Have you paused to ask: why is the presidency, especially the President’s ‘attack dog’ and Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Mr. Bayo Onanuga, always after Mr.Peter Obi, the Labour Party presidential candidate in last year’s election? Have you also reflected on why Onanuga has never concealed his irrational fear and hatred for the Igbo, of which he has repeatedly said, “I owe no one any apology”. Recall that only recently, Onanuga flew off the handle and alleged, without evidence, that Obi and his supporters, are responsible for the looming nationwide protest: #EndBad Governance’. Onanuga, it was reported, has urged the federal government controlled Department of State Service (DSS) to arrest Obi supporters across the country. This is, by all accounts, a malicious accusation for which Obi has instructed his lawyer, Alex Ejesieme, to slam a N5 billion libel suit on Onanuga if he fails to apologize.
Could this irascible behaviour of Onanuga be a daft desperation to explain away the government’s non-performance in the face of challenging economic times? One may also ask: why has Obi suddenly become Tinubu’s nightmares? Is Obi responsible for the present influx of beggars that have taken over most pedestrian flyovers and under bridges in Lagos, the President’s home state? Visit Lagos and see for yourself.
These are questions that the answers may begin to unravel before the 2027 elections. I perceive that soon, Peter Obi might be ‘held responsible’ for all pregnancy miscarriages by Nigerian women, among other trumped up charges that may be underway. Keep this in view: No stone will be left unturned to make things too hard for him should Obi decide to contest the 2027 presidential election. By the way, where’s that self-proclaimed intellectual acuity, that political, idealistic gifts and extraordinary capacity of hard work for serving the public that the president’s handlers used as a marketing pitch to promote his candidacy during the last electioneering campaign? Perhaps all of that is hubris, a presumption that has since melted under the weight of intense public scrutiny.
If truth be told, almost everything has gone wrong for President Tinubu since he was sworn in 428 days ago. It is as if he didn’t prepare( did he really?) for the demands of the most important office in the land. Maybe, he should be reminded once again as one cleric said recently, “you said it’s your turn, now save Nigeria”. What the man was actually saying is that the office of the presidency is not a prize to be won but a duty to perform. That’s why the cautionary saying, “Be careful what you wish for, because it might come true”, remains relevant, especially for those who aspire to higher offices. This fable seems frighteningly true of Tinubu’s presidency and the policies he has enunciated so far. They have all gone awry, achieving the opposite results, because some of them were not thought through before implementation. It’s not unkind to say that there’s no consolidation of support from most Nigerians, except those benefiting from the ill-advised policies.
From the outset of his administration, Tinubu must have himself to blame and no one else for the deep hole the country is currently in. At a time of unprecedented economic crises left behind by his predecessor, Muhammadu Buhari, instead of making things better, Tinubu began by making things worse the very moment he declared, “fuel subsidy is gone”. By that singular miscalculation ostensibly to steal the headlines, he denied himself the honeymoon, that initial smooth ride that every new president enjoys. All of that misjudgment has hindered him from the surge of momentum for which he’s yet to recover from. His arrogance, nepotistic and “I alone-can- fix it” approach to governance have made things even much worse.
The realities of the present economic challenges – rampaging hunger, poverty, unemployment, hyper inflation, freefall of the naira, debt crisis, and exit of multinationals- have left him in a quagmire, hemmed in in a smoke-filled room with no hope ‘renewed’. But it’s a landmine he laid for himself, and should blame no one else for his own failure. Sadly enough, instead of reasserting himself and reset the economy, his aides are misdirecting his fire of frustration at the wrong people like Obi. But Obi has not buckled under the pressure of blackmail. He is telling anyone who cares to listen where the problem lies and what should be done to get the economy out of the current doldrums.
This President needs reminding that Nigeria is not Lagos. The country is a much complicated place that requires a hands-on approach to governance. He should also not forget that politics is about tomorrow, not yesterday. The medicine for headache is completely different from the cure for cancer. In other words, even though it may be true that “all politics is local”, as late Speaker of U.S. House of Representatives Tip O’Neill famously said, leadership is another story. Ground-level execution and networking are essential leadership skills, so are framing and consulting widely, policies that will stimulate economic national growth and benefit the people. According to the host of popular television show “Hardball”, these set of skills are called, “retail” and “wholesale” that the most effective political leaders must strive to excel at.
