CHAIRMAN’S MEMO
By Garba Dangida
The emergence of Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the seventh democratically elected president of Nigeria is an act of providence considering the massive pressure and opposition mounted by some stalwarts of his party and other external forces to stop him from getting the party ticket to contest for the presidency.
Even after his emergence as the candidate of his party, Tinubu did not rest as many strong voices campaigned against his presidential bid, citing religion and ethnicity as their reason for taking their stand against the Tinubu presidency. Despite all that, he eventually emerged winner and was sworn into office on May 29th 2023.
My advice to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is that he should not make the same mistake as Obasanjo and Buhari, who have had the opportunity to put smiles on the faces of the suffering people of Nigeria but failed to do so. Instead, they were carried away by the perquisites of office and forgot the favours that Allah did to them in choosing them for a special purpose of serving the largest and richest country in Africa.
Though President Tinubu came to power at a time when the country is confronted by challenges in many fronts from insecurity, economic recession, disunity, and institutional failures, Nigerians still look up to him to address the problems and take Nigeria to the promised land.
He has many things going for him. First, he has the full support of his people, the Yoruba nation, the entire nation sees him as a window of hope considering his antecedents as the former governor of Lagos State where he left indelible footprints as a transformative leader that puts Lagos on the world map as a leading fast growing economy.
Nigerians expects him to replicate this economic magic on a larger scale to liberate the nation’s economy from the firm grip of foreign profiteers and their local agents. He is also regarded as a very enterprising and wealth businessman who will not dip hi hands into the coffers of government to loot.
With these shining credentials, President Tinubu can be regarded as the first Nigerian politician to come to the presidency fully prepared. He has the experience, the legacy and the capacity to lead the country to greatness.
The first steps he has taken so far has become a cause for concern. The removal of fuel subsidy is regarded in many quarters as a hasty decision that should have been taken after the restoration of the nation’s refineries that have remained shut down for over fifteen years.
The adoption of a single tier exchange rate by the Tinubu administration has led to further devaluation of the Naira which has set in a hyper-inflation regime never witnessed by Nigerians. These are policy blunders that should be reversed to save the economy from imminent collapse.
President Tinubu should gauge the reaction of the people to these policies and take immediate remedial action. The promise of palliatives cannot address the negative effects of the policies which have thrown the entire population into unmitigated suffering.
It is noteworthy that similar policies by his predecessors have not yielded any positive results. Rather they pushed the people into abject poverty leading to the rating of Nigeria as the world capital of poverty, with more than half of its population living below the official poverty line of $2 dollars per day.
President Tinubu should recall how President Obasanjo bungled the opportunity presented to him to serve as president in 1999. Instead of taking drastic measures to reduce cost of governance, and inject the proceeds into the provision of basic needs of the people, he went on a binge.
He appointed his friends and boys into sensitive positions without holding them accountable. He left a legacy of no visible projects for the country. During his eight years tenure our roads became death traps despite billions of budgetary allocation for their rehabilitation. One of his Ministers of Works was accused of diverting over 300billion Naira meant for roads rehabilitation. Another minister of power looted 12billion Naira allocated to resuscitation of the power sector.
President Buhari made similar mistakes by turning governance into family business. He appointed his nephews, cousins, and boys into public offices without requisite experience and technical skills to handle the jobs. Majority of them became overnight billionaires before our very eyes.
From an advocate for the masses of over 12 years (2003-2015), Buhari transformed into a judge condemning our teeming youth as lazy folks. He abandoned the masses that propelled him to power. More than any of the former Nigerian leaders, Buhari hiked the pump price of fuel to 145 Naira from the previous 93 Naira he met it during Jonathan‘s era.
His policies set the country on a trajectory of an unprecedented inflation that made the price of a bag of rice 24,000 Naira from the previous N8000. Today it’s over 50,000 Naira as a consequence of Buhari’s ban on the importation of rice.
The irony of Buhari’s ban policy was that while he banned foreign rice, he sustained the importation of petroleum products. By this action, the Buhari regime demonstrated its lack of initiative and critical thinkers. How can a nation ban a product in which it is not self-sufficient but allow the importation of a product it has in excess? Nigeria is the 10th largest producer of oil and has four refineries. But the government could not revive a single one to refine and sell petroleum products to citizens at subsidized prices.
