“Give Tinubu time”, yes, we have!

There is this sycophantic bug that has beaten most people inside of the administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

The main concern is that this dangerous bug has infested each of these political office holders in the APC led federal administration with the ‘virus’ called “GIVE TINUBU MORE TIME.”

The effect of this political ailment that has befallen politicians of the All Progressives Congress’s genre is so worrisome that these “political patients” have continuously inundated the public space with their “GIVE TINUBU MORE TIME SYNDROME.”

The latest scenario was in the media in the last 24 hours in which a member of the House of Representatives representing Ibarapa East/Ido Federal Constituency, Mr. Aderemi Oseni, reportedly charged Nigerians to give President Bola Tinubu more time to fix the various challenges currently facing the country which are surmountable.

Oseni, while speaking at the launch of a N250 million empowerment initiative for members of the Blacksmith, Welders, Iron Benders and Metal Technicians Association of Nigeria (BWAIAN), Oyo State chapter, in Ibadan, said though some of the policies being implemented by the present administration seem tough but they are what Nigeria needs to have a brighter future.

He enjoined Nigerians to remain steadfast and support Tinubu’s administration despite the current economic challenges, stating that efforts by the president in fixing Nigeria will soon yield positive results and Nigerians should keep their hope alive for a better and prosperous country.

The federal lawmaker maintained that Tinubu as a friend of the masses and promoter of mankind is concerned about how to make life better and more meaningful for the citizens. Oseni isn’t alone amongst the political sufferers of the VIRUS OF GIVE TINUBU MORE TIME.

This is so because from the top-most members of the hierarchy of the National Assembly to the ordinary membership who are all of the All Progressives Congress’s political cohort, the common antiphon each of them sing is the meaningless singsong of “GIVE TINUBU MORE TIME.”

The Senate President and the speaker including their deputies, all of these persons have become political choristers of President Tinubu’s political choir and their common political anthem which they pollute and inundate the media space is “GIVE TINUBU MORE TIME.”

But here is the reason: Nigerian politicians within the corridors of power behave typically like a parasitic and lazy bunch of beer drinking people belonging to one self-serving political family, who locked themselves up in a room and are busy feasting, dining, wining and making merry even whilst surrounded on the outside by a large crowd of starving, poverty stricken citizens. These hungry audiences outside the exclusively political elitist merry-go-round dinner party, are even expected to simply entertain themselves with the rich aroma of different species of foods being prepared from an enclosure within the inside of the party hall.

But every time each of the members of the feasting elite look out from the window, the person shouts to the hungry crowds, ‘be patient, give us more time’. Meanwhile, the few political elite who are feasting even enjoy the services of all kinds including a bathroom known in Latin as VOMITORUM whereby those politicians feasting inside the heavily guarded party hall, could go and vomit out what they have eaten to create room in their tummies for freshly baked and prepared delicacies. What goes on there can literally be interpreted to be the same as the popular ideological anthem of members of the epicurean school of thought that goes thus: “let us eat today for tomorrow we shall die.”

These colossal waste of foods go on whilst the growing number of external audiences drawn from the hoi-polloi or the commoners are famished and some have collapsed for lack of nutrition even whilst perceiving all kinds of rich aroma of healthy and exotic diets that are consumed by the political class who as we said, locked themselves inside a dance hall.

This dramatic scenario I just painted, is exactly how to describe the constant anthem of those within the corridors of power who constantly bother us with their idiocy of ‘appealing’ to us to give Tinubu more time as if president Tinubu is unaware that the voters who are the good people of Nigeria already gave him his time which started running since May 29th 2023 and will expire on May 29th 2027.

So which other time are these senseless and insensitive bunch of politicians asking the dying masses of Nigerian citizens to give to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu who has spend nearly fifty percent of his time/tenure?

As I said earlier, the reason for this burdensome chorus of GIVE TINUBU MORE TIME as constantly unleashed on the public space by politicians belonging to the kitchen cabinet of president Tinubu is that these are actually the only people amongst the over 200 million of us who are citizens, that are enjoying the selective bumper political feasting and dining to the exclusion of the rest of us who are being asked to give the president who already has a constitutional timeframe, more time.

The following is the reason especially for the members of the National parliament who are now virtual slaves and zombies of the president of Nigeria. The reason boils down to their juicy pay package.

As revealed authoritatively, the National Assembly and the 36 state assemblies of the federation as well as their agencies will spend about N724bn this year. A major media establishment in Nigeria recently made a research analysis and reached this determination.

Further findings also showed that the salaries and allowances for federal and state lawmakers would cost the country about N50bn this year.

This means that the federal and state governments earmarked N673.94bn for the national and state assemblies as well as their related agencies in the 2024 budget.

The salaries and allowances are based on data collated from a document obtained from the website of the Revenue Mobilisation and Fiscal Allocation Commission.

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However, the overall allowances exceed the reported figure due to undisclosed amounts for several of the lawmakers.

An analysis shows that 109 members of the senate will get N8.67bn in salaries and allowances while 360 members in the green chamber will get N24.43bn in salaries and allowances.

A breakdown shows that the annual basic salary of the President of the Senate is N2.48m each year (about N9.92m in four years) while that of the Deputy President is N2.31m yearly (about N9.24m in four years).

