubu was at sea as to what to do was in March when he frenziedly announced what was termed Presidential Economic Advisory Council (PECC). It came with a subgroup – Economic Management Team Emergency Task Force (EET).
The members are Alhaji Aliko Dangote, Tony Elumelu and the rest of the sharks playing in Nigeria’s economic sea. They are to be joined by Governors, leadership of the NASS, and select members of the Federal Executive Council.
The team is as unwieldy as it’s crowded. The team was surely the size of the President’s utter confusion about how to proceed with the economy. First mooted in March, it wasn’t until July that PECC was eventually inaugurated.
After the colourful inauguration, not a word has been heard since. They are supposed to report every month and have the economy revitalized by year end – December 2024. Not one word!
Yet, this is a N2 trillion package broken down thus: Health and Social Welfare (N350b), Agriculture and Food Security (N500b), Energy and Power (N500b),General Business Support (N650b).
By Nigeria’s modus operandi, N2 trillion may have been released to PECC. But we have no way of confirming this. As it is well known, opacity is the hallmark of the Tinubu era and corruption has become a norm.
The only thing we can confirm is that the economy remains in the doldrums – worse than how it was before Aliko Dangote’s PECC.
Nigerians await Aliko, Elumelu, Bismark Rewane and the rest of them to give account of the proposed N2 trillion Economic Revitalisation fund.
Meanwhile, setting up PECC suggests that the economic team is weak. It’s also a pointer that all institutions of government have become damaged by corruption and are unable to deliver public good.
IS IT GENOCIDAL INCOMPETENCE OR TRANSACTIONAL LEADERSHIP? Some have argued that Tinubu is plain incompetent. The kind of incompetence that leads to immiseration and mass death of the populace (many Nigerians dying out of misery and acute poverty).
Another school of thought suggests that Tinubu is merely a transactional leader who’s not leading but merely trading for personal profits.
EXPRESSO wagers that Tinubu suffers from both for one could still lead while trading and vice-versa!
It’s most scary to think that Nigeria is in the hands of a man who doesn’t know how to lead, who doesn’t care even. All we see is a pretence to leadership…
HAEMORHAGING THE ECONOMY: And here are some pointers to back this assertion: Tinubu seems to be bleeding the economy to death. He removes fuel subsidy, hiking petrol price astronomically. He increased taxes and levies; increased electricity/energy tariffs, school fees, port taxes, etc.
He seems to be addicted to taxes as well. He ordered a so-called elaborate taxes reform. But EXPRESSO can tell you for free that all na wash as they say on Nigerian streets. Never trust President Tinubu with taxes for he is sure to snooker you. Unless you want what happened in Lagos to repeat at a national scale.
This hoopla about taxes reform is firstly, REVENUE DERIVATION by stealth. Tinubu wants to give the Southwest her chunk of the Federation revenues through the backdoor. If passed as it is, Lagos (SW) will get federal allocation in trillions while other states will collect in billions. If President Tinubu wants to embark on fiscal restructure of the country, he must do so holistically. A true leader must have the courage of his convictions.
By a rough estimate, President Tinubu may have altogether secured about $1trillion loans in over a dozen tranches. Yet, there are no traces of any projects carried out with this huge sum in 18 months.
A VERY STARK ENVIRONMENT: One wished so much to find something cheery to report, but the environment is very stark and forlorn. People speak of a new minimum wage regime, but it’s yet to be paid, insignificant as it is.
The LGA autonomy move remains so much motion, no movement. Status quo remains. Students loan is yet another supposed gain. But this is a shackle on a wretched populace. A smart leader would subsidise and invest heavily on Nigeria’s education as a growth tool for the next few decades. Instead, he has taxed tertiary education out of the reach of the majority.
Every sector of the economy is a tale of woes.
Agricultural production was planned as the fulcrum of the Renewed Hope economy. About N75 billion was budgeted for massive large scale mechanisation. Not one tractor has been acquired so far.
The long awaited Dangote Refinery came on stream in 2024. Probably the largest in the world, it was to be a source of relief to Nigerians but today, imported fuels are cheaper than locally produced ones. Put simply, that’s an example of the ‘perverse’ corruption of the Tinubu era.
Solid Minerals were billed as the alternate petro- carbon but that sector is manned by cronies who see it as reward for decades of service and loyalty to baba. So solid minerals transactions are as mired as the gold mines in the unmanned fields of Zamfara State.
We hear N45 billion was disbursed for rural health but the Primary Health Centre in my community, Ibeme, represents a sordid embarrassment to any country. So is the one in the neighbouring community, on and on.
Money is being dished out in tens of billions but little value is returned to Nigerians. On the other hand, public officials and their cronies are living in roguish opulence, far out of touch with reality. The president, without appropriation, increased his fleet of presidential jets even as citizens suffer hunger pangs. He has shuttled Paris more times than we can count…
WHAT’S INCLUSIVITY: President Tinubu probably never heard this word before. Even our military leaders made efforts to manage our diversity. But Tinubu has turned Nigeria to YORUBA REPUBLIC to the discomfiture of enlightened omoluabis who know better. Tinubu continues to break the ties that bind Nigeria with unbridled nepotism. Leadership seems to him like rocket science and statesmanship an anathema.
RENEWED HOPELESSNESS: 2024 is a long, endless tale of failure. It is indeed, Tinubu’s year of epiphany. It’s his final unravelling, an indelicate denouement for a man who jostled for power so much he forgot its essence. Today, EXPRESSO has determined that the Tinubu era is a chimera, turbocharged by propaganda, lies and looting.
Sadly, it’s a failure that has neither remedy nor reparation. Tinubu’s Presidency is a debacle that keeps rational Nigerians sleepless, not sure what might happen next.
Feedback: steve.osuji@gmail.com
Osuji was editor with The Guardian, THISDAY, and NewAge. He was until recently, member, Editorial Board of The Nation.
▪︎OSUJISTEVE/23.12.24
