EXPRESSO_PRESIDENCYWatch》》By Steve Osuji
“If an African child is assured of a pint of milk in the classroom, a good sandwich or one egg daily, there will be no fear of learning.” — President Bola Tinubu in France
Who writes the president’s speeches? Who manages his thoughts and actions? Do we have a strategy team in the presidency? How do we prepare for huge events like the current State visit to France?
EXPRESSO asks these and so many other questions over Tinubu’s current visit to France. It’s obvious that the current presidency is puny in terms of knowledge stock, experience and mental power of the current aides, but it seems to get worse. The intellection in The Presidency gets annoyingly bereft and they are getting poorer even on the basics.
It’s elementary that every piece of daily action of a country’s President/leader, is choreographed. Indeed, rehearsed and mastered. Much more so an international engagement with no mean a country as France. And we can tell you for free that the meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron was a meeting with the allied nations of NATO.
Though hosted by Paris, it is a meeting with the US, UK, Germany, Italy, etc. It’s NATO realigning and consolidating territorial interests in Africa in view of the emerging revolt in the Sahel. The NATO brigands who have mismanaged their prime opportunities in West and Central Africa are now desperate as Russia and China are closing in and edging them out.
But who is leading the thought in Aso Rock? Apparently none as everything looks wrong from the outside. Look at President Tinubu’s dressing. No alive President stands on the world stage looking like a scarecrow. Any President worth the name has a clear public identity even before he ascends the office.
As the photo here shows, Tinubu dons a knee-length winter coat over his already well-known and fitting danshiki. Now what manner of dressing is this that looks like an afterthought.
Didn’t we know it’s winter in Europe, which means acute cold? If you can’t visit in winter, postpone until It’s conducive. In fact, if there be a think-tank, it would have suggested that Macron visited Abuja. They need this visit more than we do.
If you must visit now, sew your dress (danshiki or agbada), make it cold proof!
Let’s overlook the un-Presidential appearance and of course, the milling crowd of entourage on shopping spree and estacode jamboree… let’s look at the issues.
From where we sit, it seems as if our President is on an early Christmas holiday instead of the hard-headed diplomatic outreach that the visit is meant to be. Meet and greet. Photo opportunities. Outdoor optics…
And when it came to making a statement, it was puerile as always; incoherent and banal. Look at the quote above, extracted from President Tinubu’s main address. President Tinubu practically lays an egg in France in the guise of a speech.
If an African pupil is assured of a good sandwich, if he could have an egg a day, he would be amenable to learning! One can’t understand the meaning of this talk?
Is Macron supposed to come build poultry for Africans or lay eggs for Nigerian school pupils. In one and half years, there would have been a glut of eggs and chicken in Nigeria if Tinubu has paid just a bit of attention to the poultry sub-unit of agriculture.
The ordered world would be scandalised of course hearing the leader of one of the largest countries in the world moaning about eggs and sandwiches to her host country. Expresso is shame-faced!
Though it’s noteworthy that Tinubu’s extempore speech has improved a bit. But one was expecting to hear about grand plans to clear out the last vestiges of bandits in Nigeria’s North East and North West by end of 2025. We expected an aggressive blueprint to return all out of school children back to the classrooms by September as well as legal framework to levy severe sanctions on parents who bar children from being in school.
We look forward to solid roadmaps for pulling at least 10 million Nigerians out of poverty by 2027. We wanted to see a €20b plan to revamp the troublous Nigeria’s livestock sub-sector.
These are some of the concrete bargaining chips to push at France and her allies.
Not telling the world about eggs and sandwiches. Or telling your host no child should go to bed hungry as if it’s the fault of Macron that Nigeria’s children are acutely malnourished.
Feedback: steve.osuji@gmail.com
OSUJISTEVE/29.11.24