These trajectories should offer an insight to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on how to handle the most sensitive issues confronting the country. First is the security challenge that bedevils the country, especially northern Nigeria where banditry and terrorism have denied people peace.
The President should not ignore the calls and cries of the poor who are the major victims of these atrocities. He should not take the silence or resignation to fate of the average northerners for granted as presume that all is well. If he ignores the cry of the poor, he should have nobody to blame when the tide turned against him in 2027.
It’s now time to change the approach to fighting the insurgence and banditry that have become the twin evils destroying the entire region of the country. The president needs to take a fresh look at the security challenges of the country, and offer different approaches to them.
He should lead from the front by engaging with the nation’s security community to find solutions to the challenges which may involve restructuring the security architecture to empower the states and local governments to establish and empower their security outfits to protect their citizens. As we all know most security issues are local, they don’t need the intervention of the centre.
The president will need to initiate constitution amendment to collapse the exclusive legislative list of the Nigerian constitution that gives exclusive power to the centre to establish and arm the police. This is an aberration in a truly federal structure. The states and local governments should have their own law enforcement agents to enforce their own laws just as they have their own judiciary.
Another area that president Tinubu needs to look at critically and take appropriate action is the fight against corruption. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission seems to have failed in carrying out its constitutional function of investigating, prosecuting and charging corrupt public officials to court.
Firstly, their investigations are always marred by corrupt investigators, their prosecution is largely incomplete, and their charges are a far cry from what Nigerians expect. These lacunas need to be filled through legal and structural reforms. The EFCC Act 2003 needs to be amended to give EFCC power to initiate investigation without waiting for a report or petition from third party. Secondly, the law should spell out punishment for specific corruption offences, including death sentence.
Secondly, President Tinubu should direct the EFCC to revisit the previous corruption charges against some prominent politicians and public office holders that’s served under the Jonathan’s administration especially those involved in the arms deal scandal.
The culprits robbed Nigeria of 2.1billion dollars allocated for the purchase of arms to fight insurgency. By this single act, they put the lives of millions of Nigerians on the line by exposing them to the terror attacks and rendering our troops incapable of depending the territorial integrity of our nation. Those culprits deserve to die for sabotaging the war against terror.
Nigerians waited patiently to see the Bughari administration prosecute the 65 persons responsible for looting over 6.7billion Naira during the Jonathan’s regime. Though many of them had been arrested, charged to court, and detained for some time, they were later released on bail. Tunubu should not bury those cases under the carpet in view of the damning reports and available evidence of malfeasance established against the leading suspects and their cronies.
The case of Abdulrahman Maina, the erstwhile administrator of the Army Pension Board is another deserving the attention of President Tinubu. The souls of our departing soldiers will not rest until justice is done to them and their families.
The high profile cases of some prominent members of the Buhari administration too should catch the attention of President Tinubu. The case of the former Accountant General of the Federation, Ahmed Idris, who was charged to court for diverting over 90 billion Naira has not been prosecuted to the latter. He was granted bail after the first and second hearing of the case. Similarly, the case of the former Director General of NIRSAL, Aliyu Abdulhakeem who is being charged for allegedly diverting 6.5billion Naira Anchor Borrowers fund has been on a suspension mode.
President Tinubu should institute a probe on the controversial Air Nigeria project which the former Minster of Aviation, Hadi Sirika said was in process only for Nigerians to sight a renovated Ethiopian Airline aircraft painted in national colours displayed at the terminal of Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja.
The display was not only an embarrassment to Nigeria but a show a shame.
Finally, the President has a duty to rid Nigeria of the incessant collapse of the national electricity transmission grid by decentralizing the power supply chain to allow foreign investors with enough capital and technical expertise to invest and run the business so that Nigerian can enjoy uninterrupted power supply.
The Nigerian energy sector should be fully privatized and ailing refineries revitalized to ensure uninterrupted supply of petroleum products, including cooking gas. Nigerians deserve the best as citizens of an oil producing country . If we can’t enjoy what God has endowed us with, then what is the essence of having the black oil in our backyards?
President Bola Tinubu has a date with history. He has a choice to either play the role of a visionary and compatriot or join the hall of shame of his predecessors. The President must demonstrate courage to review those cases and many more so that justice can be done to Nigerians who have been denied good health care, education, roads, and regular supply of electricity as a result of the looting spree of those entrusted with public office.
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