The President Is In Real Trouble

Manipulation of figures at the CBN and deft political moves of Tinubu can only keep Tinubu in office but will never get Nigeria out of the woods.

The president, Bola Ahmed Tinubu is a very rugged politician. He is very deft at the game of politics. I don't know how the north of Nigeria, ever always desiring to be in power without knowing what to do with it, trusted Bola Tinubu in the 2023 presidential election when its own Atiku Abubakar was in the race. Give it to Tinubu, he knows his game very well and he was able to swing the north to his side. I predicted then that the North would have problems with Tinubu. They won't trust him but they will be won over. In power, Tinubu can't be controlled. The North when it is out of power always wants to control the lever of power.

Even great military strategist, Olusegun Obasanjo was rendered very weak in his first term as president because the north would not allow him to breathe. Obasanjo showed his true colours and took charge only in his second term. Late Ghaali Na’aba, former Speaker of the House of Representatives almost impeached Obasanjo. Obasanjo ensured he manipulated things to ensure that Ghaali Na’aba did not win a return to the House of Representatives for a second term as his reply to the former Speaker's threat to his presidency despite the huge power conferred on whoever is president by the constitution. Ghaali Na’aba's power was not derived from the constitution but from his north. The North has a large population and is commonly Islamic and with that, it always controls anybody in power. The North is very stubborn and does not seem to know what is good for itself. It has been in power for the better part of Nigeria's independence but despite that, it is the worst in virtually all development indices. Overpopulation, religiosity and careless leadership have been the bane of the North. What was the strategy that won Tinubu the presidency? Undoubtedly it is his same-faith ticket which he risked despite much opposition from across the nation. In choosing his Muslim running mate, Tinubu displayed his political sagacity; he picked a Kanuri man, Kashim Shettima who had been governor in his home state of Borno and like Tinubu was brilliant. He left the usual power-holder in the north, the Fulani in the cold.

The Fulani could not openly deny Kashim Shettima because that might put a final nail in the monolithic posture of the Fulani for the north and therefore had to forget about their hunger for political power at least for once. A friend who was deeply involved in selling the Tinubu/ Shettima ticket to the emirs in the north told me how they told the emirs, headed by the Sultan of Sokoto, Sa'ad Abubakar when they met them that the south only knew one common Muslim stock and don't know any difference between the Islam of the Fulani and that of the Kanuri. They bought them over, he told me.

Since his ascenion to power, Tinubu has been daring, walking where angels fear to tread. He removed the subsidy at once as he was being inaugurated into office. But of all his bold moves, none has revealed the hypocrisy of the north and its tendency to always hold the nation by the jugular than the current imbroglio of the relocation of some departments of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN and the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, FAAN to Lagos. The northern political elite is fiercely opposed to the plan. But in the opposition, the hypocrisy of the North has been exposed. While they give the interest of the north as the reason for the opposition, it has been clearly shown it is the interest of the elite that was uppermost. Most of those who rose against the plan accused the president of a clandestine move to take the capital of the nation back to Lagos from where it was moved to Abuja. But voices even some very strident ones from the north stressed that the criticism of the move was encouraged by the children of the political elites from the north who now populate the CBN. Since they are spoilt children, they don't want to be moved away from Abuja where their fathers have cozy properties to the hectic life associated with Lagos. They therefore prevailed on their fathers to move against the plan.

Senator Ali Ndume who has been in the senate since 1999 return to civil government is said to be the arrowhead of the opposition. He is alleged to have a son and an in-law at the CBN. In this, Nigerians are seeing very clearly that when the northern political elites say they are fighting for the interest of that section of the country, they are fighting for their families. While the poor don't get jobs to do, their children continue to get employment in good places. The jobs even though are unavailable are part of Emefiele's negotiation to keep his job as governor of CBN. So while Emefiele enriched himself at the CBN, those who are supposed to have oversight functions at the Senate and the House of Representatives looked the other way.

Tinubu has travelled to France on what is called a private visit that Nigerians don't understand. Seun Okinbaloye of Channels Television used very strong words to call Tinubu to his responsibility. A time of serious national malaise is not one for the president to gallivant around the world. Insecurity is at its highest, the economy is collapsing very fast, inflation is 28 per cent and food prices are making Nigerians hungry. Garri, usually the common man's staple is no longer affordable. Tinubu's economic advisers and technocrats at the presidency, the CBN and the Ministry of Finance seem to have lost steam. Both Tinubu and Nigerians knew that the president was going to inherit great problems because his fellow party man, Muhammadu Buhari who was in the saddle before him worsened the situation of things in Nigeria.

Tinubu kept quiet all the eight years of Buhari as he brought the economy to ruin. Tinubu's strategy of silence is unstatemanlike. Statesmen all over the world don't keep quiet in the face of policies that ruin their nation's economics and unity. There is no reason today why Buhari should not be in prison if the man who worked for him at the CBN, as governor, Godwin Emefiele is being moved from jailhouse to jailhouse for allegedly stealing a humongous amount of Nigeria's resources. It could only happen in Nigeria that a phlegmatic president slept off and allowed one man and his associates to steal the whole nation dry.

Does Tinubu have a solution to the myriad of problems he inherited and which he helped to foster in Nigeria? I don't think so. Manipulation of figures at the CBN and deft political moves of Tinubu can only keep Tinubu in office but will never get Nigeria out of the woods. What Nigeria needs is not figure juggling, what she needs is production for export. Production for export will give Nigeria foreign exchange to affect the dollar-naira exchange rate.

Dangote refinery which held hope for many Nigerians before seems to be no hope at all. Dangote cannot sell PMS locally at the price the government has fixed. Secretly, the government is subsidizing PMS. If Dangote has to sell locally, the price will have to be about N1000 per litre. Perhaps if a way is found for Dangote to export refined PMS, the country may earn some dollars from that and give us the needed foreign exchange. Apart from the economy, insecurity has spiked again. Seems the bandits gave time to watch the Tinubu strategy and having seen he had nothing to offer different from the Buhari inaction, they launched out boldly daring the security agents. Nigerians are calling on Tinubu to restructure the nation and let state police be. But Tinubu may be the last person to do this. He once said in the 2019 elections that the constitution of Nigeria has no problem. Even Jonathan's administration which set up a national conference to draw up a new constitution only produced a document that ended up in the drawers of bureaucrats. Tinubu is a megalomaniac and won't want to give up the huge powers the Constitution confers on him. He needs that power for his political manoeuvres.

Even if he wants to give Nigeria a new constitution, he needs the north who is not prepared for any serious developmental effort and yet has a large representation in the legislature to contend with. Whether Tinubu can give the nation a new constitution which most enlightened discussants agree is highly necessary or not the rest of the nation has to be prepared to confront the North now that we know it is not the North but the political elites using the poor masses in the region to push the interest of their children. The North is the major reason the nation is not making progress. The North wants to be pampered and it has been pampered all over the years. Despite the pampering, the gap between it and the south is widening daily. The north is the reason the youths in the east want a separate Biafra, it is the reason the Yoruba are clamouring for an Oduduwa nation, it is the reason for the agitation in the oil-bearing Niger Delta because it wants all top jobs at the NNPC. Now the North is opposing a purely administrative decision to spread some federal agencies purely for economic reasons. The rest of the nation cannot continue to tolerate the tardiness of the North. The economy, security, and hunger in the land are huge trouble for Tinubu. Can he provide a solution? I doubt it.

Tunde Akande is both a journalist and a Pastor. He earned a Master’s degree in Mass Communication from the University of Lagos.