“During the time of President Goodluck Jonathan, he tried in vain to confront the bear. After a growl of protests, he ducked and postponed the evil day. Buhari was not interested in tackling it at all. It is not clear if Buhari caved in to the rapacious class or he just did not care, or he was afraid of the present turmoil.”
By Sam Omatseye,
Let me begin by acknowledging today as a tragic milestone in Nigerian history and journalism. Exactly 38 years today, Dele Giwa, a great editor, columnist and avatar for free speech was bombed out of this world by a conspiratorial military elite. At a breakfast with a colleague of his in his own home, he received a letter. Gleeful about who might have sent it, he uttered his last words, “This must be from the president.” He opened the letter and he extinguished in a cloud of smoke.
As I doff my heart for this eternal role model of Nigerian journalism, I also draw from his tale to tell my own story as a marker of the malice and bitter cauldron of the election that ushered in Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. I am saying this because I am happy to be alive to address you today at the University of Cambridge, this prestigious university among universities.
I wrote an essay titled Obituary in which I predicted that one of the candidates, Peter Obi of the Labour Party, would lose the election. I observed that the core of his following came from the southeast part of the country, and those persons were abandoning their secessionist leader who I called an ethnic entrepreneur, Nnamdi Kanu. They were diverting their zeal and agitation for a Biafran Republic to a new chief. And that new hero was Obi. I thought it was opportunist and cynical. I predicted it would fail, and I employed a word coinage from his name to propagate its coming failure and anticlimax and called the essay Obituary.
For close to five months in 2022, I was in hiding. That coven of followers came after me, asking for my head and limb and soul. The internet burst with death threats, innuendoes, outright lies and invectives. I went into hiding after even the police authority did not offer me any protection. Any time I left my place of hiding, I disguised in a car I obtained just to avoid any wolf in Obi’s clothing.
The essay is part of the collection of articles in my book, “Beating all Odds: Diary and Essays on how Bola Tinubu became president.”
I also penned a weekly diary on what happened either before or beneath the public eye in those tumultuous months leading to the polls. Before I address whether the reforms of President Tinubu will lead to perdition or redemption, it is important to understand the context of how he defeated his two major opponents. The two other presidential candidates were Abubakar Atiku and, of course, Peter Obi. Atiku was the presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). Obi, as I stated earlier, held the banner of the Labour Party. Tinubu polled 8,794,726 votes, Atiku polled 6,984,520 votes while Obi had 6,101,533 votes. It is obvious that those who did not want Tinubu as president were more than those who wanted him to lead the country. If we combined the votes of the Labour Party and the PDP, they amounted to about 13 million votes compared to Tinubu’s eight million.
If we consider the bitterness of the polls, especially the religious ferment and ethnic odium, it is understandable why the majority of the country still aches and swears. Immediately the electoral chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, announced the results, both men rejected them and proceeded to challenge the verdict in court. During the campaigns, they accused him as a thief, without evidence; as a convicted drug baron, even after the United States government through its embassy had cleared him; of forged certificate as a student of Chicago State University, even though the university confirmed his was a student. Yet, when Atiku’s school discrepancies were released, there was little bubble, or when Obi was revealed to have used his own late brother’s certificate, there was silence. In fact, when I recently discussed this with an Obidient – that is, what the Obi followers call themselves – the fellow said he had never heard such a thing. It reminds me of Jose Saramago’s Blindness, a parable about how a whole people cannot see in broad day light. In the Bible, it says “darkness shall cover the earth, gross darkness the people.” It is one of the challenges of populism as we have saw in the 20th century in Europe, and we are seeing it today across the world, including the United States.
While they say Tinubu stole state funds, Obi’s followers were not willing to address what their man had publicly acknowledged: that he (Obi) had invested state funds in a family business when he was a governor of Anambra State and that he maintained an off-shore account against the law when he governed Anambra State. Atiku himself had also been accused of selling off public companies at giveaway prices and had fattened on public funds. Few were willing to interrogate them. But Tinubu became the butt of a barrage of umbrage.