But not this President. That’s why Nigeria’s economy is floundering, and lies and threats(like the President’s daughter Shade, has issued to parents in Lagos) can’t take the place of facts. For instance, in its recent analysis of Nigeria, the London-based Financial Times stated, matter-of-fact, that since 14 months that Tinubu became president, he has forced Nigerians to “swallow some bitter medicine”, by removing petrol subsidy, one of the “few benefits the citizens received from their inefficient and corrupt state”. The paper also said the government allowed the naira to enter freefall, thereby fuelling imported inflation and triggering the “worst cost of living crisis in a generation”. And with many industries starved of hard currency, these measures, the paper added, have impoverished the people.
As of last week, the naira exchanged for N1,600/$1 in the parallel market. Two months ago, the influential Newyorktimes made similar analysis on Nigeria, for which Onanuga excoriated the paper and the writers of the story. But that is where we are in Nigeria today under Tinubu’s watch. Without a doubt, the president’s economic policies are so disjointed to deserve being called “Tinubunomics”. That’s the point Mr. Obi has been hammering on for months now. Always armed with irrefutable statistics, Obi said last week that no concrete efforts have been made by this government to address the issues dragging down the economy. These include poverty, hunger, insecurity, rising national debt, unemployment, loss of investors’ confidence, among other challenges of immediate sort. Instead, the government is spending humongous funds on luxury lifestyles of political officeholders.
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Fact check where Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP)was before, and where it’s now since the All Progressives Congress (APC) came to power nine years ago. From 1999-2014, the country recorded a phenomenal average GDP growth of 6.72 percent. It had since plunged to a piteous 2.79 percent under the leadership of the APC that started in 2015. Recession set in a year later, and the our GDP went into negative territory of -158 and 0.82 percent in 2016 and 2017, respectively. That’s how Nigeria went from being the largest economy in Africa with a GDP growth of $568.5bn and per capita of $3200, to a downward GDP growth of $375bn and per capita of $1700, last year. In the first half of this year, it has further gone down, contrary to the claims made last week by Mr Wale Edun, Minister of Finance.
According to The Guardian of December 21, 2023, a daily meal of N800 approved for a security dog, and N750 for prison inmates are now higher than what an Nigerian household earns a day. You see that! Is that how to run a country? Yet Onanuga told Nigerians in February this year that there was no food shortage in the country. Ordinarily, this man does not worth a pitcher of a warm spit as a response to his numerous falsehoods. I think he’s borrowing from the playbook of Joseph Geobbels(1897-1945), the man behind Adolph Hitler’s propaganda. As you probably know, Geobbels was a small man with large head, fragile body and a crippled foot as a result of poliomyelitis that afflicted him when he was a child. But unlike his boss Hitler whose voice sometimes broke when he reached a fever pitch of oration, Geobbels’ voice was described as “deep, mesmerising and never wavering”.
With a Ph.D in history and Literature from University of Heidelberg, Germany, Geobbels was appointed the Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda by Hitler. His assignment was to do the ‘dirty’ job, and he did infamously effectively what the master instructed him to do. He crafted rabid messages of anti-Semitism, the German superiority over other tribes. That’s exactly what Onanuga is doing against the Igbo, creating an atmosphere of fear and hatred. That may be one of his primary assignments – to demonise Obi and Ndigbo in general. I guess he will do much worse things as 2027 approaches. Some say he perhaps has the president’s ‘eyes’ and ‘ears’ in ground-zero execution of dangerous things. My colleague, Alex Emeka Duru, in his brilliant analysis last Friday, described it with the gripping metaphor, “Onanuga’s dangerous drive to Kigali”. It often comes with seemingly good intentions but ends in dramatic hellish outcomes. I think that Onanuga’s vituperations represent a mindless, over the top comments, a possible invitation to ethnic cleansing of the Igbo living in Lagos and elsewhere of which he must be held accountable if anything happens to any Igbo residing in the South West. Several times, the President has been asked by many well-meaning Nigerians to call Onanuga to order if he cannot sack him. He remains recalcitrant, boasting that he’s not “afraid of any legal action” by Obi. What, or who exactly is goading him on, only time will tell. Maybe, that is how Onanuga thinks he can outshine the much younger, more decent, better raised, presidential spokesman Ajuri Ngelale. But history has a way of dealing with such men who twist and malign the truth. If in doubt, Onanuga should read how Geobbels went down in history.
