President Tinubu may have stumbled on a sustaining logic and viable mission for his political future. Prior to last fortnight, I was among those who were doubting what narrative or political argument could sustain Mr. Tinubu’s interest in a 2027 run. Now, there seems to be something in the works. It is the fickle and belated argument that Nigerians had lived a fake life of petro consumerism before last May’s removal of petroleum subsidy. Prior to then, we all had lived a ‘fake life’ of prodigal waste.
We were splurging on our oil wealth through unlimited burning of cheap fuel. We were owning and driving fleets of multiple cars. We were often going to nowhere in particular in these cars. Those with no cars or rickshaws were using cheap gasoline to powered noisy ‘I pass my Neighbour’ generators to power homes, run tiny businesses or just pollute the air in order to charge their phones for gossiping on social media.
In other cases, we were watching helplessly as greedy smugglers trucked loads of cheap gasoline across the borders and hauling in stashes of cheap cash. Oil oligarchs were fleecing the state through opaque and dubious oil subsidy scams. The annual national budget was being manipulated and padded to provide and pay for dubious subsidy provisions.
Then came a savior, so the new narrative goes. On May 29th 2023, an elected messiah strolled in with a message of salvation casually delivered: “oil subsidy is gone!”. Mr. Tinubu casually commanded an end to the bazaar of fake life. No systematic thinking followed the policy jolt. No measures to protect us from this casual cruelty. Only hints from the IMF suggested an informed policy. But the public cruelty was unmistakable, total and instant. The mass suffering was undisguised. Living costs shot through the roof. Transportation costs sent every other cost upwards till now. As it were, the whole society was being compelled to do penance for a past life of wasteful oil consumption. A fake and indulgent past life was bound to end as a new sheriff swept into town. This seems to be the new narrative.
This thoughtless policy announcement is now being painted as a messianic intervention of epic proportions. Tinubu has come to save us from our past prodigality. What has so far been an accidental presidency is now being rebranded into a salvation mission. A squad of clueless political jobbers hurriedly assembled as a government is now being cast as an army of reformers out to save an economy and punish a wasteful society for its past sins. A basically clueless president now wants to be greeted as a crusading messianic figure who came to end a culture of fake wasteful consumption of the nation’s oil resources in the form of cheap gasoline.
Tinubu was speaking recently through a surrogate at the graduation ceremony of a University in Kwara state. Nigerians are enamored of fake things, quacks and false prophets and politicians that parade fake credentials and false promises.
The pronouncement went viral. In a nation that is instinctively religious in its understanding of public issues, the accusation of a past fake life of unthinking consumption caught on. Nigerians had sinned in the oast and are now paying for their past sins. The president was accusing the Nigerian populace of the sin of past gluttony and waste. The president is now a messiah with an implicit mandate to end the fake life and replace it with one of prudence and frugality. The higher pump peroces and mass pauperization are aspects of the penance that we all have to poay for our past sins. The removal of oil subsidy is now presented as a much deserved act of expiation for past sins. Our people are being punished to do penance for a past life of prodigal waste and reckless indulgence.
To the best of my knowledge, the Tinubu presidency has so far not come up with a strong enough argument that could necessitate a 2027 run for a second term. Yet the machinery for a second term run is everywhere in evidence. Pressure groups are springinh up in all corners of the nation. Carefully nominated spokespersons are making coordinated noises. Yet, the public has not quite seen in the episodic style of governance anything that should support lacks an argument. Its programs lack a consistency. It’s achievement remain scanty and eclectic. It has not articulated a systematic programme that could sustain government for four years. And yet, the administration is nearly halfway through its tenure. How to find justification for the remaining time and onwards to 2027 remains the lingering political problem of the administration. Therefore, stumbling on this messianic streak could be a saving grace. Clearly, the magnitude of national problems that remain unaddressed is a mountain. It is easier to replace the multitude of probems with a single messianic salvation mission.
Couched in terms of saving us all from a sinful fake life, the mandate of the Tinubu presidency becomes both a moral and economic crusade. Coupled with foreign exchange and other economic policy crises, the fuel subsidy removal salvation mandate can stand as a national economic reform measure. But taken together, their negative impacts cannot market them politically for another presidential term. But dressed in moral garb, a mission to encourage an end to a fake life could pass for a crusade for a review of our moral values.
Tinubu wants to migrate from an economic reformer to a moral crusader for a new economic order. But in order to make that somersault, Mr. Tinubu will need a total makeover. He needs to revamp and come clean on his personal credentials. He needs to rejig his team by replacing fellow travelers and debt collectors with technocrats. He needs to revise his priorities and revise or even review the agenda of his creaky party.
Those expensive real estate renovations in his previous budgets need urgent review. Those new executive jets, fleets of SUVs and those lengthy motorcades and yachts etc do not quite fit into any reformist moral agenda. You need to save yourself before setting out to save others! The question remains this: does Mr. Tinubu have the moral credentials to navigate Nigeria from an assumed sinful past?
It is politically unwise in any case for a leader to set himself above the people. It is erroneous to posit the people as sinners and the leader as a saint. The consumption of subsidized petroleum products is the result of past government policies. Tinubu was here with us through the various dispensations that instituted the subsidized petrol prizes. He and his numerous businesses was a beneficiary of the subsidized prices. It is doubtful whether he and his relations and associates were totally innocent of the wheeling and dealing in petroleum products imports that sustained the subsidy regime.
The most important requirement of credible political leadership is to rise above a messianic posturing and immerse oneself in the crises and problems in which the people find themselves. The challenge of credible political leadership is to face the problems of a tenure and seek to resolve them by uplifting the people from the challenges that torment them. To distance oneself from the challenges and posit oneself above the people is false consciousness which can at best convert the leader into an aloof and distant messianic figure far removed from the realities that define general social existence.
If 2027 is the issue on hand, then the Tinubu government must face up to the challenge of that our current problems are largely the result of both its inherited and self-created policy quagmire. Tinubu created the subsidy removal and its serial conseqences. He created the consequences of the foreign exchange merger. He imposed the myriad taxes, levies, tariffs, charges that have joiied forces to make life unlivable for most Nigerians. Hunger became a national feature under his watch just as suicide became an option for a lot of Nigerians seeking to escape from the harrowing realities of the present time.
The road to escape from these consequences of present day policies should be the basis of whatever new thinking the president and his team want to advance for a possible 2027 run. Better solutions to the problems already created by the Tinubu government should be the basis of any credible opposition to the Tinubu incumbency.
There is no need to negatively brand all Nigerians or consign us all into a tribe of sinners just to find a narrative to ennoble Mr. Tinubu’s rudderless stewardship find an excuse for its elongation. We are already suffering enough of the consequences of bad governance. There is no need to call us names, insult us further or, for that matter, burden us with guilt just to sit comfortably on its bruised backs.