I am not here to say he is innocent of anything, but just to chart the architecture of rage that pervaded the man’s rise to power. But as they say in law, he who accuses must prove. During the election campaigns, he chose Kashim Shettima, a northern Muslim, as his running mate. Tinubu himself is a Muslim. A firestorm of resentment followed his pick with the accusation that he wanted to foist Islam on the nation. Obi exploited this and called for the Christians to save the country from a rising mullah, not his words, but his sentiment. The church elite, who had collaborated with Tinubu for over a decade and accepted his wife who is a Christian and pastor, banded together against him. That was how Obi rallied his ethnic group and southern and Middlebelt Christians against Tinubu. As I show in my book, some of those who wanted Obi were those who did not want to face the moral dilemma of choosing between a Yoruba man and a Fulani man, that is Atiku, having just had Muhammadu Buhari, a Fulani man, in the saddle for eight years. Obi’s candidacy released them from that moral bind of picking a northerner over a fellow southerner that is Tinubu. They who did not want a Yoruba found a shelter in a non-Yoruba man in Obi.
In spite of all these headwinds, Tinubu triumphed. Hence, I called the book, Beating all odds. As the two opponents challenged the polls in court, their supporters stoked the flames of subversion. Some of their followers even asked the army to overthrow democracy. It has been a virtual bedlam in the country since he took over office as president.
More than half of the country did not accept him as their leader, and whatever he did, good or bad was bad. It has been the challenge, especially given his reforms in the economy. In his inaugural address, his quote, “subsidy is gone,” has been a refrain of rebellion. He might have believed, perhaps naively, that since everyone agreed that the regime of arbitrage and corruption known as subsidy of oil was bad, it would attract universal acceptance once he announced its history. But when the consequences began to hit with core inflation rising like a hawk, they began to accuse him of bad faith, ineptitude and insensitivity. The cost of food, transportation and fuel staggered the market and the poor.
It brings to mind the story of exodus of the people of Israel in the Bible. When Moses arose and said he was going to take them away from the clutches of Pharoah, they followed. Hoping to get to the promised land that flowed with milk and honey, they eagerly defied their whipmasters and followed him through the Red Sea. But when they reached the other side of the water, they began complaining. They could not see what they hoped for and suddenly they started saying it was better where they came from. At least their taskmasters gave them food. They were not even happy enough with the manna that came from heaven. It’s like Ted Hughes book on United States called A culture of Complaint.
All three candidates agreed in their hustings that they would abolish subsidy. A World Bank report came out recently that the country spent $15 billion to both fuel subsidies and pegging of foreign exchange rate in 2022 alone. This is the waste that the Tinubu government sought to stop. In the first few days of his presidency, he spoke about the rage of those who were benefiting from arbitrage. To add to this, he also noted that the nation was dealing with the problem of PMS importation as a drain on foreign exchange.
We were going to deal with these problems head on, or we were going the way of Venezuela. What has happened for decades has been an indulgence of a parasitic elite who held the political class hostage. Leader after leader did not want to bite the bullet. During the time of President Goodluck Jonathan, he tried in vain to confront the bear. After a growl of protests, he ducked and postponed the evil day. Buhari was not interested in tackling it at all. It is not clear if Buhari caved in to the rapacious class or he just did not care, or he was afraid of the present turmoil.
But Tinubu laid down the problem. He inherited a nation that was borrowing to support a meretricious lifestyle. With 97 percent of revenue going to debt and maintaining government and ways and means that ran to about 100 billion dollars and with interest of another fifty billion dollars, the country could only continue on that path hooting towards perdition. Imagine if Tinubu continued with that policy and turned his blind eye or conscience away from the foxes at the barn? I was at a meeting with some editors where a government representative explained the economic pressure and how the government had no choice but to stanch the bleeding. One of the editors and a prominent commentator wondered why the government did not continue with the old policy, so we did not have the pains of the moment. I quipped to the fellow, “You don’t like your children.”
To understand how he approached this, it will help to understand his biography. He grew up with his mother who was a well-known market leader and a grassroots woman, Chief Abibatu Mogaji, who was known as Iyaloja, that is, the market leader. This gave Tinubu an early exposure to how grassroots mobilisers did the work with the commonfolk. He therefore grew up with the commonfolk. But she was not poor, if not a money bag. She worked for progressive causes as a habitue with the masses.
