By Ikeddy ISIGUZO
HIS name remains debatable. So uncertain are his roots that even guessing leads to more diverse answers. The only things certain about Bola Ahmed Tinubu, President of Nigeria, is that he has ruined Nigeria beyond recognition. Every passing day he leads Nigeria to more ruination.
There is nothing he can do about it. The reason is simple: Tinubu has nothing to offer, never had anything to offer Nigerians who after surviving Muhammadu Buhari thought the worse was over forever.
The other thing is that Tinubu’s love for lugging the title President, without taking responsibility for anything bothers on highest levels of indifference.
Can we call it a President’s indifference to his people? Was that what he meant when instead of a people, he saw us as a “town hall; different”?
Tinubu’s lack of capacity to do good, work for the common good, recuperate a country that went through indescribable harm under Buhari, is evident in his works and words. Tinubu cannot care for himself; he is that deficient.
Forget the amassing of resources for his personal good and interests, how have they benefitted him? The trips to France and fancy places like St. Lucia, all call him to judgement.
Who still remembers that Tinubu is also Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria? What has he done recently that has not reduced that role to a mere title?
Bandits, terrorists, emboldened by the empty words of government have increased the tempo of their killings of our troops and other security agents in the North-East, North-West, North-Central, and other parts. Government has reclined to a resounding silence.
If bandits can get away with killings soldiers in ambushes why would their leader not kill an Assistant Commissioner of Police and wear the murdered officer’s uniform to a government-initiated meeting that discussed a truce?
Soldiers and other security agents subdued, they have moved to Kwara State after years invested in appropriating Niger State, the biggest State, by land area in Nigeria, from where they forage into Nasarawa, Kogi, Kaduna, and now Kwara.
The interests of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is not in making Nigeria safe. He has run out of excuses for not setting the military after the invaders who kill, maim, and put those they have not killed in perpetual fear with threats to return and finish them off.
They keep their promises. These days they write letters to communities in Kwara State warning of their imminent arrival. In the North-West, they have been imposing taxes on communities who over the years have been terrorised to poverty, their farms plundered as part of their punishment for being Nigerians in those areas.
If these communities pay the taxes, they are most likely leaning on their shares of the proceeds of illegal mining of gold and other solid minerals. Their farms are long gone.
The conflicts would continue because the terrorists need more lands to exploit for minerals. That is the explanation for the burning of villages and displacing the inhabitants.
Kwara’s terrorists claim to be on a jihad. Follow our own doctrine, of the same religion, or you are dead, is their policy. They kill, retreat to plan more killings. Government watches, perhaps, confused.
Tinubu’s tepid response, where he acts, is as pathetic as his wondering attention on Nigeria.
Who are the Nigerians who would vote for Tinubu? What would they say he did for them? Tinubu more than anyone of us knows he is not electable in 2027.
Not being a man of his word, unable to resist the allure of power, disinclined to working for the improvement of Nigeria, having vowed to continue from where Buhari stopped, he is working at winning the election without voters.
The alacrity with which he signed the Electoral Act 2006 dripped with his relief that he has a piece of law that gives him leeway to work for his interests.
Why would a President who claims to have done so well not use his achievements to campaign for his second term? He has done worse than what his opponents warned against in 2023. What would he promise in 2027? To finish off the country?
Tinubu must be stopped for our own good. Individuals must assess various interventions Tinubu have made in their lives and arrive at their own conclusions. We have become poorer, less secured under Tinubu. The state of Nigerians show thus – hunger and anger in the land, an increasingly divided country along lines of ethnicity, religion and regions all drawing extensively from Tinubu’s anti-people policies that he celebrates as if they are the entire purpose of his government. They could just be.
At the National Assembly Obong Godswill Akpabio acts as if the entire purpose of his existence of his existence is to please Tinubu whose well-being must be more important than Nigeria and its peoples. Each successful minimisation of Nigerians sends Akpabio rolling on his seat in sheer delight. In this instance, he guffawed at the efforts of the opposition to get a voice into debates on the Electoral Act 2006 amendment.
Nigerians should harness their numbers and speak with one voice to end the presence of Tinubu’s government through the ballot box. We should resist his pressures in the various patterns they come.
We need to get our country back and re-work it to a nation where “no man is oppressed”. These are not meant to be the mere words that Tinubu and company have made them.
Nigeria should work for Nigerians and not for a miniscule group in the likes of Tinubu and Akpabio who count their resilience in opposing democratic practices as achievements. If the will of the people is allowed to be freely expressed, they know they are gone.
Would Akpabio have forgotten that if the Electoral Act was used in determining his case in 2023 he could only be seen at the Senate if he was visiting? He is the Chairman of the National Assembly and primed on mocking Nigerians as he presides.
APC, the ruining party, is in a panic over its pendulous hold on power. With 30 Governors in APC, and all the Governors in some arrangements with Tinubu in 2027, Tinubu remains petrified about his chances. He knows he has not done enough to merit re-election.
Tinubu dreads free and fair elections. He is recruiting supports in different guises. Yet he is really scared that Nigerians will chase him away through the ballot box.
Dangers for our democracy are often not obvious. During the protests about the determination of the majority APC to leave enough loopholes in the Electoral Act, Senator Kenneth Eze, APC Ebonyi Central, slipped to his village to propose a single 16-year presidential term to replace the current renewable four-year tenure. Eze, Chairman, Senate Committee on Information and National Orientation, argued that frequent election cycles distracted leaders and weakened policy continuity. Was he testing the waters? Why would someone dream of an unbroken 16-year tenure?
If in less than four years Tinubu got Nigeria into its dreary circumstances; just imagine where such President would take in 16 years.
Senator Eze could be the voice of Dave Umahi, Minister of Work, and a rabid Tinubu supporter.
Tinubu should go quickly before we have a democratically “elected” dictator, whose next tenure would be 16 years.
APC has no qualms about oppressing, suppressing, and telling Nigerians – Tinubu does not need you to win in 2027. We have a duty to stop the dictatorship that is in the works.
ISIGUZO is a major commentator on minor issues
