“What the New Year brings to you will depend a great deal on what you bring to the New Year.” – Vern McLellan
Yes. Vern McLellan couldn’t be more right. It’s garbage in, garbage out, as they say. If you just finished a quarrel that was not settled last year and prayed endlessly for a peaceful 2024, you might be disappointed. If you had a rough bed in the outgone year and now hope for a sound sleep without first making good the rough bed or, if you seized a child’s toy in 2023 and hope that crossing into 2024 will end its agitation for the recovery of the toy, you might just be fantasizing or indulging in wool-gathering.
That, perhaps, is why Jonathan Lockwood Huie is urging us “to celebrate endings—for they precede new beginnings.” Albert Einstein admonishes: “Learn from yesterday, live for today, and hope for tomorrow.”
Against this backdrop, the first Political Musings of the year will attempt to predict what will happen in our political life based on happenings in 2023. In the past, predictions in a new year were being looked up to by many. Even though they hardly turn out accurate, they guide the people in planning for the new year. A new year is like being handed a plain sheet of paper in January and told to fill the space. And whatever you write on it will stand as your new year dreams and aspirations.
In filling such space, you won’t just rush into it. You will look back and put a lot of thinking into it before writing. This is because if you derail you have yourself to blame. You would be struggling to avoid a repeat of mistakes you made the previous year.
As it is with individuals, so it is with nations. Countries/governments also try to plan for their new year through budgets and other policy mechanisms. In Nigeria, the new year is going to be a unique one for many reasons. The fiscal year began on Monday, January 1, meaning we are already four days into it.
This week, we are going to attempt some predictions on what will happen this year in our land. In doing this, we are not oblivious to the fact that predictions in Nigeria like in every other human endeavour have been bastardized and politicized. “Prophets” like judicial operatives and electoral officers can be bought like merchandise. Priests, pastors, and even Imams now tailor their prophecies to suit their sponsors’ interests or to disparage and undermine the opponents of their sponsors.
Perhaps, the most absurd and provocative in Nigeria’s transactional prophecies is the claim that their visions are divine. Against this backdrop, we hereby issue a caveat: our predictions are not a consequence of any divinely inspired visions. We saw no visions and neither God nor his son Jesus met us in the dream. Rather, our predictions are coming from a realistic view of what happened in 2023 that will significantly affect the events of 2024.
In 2024, Nigeria will remain a country with over 200 million with Bola Ahmad Tinubu as the President. It will still retain its 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory structure because Nigeria will not restructure this year. Kashim Shettima will still be the Vice President and would hope to be as lucky as Goodluck Jonathan and Lucky Aiyedatiwa, the Ondo State governor. We predict that such will not happen. Rather, what will happen may be different but going to be exciting. Given the quicksand foundation laid for our democracy in 2023, the turbulence therefrom in 2024 is going to be enormous and windy and anything can happen.
The Nigerian economy will be bad in 2024 its weight will be felt by everybody. The screaming that will accompany its weight will be immense to the extent that fear of system collapse will be real enough to grip both the government and the governed.
Unemployment and inflation will continue to fuel hunger and insecurity in the country. In 2024, corruption will subdue and intimidate anti-corruption operatives of government in Nigeria. Corrupt people will be bolder in 2024 even as the anti-graft agencies will struggle and pretend to be doing something.
In 2024, the trial of the former Governor of the Central Bank, Godwin Emefiele, will be stalled because the attempt to try him without his co-offenders will suffer severely. NNPC Managing Director Mele Kyari will continue to be a good boy of the system for being in the wrong place at the right time, unlike Emefiele who was at the right place at the wrong time and has to answer questions. Both Emefiele and Kyari represent varying interests, Emefiele enjoyed Muhammed Buhari’s backing while Kyari, the cat with nine lives, enjoyed the backing of both Buhari and Tinubu. No wonder his crossover was seamless.
The crafty oil boss was luckier than the banker, he calculated better with his resources. In 2024, he may survive so long as he dances the music as required. Just like no Fulani man would have done better than Emefiele, an Igbo serving Buhari, a Fulani, so it is with Kyari. No Yoruba will do better bootlicking than the Kanuri. Ditto the Director-General of the DSS and they will continue to play great in the power corridor. The other service chiefs are already history.
In 2024, the ruling APC will swell with more members desiring to either go for chopping or to get protected from the unveiling that is about to hook them in the throat.
This year will be a turbulent one for the main opposition PDP which will continue to struggle for life wire. The party will break into three groups, group one will comprise those still dreaming that Atiku Abubakar will be President in 2027 when he will be 80 years or above. The second group will be mostly youths hoping to have a romance with the phenomenal Peter Obi and his obidient movement to be able to assume political power. The third group will be renegades led by the Minister of the FCT, Nyesom Wike, playing spoiler for APC to help Tinubu consolidate for 2027.
The Labour Party will also experience schism in 2024, but the overwhelming impact of Peter Obi will drown the mutineers and tergiversators.
The Independent National Electoral Commission will continue to suffer credibility challenges as more evidence of their corruption will unfold in 2024. The Edo State gubernatorial election in 2024 will underline INEC and APC bond as Senator Adams Oshiohmole will try to muscle his way for APC to return to power at all costs to prove this time that “Edo can be Lagos.” Recall that Governor Godwin Obaseki had taken a dig at Oshiohmole and Bola Tinubu in 2020 that “Edo no bi Lagos,” but who knows with Tinubu as the large bolt in the central position with such an uncompromising political disposition?
The incarcerated leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, will smell freedom but not through the courts, Tinubu will want to use his release to change the perception of him by Ndigbo but it would not change anything. Anybody who hijacks your turn and wants you to romance him is merely a friendly foe.
In 2024, the rehearsal for the 2025 gubernatorial poll will be electric as Anambra Governor Charles Soludo will struggle to be afloat despite the consequences of his needless and tactless attack on Peter Obi, the prodigious and wondrous candidate during the 2023 electioneering.
APC will try testing Uzodinma’s formula to ensure its workability but it’s going to be an uphill task in Anambra state. Soludo will struggle with his fading APGA and will try to enter into an unholy political alliance with the Abuja forces.
In 2024, insecurity will not abate. The North will be more unsafe than ever, and ethnic, religious, and criminal banditry plus terrorism will heighten with hunger and poor education in the region not improving.
The rich will have to sleep with one eye open in 2024 as the patience of the poor will get thinner and the smallest provocation could snowball into a huge crisis.
After the management of the national currency against the dollar by propaganda fails to bring it down in 2024, the confused Federal Government will attempt two options with the Bureau de Change and black market operators. First, the government will attempt a clampdown on them which will also fail before settling for negotiations with them. This too will fail because the drivers that help the national currency, that is, local production to earn forex are nonexistent. What exists rather in abundance are those variables that fuel the weakening of national currency such as corruption and needless importation.
Notwithstanding the gloomy predictions, There will be light at the end of the tunnel but if no rays are sighted in the tunnel there is no end yet. The real reason we feel hopeless in every situation in Nigeria today is because of our reaction. Maybe we need to find a fresh way of reacting to our situations. Longing for a lost love can be excruciating unless you find an alternative.
Contemporary Turkish playwright and novelist Mehmet Murat ildan is fitting for this conclusion: “When hopeful and hopeless come together, both will learn great things from each other: Hopeful will learn the horror of being hopeless and the hopeless will learn the beauty of being hopeful!” Let us therefore not wake up with the regrets of 2023. Rather, let us wake up thinking about what to achieve in the new year. Welcome to 2024.