There is a saying in Hausa – shure shure bai hana mutuwa, which literally means ‘struggling to survive does not stop one from dying’. This, perhaps, is the reality facing the government of President Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu. With a protest scheduled to take place on August 1 – 10, 2024, the government is desperately mobilising opposition to the protest. On Thursday, July 25, 2024, President Asiwaju Tinubu met Governors, Traditional Rulers and Religious Leaders and they all call on Nigerians to be patient with the government and appeal against the protest. On the same day, the Department of State Services (DSS) claimed that it uncovers plan by some criminal elements to hijack the protest. The Defence Headquarters also issued warning to protesters against any form of violence.
The truth is that these are old scripts, which have been used in the past to block attempts of Nigerians to legitimately express their dissatisfaction with government policies. All those who are in the forefront of the campaign against the protest have never been associated with any popular campaign in the country. Every time, Nigerians try to engage government through protests or other modes of contestations, these same groups are always there with the same messages and warnings against so-called violence. They always uncover plots by opposition, criminal elements, etc. to hijack protests and campaigns against governments. If anything, it would have been news if they say anything contrary. The reality is that, often the response of the security agencies through attempts to forcefully disperse protesters is the source of violence.
In all past experiences, irrespective of these so-called appeals, which threatened organisers of the protests, protests still take place and in varying degrees recorded success. As someone who is privileged to have organised protests in the country, one can say without any fear of contradiction that Nigerians, across every part of the country, have never been pushed to the wall like they are today. Within one year, virtually everything has crashed, all due to the impatience and arrogance of President Asiwaju Tinubu. If President Asiwaju Tinubu has turned out to be an impatient leader who is in a hurry to implement policies that has impoverish citizens, why should citizens be patient with him?
Here is a President Asiwaju Tinubu who even before settling down to resume work as President of the Federal Republic, declared an end to petroleum subsidy without any plan. At the same time, he proceeded to float the exchange rate of the Naira against other international currency. For an import dependent nation, why should any leaders be in a hurry to implement such policies without having any plan to boost local production? In the case of withdrawal of subsidy, does it require any counselling to time such policy with ensuring capacity for local refining? With all the talk of fixing the four refineries in the country and the beginning of production activity by the Dangote refinery, why is President Asiwaju Tinubu in a mad rush and unable to align his policy initiatives with these expectations? Instead, needlessly, Nigerians watch the shameless criminal dispute between NNPC and Dangote Refinery.
And having push the nation to a hopeless trajectory, which has worsened living conditions of all Nigerians, what plan has President Asiwaju Tinubu put in place to fix the problem? Even in terms of ameliorating the challenge facing Nigerians, the government has demonstrated lack of capacity to manage initiatives resulting in compounding the allegations of embezzlement surrounding initiatives to ameliorate worsening conditions of citizens. For more than one year, it’s been one explanation after the other, with hardly any clear blueprint or timeline when the downward slide of the Nigerian economy will end. Every day, the hopelessness of the government gets more exposed.
For those of us who were associated with President Asiwaju Tinubu and campaigned for him to become President, it is a big disappointment. We did campaign for him with the conviction that he is a strategic politician who is an excellent talent hunter. The magic of how Lagos State was transformed under his leadership was our reference point. Sadly, more than one year at the helm of affairs as the President of Nigeria, it is a different Asiwaju Tinubu we have who is becoming an excellent hunter for political mercenaries. He has become more strategic in taking decision without looking at the problem, which could be why he promised Nigerian workers living wage, but his negotiation skills could only retain the old starvation minimum wage.
Terribly, President Asiwaju Tinubu has turned out to be a brash politician who is resistant to accountability and would destroy all the democratic structures that enforces accountability. If anyone doubts this, just check the state of the All Progressive Congress (APC) as a political party. When last did any of the organs meet? Being a brash politician, for the first time in the political history of Nigeria, we have a government that marginalises the people of North-Central. And with the way APC has been completely demobilised under his leadership, democracy is reduced to a mockery in Nigeria.
So far, President Asiwaju Tinubu is turning out to be the most inaccessible President in Nigeria’s political history. Even Gen. Sani Abacha wasn’t as much inaccessible. Beyond the APC, all the leading opposition parties, Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP), Labour Party (LP) and New Nigeria Peoples’ Party (NNPP) have been manipulated into leadership crisis. As it is, with the way things are happening, even the remote hope of using election to register citizens’ opposition against the reckless disposition of President Asiwaju Tinubu is fading away.
