Time to stand out, Mr President

The eight years of President Buhari, 2015-2023, have now been etched in our national history as the Buhari era. That era witnessed the incapacity of the Nigerian government to fully rise up to the challenges of governance. It failed in its core constitutional duty of providing for the security and the welfare of the people. […]

The eight years of President Buhari, 2015-2023, have now been etched in our national history as the Buhari era. That era witnessed the incapacity of the Nigerian government to fully rise up to the challenges of governance. It failed in its core constitutional duty of providing for the security and the welfare of the people.

It is not much use disputing this without looking foolish. In that era, the economy headed south. The government secured a jumbo loan and opened the floodgates of loans that overwhelmed the economy. Myriads of criminals – bandits, armed robbers, kidnappers, hired killers and brazen corruption – overwhelmed the nation. Life became cheap and expendable, thanks to AK47. The government was stuck in the marsh of its own inertia and watched the country lose its valued professional citizens to other countries with greater promises of hope and security.

We longed for its end. The constitution came to our rescue. And the era ended on May 29, 2023. It yielded place to what is now the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu era. It inherited the baggage of the preceding era. Still, it is in the nature of a new era to engender hope. That hope in this case lies in our expectation that the new era will necessarily birth a new period in which life is secure and sacred and the poor will breathe as much fresh air in their fatherland as the rich and the influential.

We look for changes that define the new era on its own terms. So, what do we see of the Tinubu era nine months or so after the man who said it was his turn, took his turn on the top podium of the leadership of our nation? Well, what we thought we had left behind with Buhari are still very much with us. The economy is still in very bad shape and invited hunger and hunger protests by the people to register their disenchantment with failing promises. The president’s economic management team did not prepare for nor responded adequately to the fallouts from the removal of fuel subsidy. So, what was deemed to save the economy is crushing it.

• Open letter to President Tinubu on State of the Nation (II)
• Open letter to President Tinubu on state of the nation (I)

Bandits still control large parts of Katsina and Zamfara states; kidnappers, are still on the lose and doing what they did regularly under Buhari’s watch, to wit, the kidnapping of secondary school students; the tribes of armed robbers have increased, not diminished. Killer herdsmen are still bathing Benue and parts of the north-central with blood. The kidnapping of students is an assault on the future of the Nigerian state. No nation takes such assault on its most vulnerable group of citizens lightly. No one need telling in our country that without our young people, our country has no future.

Nasir El-Rufai, former governor of Kaduna State, was recently quoted as saying that the government is not paying as much attention to kidnapping as it does to the separatist agitation by IPOB because kidnapping is business. It was an unfortunate statement, to say the least. Kidnapping is not business. It is a heinous crime. It was turned into a lucrative business under Buhari’s indifferent leadership that left kidnapped victims to secure their freedom by paying the ransoms demanded by their abductors. Should the Nigerian government continue to allow this kind of crime to thrive as business? The right answer is no brainer.

Nobody expects the president to fix our broken nation in nine months. What we expect to see is some evidence of his determination to see Nigeria rise again towards the sunrise of its potential greatness. It is not too early to know to where he is taking the country and how he intends to take it there. The man who hit the ground running can ill afford a leisurely walk along the pavement. The challenges are too serious and too big to allow for a breather at this point in the life of the administration. The president needs to break out and stand out by the way and manner he responds to the challenges that beset his administration.

The insecurity challenge is a huge embarrassment to the country that once took it upon itself to police the West African sub-region and cage all security threats to it. The country has no reason to be so overwhelmed with this challenge. Our armed and security forces cannot be pushed over by criminal non-state actors with AK47. Under his watch, Buhari gave marching orders to the security forces in almost every case of a major security breach. Tinubu appears to be stuck with the same method that proved so disastrously ineffective in that era. It is no way to go. The only way to go is the effective and superior response by our armed and security forces to the security challenges the nation faces in the hands of the various criminal elements.

The president is anxious to woo investors to the country like all previous presidents before him. It has become a routine. Investors are not in the business of doing favours for their host countries. They go to where the conditions for investments are right so they can make more money. Given the lingering and the new challenges that afflict the country, no investors will beat the path to the president’s door. If the conditions are right, they will come uninvited and those who are here will not pack up and relocate to other African countries as is the case now. To make Nigeria safe again should be the first order of this administration. The economy cannot thrive in a climate of insecurity and uncertainty.

The president is not in control of the national assembly. But he cannot ignore what is happening there. What is happening there is a monumental national shame. The national assembly reeks of scandal and embarrassment. That in the midst of the current hardship, the lawmakers are sharing humongous sums of money takes our national greed and shame to a new height. Sadly, the president and his administration cannot be untainted by the scandals that taint the legislative arm of government.

This is, after all, the Tinubu era. Whatever happens under his watch provides history with the raw materials with which to judge Nigeria under his watch. It means that he takes credit for the good and bears responsibility for the bad and the ugly. Tinubu must not let it be said of him as a Daily Trust editorial said of Buhari that he was absent from duty.