The Insight by Lateef Adewole
This week has been eventful in Nigeria. One critical event was the nationwide protest called by the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), led by Comrade Joe Ajaero, which was expected to take place for two days, 27th and 28th of February. It was eventually called off after the first day, not because they were prevented from carrying on but for reasons best known to the leadership. I did not want to call it a completely failed project. But, if compared with the success of many ‘sincere’ protests that we have seen in the past, this week’s own was not as successful.
Before then, I saw the signs of such expected outcome. Some days ago, the leadership of the Trade Union Congress (TUC), led by Comrade Engr. Osifo, addressed a press conference where they dissociated themselves from the planned nationwide protest. Reasons given included the ‘one-man’ show that the NLC leadership is fond of running. They accused NLC leadership of taking unilateral decision about such important event that was supposed to affect them without carrying them along. This was said to be the third or fourth time that similar thing would happen, which they have called the attention of the NLC leaders to, had meetings to resolve but all that seemed to be inconsequential, reason it repeated itself. Hence, being a body representing an independent labour centre, of no less a status, they decided not to join in the protest.
Another sign of what to come came with the resolution of about 65 Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), not to participate in the protest. In fact, they advised that it should be shelved. That advice was based on the larger implications of such protest that it could exacerbate the already bad situation of the people they are claiming to fight for, with additional hardship that such disruption of economic activities would impose on the citizens. Another concern was the possibility of breakdown of law and order, which could only worsen the state of insecurities in the country.
As we know, there are people who always have their personal sinister agenda. Such nationwide protest gives them the opportunity to execute their plans by highjacking it and make it spirals out of control of those who called for the protest in the first place. We can all recollect the painful outcomes of Endsars protest after it was highjacked by impostors and militia group to carry out their own agenda, contrary to the noble intention of the youths who started the protest. We also saw how criminals took advantage of the chaos to wreck havocs, broke jails, released prisioners, attacked security agencies and their facilities, broke into peoples’ businesses to steal and loot, which were not part of the plans of the Endsars protesters who became helpless.
Even at that, the NLC protest went on, sparsely in different locations. The most surprising and interesting part happened in Lagos. Days earlier, the police authority cautioned about the possible escalation and seemed to discourage the protest, which is their usual practice. However, on that day, they were out to provide security cover for the protesters as they carried on with their protest. What shocked everyone was when the police officers began to share bottled water and snacks to protesters. The video of this went viral immediately, with protesters commending the actions of the police. What could be more disarming?
This speaks to the quality of leadership as well. Since the new Inspector General of Police Kayode Egbetokun, a thoroughbred, well read, PhD holder actually, and very civilised man, took over the leadership of The Police Force, he has tried to change the narrative about the Force. Their image has become more appealing with various prompt actions the Force took whenever reports about bad behaviours of their officers surfaced. Many reorganisations have also been done to improve the effectiveness and efficiency in service delivery to Nigerians. That reflected in Lagos on Tuesday. Kudos should be given to the Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Adegoke Fayoade for such impressive management.
Drawing from the above, while acknowledging that things are challenging for the people, it could be seen that a disruptive protest at this time is irresponsible. Such action, like many previous ones taking in the past by the labour union, particularly the NLC, is portraying the leadership, especially their president, Comrade Joe Ajaero, as having interest beyond fighting for the welfare of the workers he claims to be doing. Series of his actions are seen as being more personal and politically motivated.
This might have prompted President Tinubu’s supposed ‘jab’ that he threw in Lagos on Thursday, while speaking at the commissioning of the first phase of the Red Line rail transport in Lagos. The president said: “Allow me to throw a jab here. The Labour Union should understand that no matter how we clinch to our freedom and rights, to call four strikes within nine months of an administration is unacceptable. If you want to participate in the electoral process, wait till 2027. If not, maintain peace; you are not the only voice of Nigerians.”
This is what you get when a union leader pretends to be fighting for the people when he was known to be deeply involved in another party in opposition during the last elections. He openly supported and campaigned for a particular presidential candidate of his choice but they lost the election to a more suitable, more acceptable, better qualified and more competent candidate, at the polls, as well as in the courts, all the way to the Supreme Court of the land. Carrying such loss to bear on your activities while claiming to fight for the workers or the masses is deceitful. No one should take such person seriously.
Nigerians are genuinely going through hardship now, whether caused by the government policies and decisions or self-inflicted by selfish, greedy fellow citizens. Fortunately, President Tinubu has never shied away from taking responsibility for everything. That is unlike what we usually have in the past where leaders tried to blame all the woes on their predecessors. He still reiterated this in Akure, while addressing the Afenifere leader, Pa Reuben Fasoranti, when he paid him a courtesy visit on Wednesday.
