Why Tinubu will never cut cost of governance

The next election will be an easy ride for Tinubu and the APC. This will not be because of any positive performance but because of the use of material rewards to curry favour.

Olusegun Obasanjo, ambitious ex-president of Nigeria with a peacock ego appointed his friend, Chief Bola Ige, now late, as power minister. If any sector has the potential to fast-track development in Nigeria, that sector must be the power sector. Ige was as ambitious as Obasanjo with an added advantage over his friend; Ige had a very loud mouth. A few weeks after he assumed office, he called a press conference where he loudly and boldly told the nation he was going to turn stone into bread. If you are not conversant with the bible, that statement was a request made of Jesus by Satan. Jesus refused because he wouldn't carry out Satan's instruction.

But we are not dealing with religion now; Ige's metaphor was home and dry and I believed him. But my pastor, Tunde Bakare did not. He saw deeper than I and said if Ige taught he could do what Jesus did not do, the whole nation was about to see another failure. I didn't believe my pastor. But four years later, I ate my phlegm, Bakare was right, I was wrong, Bola Ige failed and had to be replaced. Eight years later, Obasanjo said his only regret in office was that he did not hack the electricity project. Nobody has hacked it till today. It is in this vein that I see the call by many Nigerians on Tinubu to reduce the cost of governance. Did they not know him? Who did they think they voted as a president, a performer? A disciplined person who can squeeze himself and refuse to live glamorously. Like my misevaluation of Bola Ige, Nigerians have inappropriately evaluated Tinubu. Tinubu is not a careful spender. He believes every man has a price. He buys influence and support with materials things and with money. Despite massive criticism of the 2023 election, Tinubu used money massively north and south to procure favour, and hungry and corrupt Nigerians, high and low got his money and gave him favour.

Here and now, Nigerians are about to learn a good lesson in electoral behaviour. For so long we have allowed tribalism, religion and bribery to condition our electoral choices and we are about to see that we have not put our friends in offices but our haters who are only interested in themselves and their families. I hear groaning from north and south, I heard a Hausa Muslim preacher man this morning on Facebook calling on Tinubu in the little Yoruba he could speak to have mercy on "us" because "we are hungry." I don't know who that man voted for but he seems to me an APC acolyte who may have embraced Tinubu's same faith agenda. A cousin I saw was losing weight and very sick when I went to him to find out the reason for his sickness. He confessed to me that he was affected by the inflation in the country. He confessed to me that despite Emefiele mopping up of naira, he still took bribes from APC, PDP and Accord Party during the last election and that the bribe determined his ballot. He regretted it because his poor condition was caused by his wrong ballot.

Most Nigerians believe quite rightly that the best thing the government can do to encourage Nigerians to endure in these tough times is for government personnel to show an example by living parsimoniously. If they do this the people will know what it means to sacrifice to help one's nation. But that is a call that will never be heeded now in Nigeria, no, not even the government of Bola Tinubu. Those who are watching will see that he has never responded to that call. It is good for him to allow all the legislators to have expensive SUVs even if he has to go to the World Bank to borrow to buy them. Doing that, his bills will sail through both the Senate and the House of Representatives in no time as they have been doing. Even the Labour Party legislators have agreed to collect the cars. Very soon you are going to see most of the PDP and all of the LP legislators become APC members because they know a man who knows how to use material things to curry favour is in town now. The next election will be an easy ride for Tinubu and the APC. This will not be because of any positive performance but because of the use of material rewards to curry favour. Tinubu has been in the terrain for a long time and he knows the terrain so well that he can easily pick his way through. Every Nigeria has a price.

Chief Nyeson Wike is another man who knows the Nigerian terrain so well. When Siminalayi Fubara, the youthful Rivers State governor he installed tried to pull muscles, Wike quickly showed him that he was still the minister of the Federal Capital Territory where he reigns as a governor and where money is still flowing. The governor quickly went on his knees apologizing. Up Wike! He told the nation recently that the President, Bola Tinubu has ordered him to allocate some of the much coveted Abuja land to all judges. Did anybody see the motive there? The judges have just given him the election and he's about to start to reward them. A departing justice of the Supreme Court complained as he retired recently of the inglorious injustices meted out to Supreme justices. Just watch what happens to that judge in a few months. He will be rewarded, no matter how strong he is, he will cowered. After all, he is a Nigerian with Nigerian blood in his veins. What do you think about the Abuja land allocation to the judges? I know you are an optimist but open your eyes, those who think they can defeat Tinubu in a court in Nigeria must reexamine their strategy. They are in for a great disappointment.

Nigerians, you have not put a president in office who thinks of you, you have one that can buy all your governors, legislators, local government chairmen, councillors and civil servants for himself. You are not about to get the government to reduce the cost of governance but to increase it, even Buhari sold to us as parsimonious did not reduce the cost of governance. He left the office with rosy cheeks. You are about to be asked to tighten your belt until you suffocate. Better you suffocate so that the burgeoning population of Nigeria will reduce so that our leaders will have more money to put in their pockets.

Tunde Akande is both a journalist and pastor. He earned a Masters's degree in Mass Communication from the University of Lagos.