By Iliyasu Gadu
As one of those who fought the military for the restoration of civilian democratic rule in Nigeria and suffered detention for it, I am pained like millions other Nigerians across the country that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is continuing on his dangerous trajectory of destroying the democracy we struggled for but the country itself.
Having endured three years of his reckless trajectory of governance it becomes necessary to remind Nigerians that President Tinubu by his records or lack of it and by his dangerous incompetence is not eligible in the first place to occupy any public office for the following eight reasons;
1. Who is Bola Ahmed Tinubu?
The name is not his name at birth. Those who knew him from his native Iragbiji in Osun State, say his name was Yekini Amoda.
How he came about the present name he bears has not been satisfactorily explained to the public and relevant authorities
From available records on him, he has three dates of birth; 1952, 1954 and 1955. He currently claims to be 79 years old but his daughter Folasade is 70 meaning that he must have had her when he was 9 years old.
2. His dodgy educational records
There are no records of the primary and secondary schools he attended. He has no known former classmates and teachers. His claims to have attended a primary school in Kakawa on Lagos Island and a government secondary school in the same Lagos has been thoroughly and convincingly debunked. Prominent Lagos Island indigenes dismissed the claim of the primary school he purportedly attended. It did not exist as at the time he claimed to have attended it.
Same for the secondary he claimed to have attended. He said he passed out of the school in 1970. But the school was established in 1974.
If he could not prove that he attended primary and secondary schools he mentioned, how did he attend the State University of Chicago which claimed as his Alma mater?
Did Tinubu performed the mandatory national service? If yes, which state and where? And where is his NYSC discharge certificate?
3. President Tinubu is not a democrat.
As Governor of Lagos State Tinubu emasculated the state assembly and judiciary. All bills that the Lagos State assembly needed to debate and passed had to be cleared with him. If it did not, it will never fly. And even if it was passed, Tinubu would cause some of the provisions to be changed without consulting the assembly. He would get his lawyers and his cronies in the assembly to include changes that were never considered or debated in plenary
Tinubu was so intolerant of sharing the Democratic space that within his eighth years in office as Governor he had three deputies; Mrs Bucknor Akerele, Femi Pedro and Abiodun Ogunleye.
Today as President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Tinubu has similarly emasculated the National Assembly and the Judiciary. No bill is debated in the National Assembly without his consent. And the Judiciary is also subjected to similar pressures. Both independent arms of government now do the bidding of President Tinubu.
Tinubu has by subterfuge destroyed the opposition parties. Using the judiciary and agent- provocateurs, he has infiltrated opposition parties and used the resulting contrived inter party crises to encourage the judiciary to return judgements that put the parties in chaos.
Tinubu has also compromised the electoral body INEC by appointing a member of the governing All Progressive Congress as it’s Chief.
4. Tinubu’s economic policies are primitive, punitive and pathetic
Tinubu’s spin doctors will tell us that his economic policies are yielding economic gains for Nigeria. But the reality is that unimpeachable reports from sources like the World Bank say that there are 140 million Nigeria living below the poverty line.
And what is responsible for that? Tinubu’s smash and grab economic policies which have robbed the Nigerian people through withdrawal of much needed subsidies, taxes and massive corruption on industrial scale.
In other climes governments seek to lower taxes on the people and businesses in other to stimulate production. “Let the Government get off our backs” is the constant refrain from the people.
But in Nigeria under Tinubu his tax and spend policies is meant to rob the people and pay the elites and oligarchs. He implemented a self serving regime of removal of subsidies mainly to absolve and relieve government of the obligations it owes the people who elected the government in the first place.
Tinubu’s economic policies is not meant to encourage production in the economy but to institute a regime of capital flight out of the country.
These policies are out of sync with the realities in the world where the Keynesian economic approach is applied. The world had gone past the colonial model applied on colonies to provide steady capital to metropolitan colonial countries.
5. Tinubu does not believe in Nigeria
From the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. Tinubu once granted an interview in which he stated that he never believed in the unity of Nigeria. It’s a documented fact.
It is no surprise therefore that President Tinubu lacks the grace and statesmanship to recognise and enhance the diversity of Nigeria. As president Tinubu has found it difficult to climb out of his provincial mind set. He is not alive to the vive of diversity and positive energy it can generate when properly harnessed.
Tinubu has resorted to reducing his governance for the benefit of a section. In doing this he has exhibited an abject lack of statesmanship and inclusion in his policy decisions.
But by far the most dangerous manifestation of Tinubu’s poverty in statesmanship is his subtle but clear efforts at exploiting the cracks in the fabric of the Nigerian state to break it up eventually. From scepticism at first, Nigeria now see clearly that Tinubu is working towards balkanization of the country.