The president said: “Nigeria will survive the current economic challenges. There is light at the end of the tunnel. I requested the job, and I am not complaining about it. I take full responsibility. We are meeting our obligations to the international community. To lenders, we have not defaulted, and we are not going to default. We are navigating the twists and bends on the road to Nigeria’s prosperity.”
However, there are different categories of complainants in Nigeria today, both from the camp of those who supported him and those who did not. From, those who are his traducers, it is understandable. Many do so just to make him and his government look bad. Some are just programmed to criticised Tinubu and his government, because they do not like him personally. Others because he is not from their tribe or religion. Majority others are from opposition political parties, which expectedly, are not to praise the government, even when they do good or right things. That’s the nature of politics we play.
When things are not going as expected, they make the greatest noise about them so that the public / masses will hate the government. When things go right, they downplay them. They are excited by any bad news about the country and happily share it on various social media platforms. An example is the crisis we are facing in the forex market, with the unprecedented weakening of naira against other foreign currencies.
I have a friend like that who made it his duty to keep posting to me as naira weakens all this while. All that was to mock me for supporting Tinubu. However, whenever naira makes any recovery and rises against dollar, he will disappear. I won’t see his posts during the period. Same as in case of insecurity. Whenever people were kidnapped, he would be the first to post them to condemn the government, but when kidnapped victims were rescued or kidnappers were arrested or neutralised, you will never see him commend such gallant efforts of our armed forces, not to talk of Tinubu. Such people are programmed like that. Irredeemable!
The more concern is about the group of people who were or claimed to be, supporters of President Tinubu since when he was contesting. They are the ones seen in videos prodded to attack the president and complain about the situation in the country. The anti- Tinubu groups described earlier love to go out to interview them and circulate it on social media. Their point is to make it look like the president is losing his support base. They do this mostly in Yorubaland, among the Yorubas.
Like I said earlier, everyone knows that the country is facing serious challenges. That people voice out their concern is not misplaced. But to ignorantly begin to rain abuses on the president in the process is ludicrous. What I know is that, even among those who claimed to love, support or vote for Tinubu, there are many who are uninformed. Such reactions would be as a result.
Towards the last elections, many supported him because he is ‘their brother’. There those who feel he belongs to the same religion with them, not minding the fact that his wife is a very strong pastor. There are others who did so because they belong to same political party and he was their candidate. All these supports based on such sentiments, and not really critically objective factors, are bound to wane when things go as we have seen.
There is a group of well-informed supporters. They may not even belong to same or any party, may not be of same religion or ethnicity. That is where I belong. As a public commentator, I try to get myself informed as much as possible. For someone who people called to ask for his opinion about national issues, I cannot be found to be flippant. In as much as I am not immuned to wrong judgement, I try to base my opinion on objectivity, as dispassionately as possible. Such was my decision to support Tinubu as a presidential aspirant and eventually, the APC candidate in the last general elections.
Since all these crises began, I have been under ‘attacks’ by people who were unhappy that I supported Tinubu. I was constantly taunted about the pains that people are going through and blamed as being part of the cause for my supportive roles. I take responsibility for my opinions and actions. Have these now made me regret or have a change of mind about my previous stand? No. Not for a second. I am not a blind supporter. I made this obvious in my previous articles where I stated that I will be the first to criticise President Tinubu if and when I feel he has started derailing from the path for which I hoped he would trail, which earned him my support in the first place or when I feel he is showing incompetence, contrary to my expectations of him.
Before, during and after the presidential election, I wrote copiously about some attributes of Tinubu that made me to support him. Have those attributes deserted him? No. In fact, few concerns that I had then, which I simply accepted as his imperfections, have turned out not to be true. One was his health. This was not the Tinubu I envisaged. I was very worried that he might be incapacitated by ill health, which might impact negatively on the administration, and the country at large. Happily, this turned out not to be so. He is as healthy as possible for a septogenarian. He has been up and running, to the chagrin of those who mocked him with same health challenge during the campaigns. Remember the song: “hands dey shake/ leg dey shake/ baba wey no well/ he dey talk Emilokan.” All of them have been put to shame now. “Baba dey kampe for Aso Rock.”
Another surprise for me was the seriousness with which Tinubu has been tackling corruption. I did not rate him on that during the campaigns, so, I was not expecting anything or much from him, particularly considering how many interest groups he had to negotiate with to get their support then. I was concerned he would run a ‘paddy-paddy’ government. It happened that I was wrong on that too. Many Nigerians have been pleasantly surprised by the anti-corruption fight of the administration and his penchant for not tolerating malfeasance.
