Tinubu entered empty and has remained empty - By Abraham Ogbodoh

By Abraham Ogbodoh

We love escapism in this country. We create conversations to beat about the bush and avoid the main point. We knew where we were as a country after Buhari before the force majure called Bola Ahmed Tinubu happened. A force majure because his emergence seemed clearly superior to our control. There was just nothing we could do to stop him.

On his own, he didn’t have the grace to understand that, given where we were after Buhari, the Presidency was a much more serious business than gbajue or street gangsterism.

I can go ahead and say if Tinubu had stepped into the Presidency on May 29 with a better acumen than just street wisdom and naked ambition, the discussions about the circumstances of his emergence would not be this acrimonious. He came in vacuous and he is still empty doing most things on the probability of hitting the bull’s eye. There is no clear scientific thinking or the intentional application of proven methods and rules of engagement to achieve standard goals. Policies and appointments into government agencies are based on instincts and at best very parochial considerations that have nothing to do with nation building. The man just want to be seen as saying or doing something to remind Nigerians that the Presidency is not vacant after all.

With the evidence so far, he is not only a continuation but a consolidation of the Buhari rudderless power adventure. Buhari came in 2015 recalling Cousins and age-long acquaintances from redundancy to fix challenges that require contemporary skills and awareness. After eight years of riding uphill with faulty engine and tyres and without a supporting back shaft, the country rolled back beyond the starting point in 1960.

Tinubu has come in 2023 thinking factors can be forced without control in dynamics to achieve results. But good a thing, he is unraveling fast and people who didn’t know him too well are getting to know better that the name Jagagban is just a loud appellation that holds little content. The face behind the mask lacks the creativity to combine factors to create value without nuisance.

His achievements as Governor of Lagos State which somehow encouraged his ambition for the presidency were a media orchestration. And that is because not too many people outside Lagos understands Lagos. Truth is that the so-called excellence in Lagos State is almost entirely in the private sector. The public sector only hides under the private sector to seek validation and nothing more. And so, any average Governor can use private sector performance to shine in Lagos.

Beginning from 1999, Lagos State has operated one of the most mediocre and opaque public administrations in the country. The state, the smallest in the country in terms of land mass, has an oversize resource base that is locked up in the house of one man who decides what percentage of it can flow out for public good. Foe example, Lagos State with its small size, has the worst internal road network in the country. Many of the big poster projects you hear about and see in the state are also profit driven to feed the creed of one man. Fashola and Ambode were more constrained than they were free to introduce patches of brilliance that are traceable to them.

In essence, I am saying the Tinubu’s success story in Lagos is a fallacy and shouldn’t have been used as a basis to encourage his presidential ambition. No doubt, he was a successful tax master in Lagos. We can solely give that to him. Outside that, nothing else counted for him. And he had actually entered Abuja on May 29 this year hoping to replicate that the Lagos tax wonders at the national level. In real sense, it is the only way to explain why a Nigerian President would, on inauguration day, drift offscript to announce the removal of fuel subsidy just like that. And since he was able to become President in spite of Nigerians, sovereignty had been consolidated in him. The peoples of Nigeria have become subordinated and like a drunken Latin American dictator, Tinubu can now do and undo and nothing will happen. He is fixated on the wrong macroeconomic notions. He thinks taxation is an end in itself and not a means of controlling variables to achieve wider economic purpose. Anyway, everything is within Tinubunomics where more money does what money cannot do!

Again, without putting shock absorbers in place, he floated the naira in a consolidated exchange rate. He looked right, left and right again and seeing no threat coming from either direction, he then hit triumphantly on his chest and proclaimed a new dawn for the nation.

That is where we are today with a man who has no other claim to power than the feeling that it is his turn to rule over 200 million people.