6. Tinubu has flouted the procurement laws of the country.
It is only in a Nigeria under Tinubu that a road construction project worth 15 trillion Naira can be awarded without due diligence. In contravention of all known laws of procurements and procedure. Within his three years President Tinubu has awarded contracts running to trillions of Naira without the necessary procedures to required in the awards of such contracts. He then proceeded to muscle the National Assembly to appropriate the funds for the projects which is unconstitutional.
7. President Tinubu is right now a subject of judicial interest in the United States of America over his alleged involvement in drug trafficking. He was compelled to part with the sum of 460k United States dollars found in his accounts as proceeds from the trade. What has not come to light but is all part of this case is that his wife Remi Tinubu also maintained a joint account with the wife of the mule who was eventually arrested after Tinubu had bolted out of the US to escape arrest by American drug law agents and the Federal Bureau of Investigations.
Granted as his lawyers have tried to argue that he had not been tried and convicted of his allegations, his evident involvement in the drug allegations by US law enforcement agencies and the heavy dossier they have gathered against him should exclude him by law or enlightened self interest of the Nigerian state from any public office so as not expose him to being compromised or blackmailed by foreign interests to the detriment of the Nigerian state.
Conclusion
It is our responsibility and in the general interest of our country to be vigilant and insist on the right things being done by our constitution and our laws.
By all records and by his conduct in governance, President Tinubu Falls far short of the requirements to hold any public office. His birth and educational records which should at a minimum qualify him to hold the office he presently occupies and the prevent ones he occupied are non-existent or if they exist in any form or file, must have been forged.
He has not been able to prove that he attended a primary or secondary school in Nigeria and indeed anywhere in the world. So it stands to reason that even the University he purportedly attended in the US was through dodgy means. And to make matters worse he has not been able to produce evidence of his having done the mandatory National Service.
As a result of lack of due diligence on citizen Tinubu by relevant agencies of the government in the altar of political correctness, Nigeria has fallen into the hands of a dodgy and dubious character who is bereft of necessary grace and statesmanship to provide good governance to the country.
Most alarmingly he is currently on a trajectory of instituting a one-man rule over the country where his whims and preference whether good or bad determines how the country’s direction. And on the same trajectory too he is planting the seeds of dividing the country in pursuit of a wild vision of his.
If Nigerians wanted dictatorship we would not have fought and defeated the military. We did not fight to be rid of military dictatorship only to have a civilian absolutism and dictorship in its place by someone who does not qualify and is not eligible to occupy the position he prently occupies out of default. We cannot allow a man who is bereft of the basic qualifications and who is clearly handicapped and incompetent to govern a state like Nigeria to preside over and sign laws for which himself does not possess in the first place.
No. Enough should be Enough.
Nigerians should shake off the lethargy of allowing this creeping normalisation of fraud, forgery and incompetence in our governance processes. We don’t deserve to be governed by the Ilk of usurpers and misfits like President Tinubu who worked their way to where they are by skullduggery and shenanigans against the wishes and desires of Nigerians.
As we work towards resisting the negative trajectory of President Tinubu in Nigeria, the International community is also keenly watching unfolding events in our country.
Below are excerpts from a report on Nigeria by a diplomatic mission;
“As the general elections draws nearer, there is a growing sense of apprehension in the country. Daily news of corruption in government circles while the populace groans under the weight of growing poverty is generating a slow anger and apathy in the country.
If President Tinubu is aware of this, he has not shown any inclination to change things for the better. Gone are the much talked about palliatives as little as they are.
Instead the President seems more interested in pressing ahead with his reelection campaign.
The fractured opposition seems to be playing into the president’s hand by their lack of unity despite all attempts to bring them together.
The most challenging issue has to do with President Tinubu’s seeming determination to accumulate power around himself to the exclusion of other relevant sections of this diverse country. If he presses on it might result in some frightful eruptions although the President feels confident that he will be able to rally his South West region robustly behind.
In our meetings and engagement we have tried to subtly indicate to government officials and to highly placed Nigerians that democracracy must be upheld.
Per the election timetable the elections will take place in January next year. And we assume that tensions will rise high as the elections approaches in the coming.
We recommend that the Nigeria Response Committee NIREC must be ready to crank up its engagements with the government, opposition and CSOs and highly placed Nigerians. The goal being to guide the country through free, fair elections and successful transitions.It must be impressed on President Tinubu that the responsibility is in him to bring this through and the world will be keenly watching him carry out this responsibility. We will of course make our usual pledges to assist as possible”.
Iliyasu Gadu is “A Conscientious Nigerian”