In addition, having reduced the National Assembly to a rubber stamp and made it incapable of checking the excesses of the executive, President Asiwaju Tinubu has crashed all available democratic structures capable of enabling Nigerians to influence decisions of his government. And in the face of all these, reckless illogical decisions such as expending more than N15 trillion Naira, more than half the annual budget of Nigeria is being expended on 700-kilometer Lagos – Calabar coastal road. Billions have been expended to acquire Presidential Yatch, Presidential Jet, luxury vehicles for political leaders, and construction of Vice-Presidential Lodge. But crisis of insecurity continues to ravage the nation. Crisis of education with more than 10 million out of school children in the North are never given any attention. Nigerian public hospitals have since degenerated from being consulting clinics to mortuaries.
Yet, President Asiwaju Tinubu and people around him want Nigerians to still regard him as a progressive politician. Given all these, if President Asiwaju Tinubu is a progressive politician, then former President Donald Trump of the United States of America is a revolutionary. Any attempt to claim that President Asiwaju Tinubu is an Awoist will make Chief Obafemi Awolowo to turn in his grave. Even the way President Asiwaju Tinubu is failing to directly engage the organisers of the scheduled August 1 protest and mobilising traditional rulers, religious leaders and even the military high command against the protest confirmed his new conservative and repressive disposition. This was the same Asiwaju Tinubu who was part of the protest movement that birth this democracy, but having won democracy and he is President today is opposed to protest and responding exactly in the same way military governments suppressed protests.
It must be recognised that attempts to suppress protest by even military governments have never succeeded. Often, after all the attempts to suppress protests, previous governments end up granting concessions, much more than what they would have ordinarily given. The reality is, defending government in the face of a scheduled popular protest such as the coming August 1 protest amount to defense of the indefensible. It is inconsequential and will be incapable of stopping the protest.
While acknowledging that one is not in any way related with the organisers of the August 1 protest, they must be commended for summoning the courage to mobilise Nigerians and confront the administration of President Asiwaju Tinubu to change the way it is managing affairs of the country. The government must recognise that within one year, it has created more problems for Nigerians so much so that the hunger in the land has threatened virtually all citizens. If President Asiwaju Tinubu want to recover whatever is left of his democratic credentials, he should listen to the cries of Nigerians and respond by way of review his policy decisions especially withdrawal of subsidy and floating the Naira exchange rate.
Certainly, these two policies can be managed better. The speed with which they are being implemented is the problem. Instead of anyone asking Nigerians to be patient, it is President Asiwaju Tinubu that must be asked to be patient and handle leadership responsibility with compassion. He must not be allowed to continue to handle things as if he is on a mission to wreck the economy. One can say, again without fear of contradiction that the scheduled August 1 protest promises to be the most popular protest in the country since independence. The challenge before every patriot is to identify with the laudable objectives of the protest and support the organisers to succeed in providing the needed leadership required to humble President Asiwaju Tinubu and his government to come back to democratic order. Even if President Asiwaju Tinubu is unable to recover his progressive credentials, we need him to be a democrat who can at least be accessible and accountable to democratic structures as provided in the 1999 Nigerian constitution as amended.
To that extent, all patriotic Nigerians must register disapproval about the politicisation of the military high command by drawing them into the plot to suppress the protest. By extension, the military high command must be told in unmistaken terms that protests are legitimate in a democracy. No one should attempt to criminalise legitimate initiatives of Nigerians to engage in any contestation with elected governments in Nigeria. For those who express the suspicion of political motives about the protest, they must be told very clearly, that protests by nature are political. The decisions that created the challenges, which makes the protest necessary, are political. The election of President Asiwaju Tinubu is political coming with so much political promises as contained in his Renewed Hope campaign document. If instead of producing Renewed Hope, his government is producing misery and hopelessness, citizens have every right to take up the political responsibility of contesting against his administration. In fact, faced with the reality confronting Nigerians, all genuine democrats must join the protest.
As a nation desirous of renegotiating our democracy, we must aspire to recruit the organisers of the protest to be part of the new political leadership of the country. If at all we are to succeed in rescuing Nigeria from the current travail of having people who operate more like Yahoo Yahoo fraudsters as our political leaders, we must aspire to recruit new sets of selfless leaders who will be organically connected and integrated with Nigerians in every respect. The August 1 protest provide a good opportunity to begin the process of recruiting new political leaders for Nigeria. Accordingly, therefore, we must appeal to the organisers of the protest to remain focused and vigilant and continue the path of honour by ignoring all the voices of doom who are only interested in subverting Nigerian democracy. In the same vein, the organisers must have a public face to serve as a rallying point for all Nigerians to relate and effectively participate in the protest.
Certainly, the future of Nigerian democracy is bright, and a new democratic Nigeria is possible!