On the other hand, Tinubu traveled to the United States and studied accounting at Chicago and worked with big name corporations ending up with Mobil Nigeria where he rose to the position of treasurer. So President Tinubu inhabits two contradictory worlds: the mass mobiliser and laissez-faire ideologist. The poet Whitman once asked, “Do I contradict myself? Yes, I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes.” Tinubu’s political career has been a navigation of both worlds. He has both Marx and Adams Smith coddling under his skin.
So, while releasing programmes to free the economy from the parasitic elite, he has also unleashed a slew of programmes. One of them is the release of palliatives. This is a great programme. But it has faced a number of challenges. First, for a country of about 200 million, there is no credible database. Yet, hunger cannot wait for a headcount. So, they distributed them through party faithful and governors. Reports show that some politicians hoarded them, and some are not accounting for bags of grains. A good model is in Lagos State where the governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu has initiated what he called Oonje Eko, Lagos food, in which designated markets sell foodstuff at subsidized rates. The federal government palliatives need to be better systemised like the welfare state as we see in parts of Europe and North America.
Two, he has instituted a student loans scheme for the indigent. This has kicked off, and it is interesting to note that the overwhelming majority of applicants, as the records show, are from the impoverished north. There is also the business loans known as consumer credit scheme amounting to billions of dollars. Some of the money is sourced, at least, about N100 billion naira, from the proceeds from those who stole public money.
Schemes like these tell the story of his grassroots predilection. But he believes he has to make the economy fend for itself. That is why he is trying to sanitise the currency, but there are many criminals who would not let it happen. Some cryptocurrency fellows are on the run while some are facing prosecution. There are many who live by corrupting the naira for profit. But in spite of this, there is progress. Nigeria, for instance, has a trade surplus in the second quarter of this year that rose from 6.5 percent to N6.945 billion. This was a record and that is putting in mind that the previous quarter was also a record of N6.527 billion.
Also it is on record that the stock exchange, a bellwether of confidence in an economy, has been surging. The NGX, Nigeria’s index, rose to 104, 562.06, marking a year-on-year peak, establishing it as the second best performing on the continent. This was after it surpassed the 100,000 basis point in January. We cannot forget that it gained N1.6 trillion naira in a single day with an all share index of 83,191.84. the CBN has reported inflow of money into the country is substantial amount. For instance, a few days ago, the CBN governor Yemi Cardoso said the country enjoyed remittances of about 600 million dollars. This year over 200 million last year. Its call for bond bids often oversubscribes.
These are figures but that has to happen before they can be translated into something worthwhile, especially in tackling the core inflation factors of the economy. This is still a work in progress, and as those who know how an economy works, much has to be done. For instance, the waves of banditry, now abating, in the north has rolled back agriculture with bandits stopping farmers from going to the farms. It is less and less with the work of the military, and agricultural production has been ramped up with many state governors focusing on food production. This, in time, will subdue hunger. Some critics in the country who are on the left have said President Tinubu is beholden to the west and IMF policies. This is an interesting point. His policy of stanching the bleeding like floating the currency or letting fuel sell at the market rate seem to suggest this. But he has no choice. He is, to me, not implementing the policy under their behest. I see it as a coincidence of policy. This so-called Washington consensus has been touted as the solution to the problems of many developing countries with mixed results. Yet, if your currency is bleeding, do you borrow to save it without a productive base? No. If the price of fuel is killing your ability to build roads or hospitals or fund education, do you continue? I think not.
So, if it is IMF policy, it is not Tinubu obedience but a coincidence of necessity. When one of the candidates, Peter Obi was asked if he had an alternative to Tinubu’s policies, he said he would go and look for money to save the situation. In order words, he would hark back to the same era of extravagance and indulgence.
Tinubu is on the right path. He just needs to be better organized in articulating and organizing institutions around these policies. Even those need time. The situation reminds me of a story of one of Nigeria’s percipient writers, Chigozie Obioma in his debut novel The Fisherman. A sibling fight leads to one throwing the other into a well. Nobody knows where the brother is until it was a time of reckoning when the stench and parts of the body show up to someone who discovers the body. Nigeria is at that inflexion point of dealing with its own body in the well. The question is, are we willing to accept the dead body, and clean up the water. Tinubu is going ahead, and redemption beckons.
An address at University of Cambridge On October 19, 2024, delivered by Mr. Omatseye
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