ECONOMY: When Will President Tinubu Sing A New Song ? | By Taiwo Adisa

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu was on Tuesday represented at the 17th annual Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria Banking and Financial Conference held in Lagos by Vice President Kashim Shettima. The headline of the story that came out of that event, as reported in the Nigerian Tribune, reads: “We’ve taken courageous steps to reform economic environment.”

In the body of the story, Tinubu, through his vice president, highlighted what he meant by the “bold steps” being undertaken to reform the economy. The president said: “Though painful in the short term, the removal of fuel subsidies is designed to free up budgetary resources for critical investments in infrastructure and social services, frequent adjustment of the monetary policy rate, a move aimed at curbing inflation and fostering a more market-oriented exchange rate system.

“We are expanding broadband penetration and encouraging the growth of tech startups through initiatives such as the Digital Nigeria programme. For example, we currently train three million Nigerian youths in digital technology and essential skills and then deploy them to innovation hubs. These efforts are designed to create jobs, increase productivity, and make financial services more accessible to Nigerians in all corners of the country. It is essential to state that we are committed to achieving a 70% digital literacy level by 2027 through innovative approaches in delivering initiatives, continuous collaborations, and stakeholder engagement.”

Many would say those words are similar to what we’ve heard before. However, some would have wanted the president to touch base with the streets upon his return from China. He led the streets for years. He spoke their language when jeun soke was the popular lingo. Is the president abandoning his true self? Some would ask.

I’ve quoted the president’s speech at the CIBN programme extensively to showcase what is fast looking like a dialogue of the deaf between the streets of Nigeria and their leaders. Some people spoke a while ago, shouting ebi n pawa (we are hungry). The people are still hopeful the Ifa and Opele of the president will say something good, but what they are hearing about broadband expansion or bold reforms in the economy is not close. Surely the hungry man would find it difficult to understand the drive of Mr President and no matter how nice the digital drive sounds, the words will only enter the ears of a hungry man through his right and disappear through the left. Even as the government is yet to address how it intends to end hunger, the NNPCL added another sorrow with the increment in the pump price of petrol. As we speak, the corporation has again stopped the flow of fuel and queues have resurfaced. The product is expensive, it is also scarce. The NNPC is insulting us to our face. Even those who have the money to buy have to be humbled to spend hours in the filling stations.

As the Tinubu message dropped from Shettima’s lips, Nigerians were wondering what was amiss. Here is a president who has before him the case of an NNPCL, which suddenly jerked up fuel prices without any concrete explanation, save for the confusion it orchestrated in the process. Here is a president who should have questions for the same NNPC about why it has failed to actualise the purchase of fuel from the Dangote refinery, one week after the products were ready for lifting. And here is a president whose national oil giant has continued to favour massive fuel importation and payment of fuel subsidy instead of supporting local refining of petrol and the elimination of all the fraud associated with subsidy. The President was away when NNPCL inflicted yet another fuel price increase on the nation. The uninitiated believed he wasn’t aware, but he had shut down such thoughts when he told Nigerians in China “Can we help it?”

It must be distressing to the uninitiated who believed that once President Tinubu landed in the country, he would hear something different, maybe something to soothe the hurting nerves. But the President is already proving to be a different person from who he was when he heard and spoke the language of the streets and when he knew that fuel subsidy was a scam that it is.

Looking at the unfolding scenario between the street and President Tinubu, it appears the circumstances painted by WB Yeats in The Second Coming is afoot. Yeats talked about the Falcon not hearing the falconer/Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold…I pray the street and the Villa don’t get anywhere close to the scenes painted in the last part of WB Yeats’ poem, which informed the writing of another popular novel by our own Prof Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart.

But some warning shots are already oozing out of the nozzles as the Aare Ona Kakanfo of Yorubaland (Generalissimo of Yoruba), Iba Gani Adams, last week fired some warning signals.

In an open letter to the president, Adams said the poverty network in the land was expanding. He said: “President Bola Tinubu, Time is Going. We have no regret that we were created to inhabit this geographical space in the West African axis of the African continent. Obviously, past leaders, since 1960, disappointed Nigerians with the way Nigeria and Nigerians were badly led and resources selfishly managed.

“When you came with the ‘Emilokan’ coinage…many Nigerians were persuaded that…you will perform better than Muhammadu Buhari. On May 29, 2023, the Naira to a Dollar was less than N740. Today, it is more than N1,600.”

“From the North to the South, East to the West, the rate at which Nigerians are being abducted… It was as if these bloodthirsty maniacs have just been unleashed on Nigerians from the hottest part of hell.”

He asked the president to reconsider the incessant increase in fuel price, adding that the increment in fuel price from less than N200 to over N1000 per litre, and the devaluation of the Naira at the same time were draconian policies Nigerians are finding difficult to cope with.

Adam’s advice to the government may indeed have unruffled feathers here and there, especially among the class of Yoruba, who believe that the government of Tinubu must be jealously guided like the raw egg, but I am with Adams on this front. The Yoruba are known for saying the truth, no matter whose ox is gored. They did it to Obasanjo. They did so to the military. General Sani Abacha’s government was not spared even when it had a Yoruba son, Oladipo Diya, as number two.

If the Yoruba should do anything other than tell the truth to the incumbent government, the whole basis of their activism all these years would have been vanquished.

But as much as we know, Tinubu is not a wicked human being. Not a few persons around can testify to his goodwill and disposition for shared prosperity. But the advertised reforms are not working. If the iron bender keeps hitting the iron on one spot, it means he intends to get something out of it. The people are crying about being suffocated by the IMF/World Bank-designed reforms. They are saying the same thing every day. It is not about partisan politics. It’s about their reality. Tinubu has promised Eldorado after the pain. They heard similar lines from Generals Ibrahim Babangida, Abacha, and Muhammadu Buhari. None of the orange trees nurtured by these men yielded sweet fruits at the end of their years. The sad thing about it all is that those who prodded them to whip the citizens with those policies -the IMF and the World Bank never apologised for their failures.

If we may ask, what happened to Buhari’s economic programme, ERGP? What happened to SAP and all sorts they had foisted on us through the different governments? The realisation has to come from within; only Nigerians can build Nigeria. The late Prof Sam Aluko told Babangida, he didn’t listen. Thereafter, those who claimed there was no alternative to SAP have since moved on to other acronyms. If we don’t intend to continue to run our country like outposts of some foreign nations, the president needs to sing a different song.