Tinubu: Not ill, not sick but Nigerians are poor, hungry – he doesn’t care

By Ikeddy ISIGUZO

ARE we watching replays of the clips from the 2023 presidential campaigns? A bumbling Tinubu always about tumbling over not ever really making the ground? Debates rose and fell over the state of Tinubu’s health even on inauguration day.

There are suggestions that the sympathies over his health won him the election outside the intimidations that were open, yet the security agencies, deployed at billions of Naira, looked away, or sided the riggers.

Some theories on sympathies were mainly from the North where his Muslim-Muslim presidency was considered a value. After almost four years, the North has really suffered.

Nigerians are no longer impressed. The internal conflicts within the ruling party are very glaring. APC top officials are openly fighting their truths and knocking themselves for the attention of a President whose personal battles demand that he flaps his flaccid limbs against the tide.

Since Tinubu is well, he should start accounting for his over three and half years of monumental mismanagement of Nigeria, the frequent loans and absolute distance from the hunger and insecurity his policies are inflicting across Nigeria.

The deceit of public display of illness, yet able to navigate policy documents, some running into hundreds of pages should stop. If Tinubu is ill, he should tell Nigerians and what ails him.

Felix Morka, the All Progressives Congress National Publicity Secretary lugs these credentials – University of Jos, (LL.B. Hons.); Nigerian Law School, Lagos (B.L.); Harvard Law School, Cambridge, Massachusetts. U.S.A. (LL.M.); First Martin Ennals Fellow – European Human Rights Foundation Brussels, Belgium; Reginald Lewis Fellow – Harvard Human Rights Program Chairman, United Nations Expert Committee on Development-Based Displacements, Geneva, Switzerland (Drafted the International Comprehensive Human Rights Guidelines on Development-Based Displacements), Member, Project Steering Committee, Lagos Metropolitan Development and Governance Project (A $200 Million World Bank-Funded Project); Member, Global Reference Group on HIV/AIDS & Human Rights, Joint United Nations Programme on HIV & AIDS (UNAIDS); and Chairman, the Body Shop International Human Rights Award Jury, among others.

The least you would expect from such an illustriously educated man is to articulate Tinubu’s prosperous economy that results in deaths, hunger, illnesses, and normalised insecurity. I am not interested in his strategic interpretation of the party’s outing in Kaduna.

Nigerians should note again that the event was held in a 5,000-facility, Comrade Solomon Dalung, Buhari’s Sports Minister, had told Nigerians and wondered how such low numbers were expected to see their President.

The North-West, most States, 7; most numbers of registered voters, 25.08 million; according to INEC’s now AI-infected register, with all APC Governors, could only get less than 5,000 into the stadium.

A message has been delivered that Felix Morka is having a frustrating time explaining. Many of the locals live under the rule of bandits who kill them, maim them, take ransoms, raze the homes, farms, and take hostages who may still not be released after ransoms are paid.

Emir of Katsina, Alhaji Abdulmumini Kabir Usman has spoken for the North.

The North, or any part of Nigeria, cannot vote again for a government that will mock hunger, poverty, and pains that it caused the people.

Morka cannot understand why Nigerians refuse to see the great job the President is doing. The developments in the North, whatever they are, do not meet the needs of the people – security, so that they return to their farms, and revive the Northern economy that is centred on agriculture and trading.

How would Morka, when he has been hit by this most profound remark that his ebullient colleague Daniel Bwala made on 25 November 2022, during the 2023 Nigerian presidential campaign: “The human brain is unique and miraculous. It works and functions optimally 24 hours a day, 365 days a year – until you join APC, then it stops working.”?

Bwala was working for an opposition candidate then. He crawled to Tinubu for whom he now speaks for, in ways that confirm Bwala’s brain function cessation or non-optimal function theory.

His garrulity will keep him off ARISE TV from where he is practically on the run. He, thoughtless, as he has become, weighed into the debate that Tinubu never promised electricity or no second term.

Bayo Onanuga, out of strategy, unsuccessfully supervened the issue. Excuses could not paper over a firm promise that Tinubu made at 2022 Business Lunch audience and rewarded with resounding applause.

Tinubu had in his braggadocious ways clearly stated: “Whichever way, by all means necessary, you will have electricity, and you will not pay for estimated bills anymore. A promise made will be a promise kept. If I don’t keep the promise and I come for a second term, don’t vote for me”.

Bwala told Charles Aniagolu that Tinubu did not say so. When pressed further he said Tinubu had not declared for second term yet. Now that he has declared?

Tinubu failed pathetically on electricity supply. He confirmed this when he switch the presidential villa over to solar power.

Nigerians cannot wait for 16 January 2027 – their day of liberation from the shackles of Tinubu.

Finally…
. INEC is already being complicit in increasingly rising fears that the 2027 elections would not be free. We were still querying where AI would be used and the policy guidelines when AI-generated names and images were already in the INEC voters register. INEC is not sounding as if anyone would be punished for a criminal violation of a critical electoral asset. How do we know what else unauthorised AI has done to INEC processes? An independent forensic investigation of INEC electoral processes must be done for the elections. Our votes must count. It is important to punish the criminals who have already misused AI.

. WHO are interested in watching the fight over a party Senate ticket between Rochas Okorocha, former Imo Governor, and Hope Uzodinma, current Governor? At least count in Obong, Dr Godswill Obot Akpabio, Senate President, who believes Hope is after the Senate Presidency, a position Akpabio thinks he has personalised and locked up for 2027. What do we make of Alhaji Ganduje, former APC national chairman’s hasty visit to Rochas? He congratulated Rochas on “a well-deserved victory”. Nobody is openly siding with Hope, one of the head-honchos for Tinubu’s return.

. EKITI State Police Command finally arrested 11 suspects over the attack on presidential candidate of the African Action Congress, Omoyele Sowore. Let us see what happens next. The police’s shameless partisanship simply rankles.

Isiguzo is a major commentator on minor issues
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