A whole minister has been a casualty, along with many top government appointees. That was incredible to me. Why? Because, we knew what happened under ‘Mr. Integrity’, whose strength was assumed, albeit wrongly, to be anti-corruption. We have seen how rotten that administration was. I knew of many of those things then. I wrote many articles about them. I am only surprised that they were much worse than I thought. Imagine 30 trillion naira printed and cannot be accounted for. A loan of 3.4 billion dollars collected from an international bank vanished without trace. The country’s debt ballooned from N12.12 trillion in May 2015 to N87.38 trillion in May 2023, an increase of N75.26 trillion within 8 years, without proportionate infrastructures to show for it.
Money meant for farmers disappeared. Covid-19 funds mismanaged. Foreign reserve depleted. Excess Crude Account cleaned out. Millions of barrels of ‘yet-to-be’ explored crude oil, still underground, sold in forward contracts and proceeds squandered. Petrol consumption skyrocketed from 45 million litres per day (mlpd) in 2015 to over 75mlpb and 100mlpd sometimes, with corresponding humongous subsidy payments running into trillions of Naira yearly. In 2022 alone, petrol subsidy was N4 trillion. In the first six months of 2023, it was projected to be N3.36 trillion. That would have been N6.72 trillion. Where would that money to pay come from?
So far, President Tinubu is still substantially on the path I expected him to tread. I supported him for his competence, an international accountant. A man who dreams big and knows how to carve great vision, not just personal, but for a society. It’s his big dream and vision 24 years ago as the governor of Lagos State that birthed the rail transportation that he went to commission in Lagos on Thursday. The Blue Line has been running since last year. This is the first phase of the Red Line. There are five more lines to come.
He has the political sagacity and dexterity to navigate the complex nature of Nigeria politics. There are so many issues that have festered for decades in Nigeria which only a person like Tinubu could tackle. A man of courage and with gut. These are attributes that won my support for him, and he is yet to disappoint me. Petrol subsidy has been the monster in our economy for decades. He tackled it. Forex arbitrage is another. He tackled it. Nigerians have cried for state police for years as a way to tackle the worsening insecurities. He has signalled the process to set up the framework for which it will be established.
The bogus civil service, with redundancy and overlapping responsibilities, and some agencies obsolete but still draining the country, were concerns to past leaders, reason former President Jonathan set up the Oronsaye’s Committee to look into it. Widely applauded recommendations were made in what popularly became “Oronsaye’s Report”, but nothing was done about it subsequently. Former President Buhari ‘pretended’ to want to act on it but was just a faux. On Monday, at the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting, President Tinubu gave directive for its implementation after 12 years. And many more tough decisions and actions of the government he has taken. Only a Tinubu could do so.
While in Akure, he talked about carrying out reforms in Nigeria to ensure fiscal and true federalism, and a broad-based manifestation of the philosophy of “what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.” President Tinubu acknowledged the support and understanding of all the citizens in the face of difficult economic conditions which he said will be temporary. He promised the people that their patience and perseverance will not be in vain.
“The economic challenges we have endured since assuming office are not new to me. As the former governor of Lagos State, I faced similar calls for my resignation. But, through perseverance, Lagos emerged as the fifth largest economy in the entire continent of Africa. We must manage this moment with wisdom and grow Nigeria responsibly. I campaigned for this office to serve Nigeria’s interests, and I was elected. Some said I would not last in the tribunal and came up with all sorts of predictions, but even when in court, I remained focused. We cannot allow Nigeria’s economy to be exploited. We cannot abandon our economy to marauders. I am determined to re-engineer our finances and curb selfish interests permanently.”
These are reassuring. One needs to listen to the president speaks and they will have no doubt as to his passion and sincerity of purpose. He won’t cease mentioning ‘focus and staying the course’ while he was speaking in Lagos. This is how you know a man who knows what he is doing. He has a clear idea of the kind of country he wants to bequeath to Nigerians after his administration has ended. That is why he has been resolute, despite the ‘noise’ to distract him. He said there is no going back on the reforms to transform the country for better and greater future. What more can the citizens want?
As he put all efforts to make things work, he should be breathing down the necks of the state governors to do their parts. Right now, it seems these sermons by Tinubu do not concern many of them, because the people of most states are not seeing what they are doing with the humongous increase in their monthly allocations since those policies were implemented. A tree does not make a forest. Moreover, they are closer to the people. They should do the jobs for which they were elected. “Agbajo owo la fi n soya.” Nigerians need results. We cannot continue like this.
May God continue to protect us and guide us aright.
God Bless Nigeria.
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March 2, 2024.