Out of 19 allowances assigned to the Senate President and his deputy, only five allowances were assigned a specific figure.

The disclosed allowances include constituency allowance (250 per cent of the basic annual salary), duty tour allowance (N50,000 per night), Estacode ($1,300 per night), Recess (10 per cent of the basic annual salary) and severance gratuity (300 per cent of the basic annual salary).

To add to the general analysis, the Kano state Senator, Alhaji Kawu in an interview with British Broadcasting Hausa Service, recently disclosed that although his monthly salary is about N1m, but his total take-home was N21m, a wide margin from figures quoted by RMFAC.

Kawu said, “The amount of salary I receive per month is less than N1m, if there are cuts, it comes back to about six hundred thousand naira and a little something as salary.”

Besides, chief Olusegun Obasanjo, who was president between 1999 and 2007, had recently stated in Abeokuta, Ogun State Capital while receiving in audience, six members of the House of Representatives, led by Ikenga UgoChinyere who visited him, chided the federal lawmakers for fixing their salaries and emoluments.

During the parley, Obasanjo said, “In your case, with all due respect, you’re not supposed to fix your salaries. But you decide what you pay yourself, the allowances that you give yourselves (including) newspaper allowances.

“You give yourselves all sorts of things, and you know it is not right. It is immoral, (yet) you are doing it, the Senate is doing it, and you are beating your chests about it. In some cases, the executive gives you what you’re not entitled to. You all got N200 million (each).”

So, it is now so clear like the rising sun, why these political opportunists, especially the species that operate within the All Progressives Congress wouldn’t stop telling us to give the president more time even when his time that we the people of Nigeria gave him through electoral contestation, is far spent.

And to add salt to injury, the costs of living crises are widening with poverty spreading extensively.

As politicians tell us to give more time to Tinubu, they failed to understand that the best evidence that a nation has failed due to bad governance is when the well-being and welfare of the babies and children of that nation are neglected the way it is here and now in Nigeria. By the way, over ten million Nigerian children are out of school just as over 80 percent of the population of Nigeria are way too poor that they are unable to eat even two decent meals per day. Child Poverty in the country is also growing in leaps and bounds even as confirmed by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

The Situation Analysis of Children in Nigeria, the Multidimensional Child Poverty Analysis in Nigeria and Monetary Child Poverty in Nigeria prepared by the Ministry of Budget and National Planning in collaboration with UNICEF, was recently launched by the Vice President.

The Multidimensional Child Poverty Analysis using Multidimensional Overlapping Deprivation Analysis approach reveals that approximately 54 % of children in Nigeria are multidimensionally poor by facing at least three deprivations across seven dimensions of child rights including nutrition, healthcare, education, water, sanitation, adequate housing, and information.

Multidimensional poverty in children is more prevalent in the rural (65.7 %) than urban areas (28.4 %). There are also high state disparities ranging from 14.5 % (Lagos) to 81.5 % (Sokoto).

The monetary child poverty report shows that 47.4 % of children face monetary poverty by living in households with expenditure less than N 376.5 a day – national poverty line. Slight differences are observed between boys (47.98 %) and girls (46.8 %) while there are high geographical and state disparities (from 6.5% in Lagos to 91.4% in Sokoto).

In Nigeria, according to the report 24.56% of children face extreme poverty by living in households that spend less than $1.90 a day.

The analysis indicates that the country would need as roughly as 1 trillion naira to lift children out of poverty.

The Situation Analysis indicates that child poverty rate is highest among children aged 16– 17 years and least among children aged 0–5 years. It notes that children are most affected by poverty because they are vulnerable, and that poverty has long-term impacts on the well-being of children, even into adulthood.

“Data is critical for effective budgeting and decision making – and the data from these surveys together paint a picture of the situation for children and families in Nigeria,” said Peter Hawkins, UNICEF Representative in Nigeria. “We still have a long way to go towards ensuring the well-being of children and families in Nigeria, with persistent multi-dimensional poverty being a crucial obstacle. The findings of these reports will help guide the federal and state governments as they plan their budgets – providing evidence for where more funds need to be allocated and wisely spent.”

An analysis of the reports indicates the need for improved social protection measures to ensure that children are protected from risks, along with an expansion of access to much-needed social services. Whether looking at poverty from a monetary or non-monetary point of view, the data show that children are more likely to live in poverty than other groups.

“It is clear that we need to pay special attention to planning and programming for children, based on the policy recommendations and calls to action contained in the reports,” Peter Hawkins noted. “The data they provide offer a clear direction and key actions necessary for the realization of children’s rights in Nigeria.”

However, massive cases of corruption have derailed the operationalisation of the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation and the president does not care. If the President cares about child poverty, he couldn’t have failed to appoint a substantive minister for Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation but what he did was to deceptively suspend the minister who was alleged to have committed fraud by the EFCC and for almost a year,that vital ministry that is mandated to engage in redistribution of social safety relief materials to the needy, has been crippled politically.

*Emmanuel Onwubiko is head of the HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA and was NATIONAL COMMISSIONER OF THE NATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION OF NIGERIA *