By Alli Smarts
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu took over the reins of office over one year ago at a most critical juncture of our national life.
Economy was in a total shambles; state of infrastructure near comatose; corruption at an all-time high; ethnoreligious strifes, banditry and insecurity rife in ways never thought possible.
For someone who said he had prepared all his lifetime to lead the nation with the most populous black race on the planet; it was only expected that he would, in a manner of speaking, have a real handle on most, if not all the problems besetting the beleaguered nation and voila, just wave his magic wand and transport us all to El Dorado!
But alas what a pipedream that was!
A post mortem of the past 15 months shows that Nigerians, just as Davido, the OBO music crooner sang in one of his now famous vinyl ‘Dem go feel am’ are really feeling the bitterpilll of the Tinubunomics in every areas of their lives.
To say the obvious is to say there is acute hunger in the land. Common staple foods such as rice, beans, yam, plantain, and wait for this: even ordinary garri, have all become priced out of the reach of the common man on the street.
As at the time of penning this piece a 50kg bag of rice was selling at between N87K to N85K in some markets and chain stores in parts of Lagos. A 50kg bag of sweet honey beans (Oloyin), brown and white beans, sold at a staggering amount of between N175K, N160K and N135K respectively, with just an inconsequential reduction of few Naira notes here and there when compared to last July.
If you add the price of a tuber of yam sold in the last few months between N6K, N8K to N10K and a bag of yam flour otherwise known as amala laafun among the Yorubas, sold as costly as N300K, you can then understand the enormity of the food crisis at hand.
Don’t even go mentioning the price of bread, eggs and beverages: these are top tier menus for the exclusive preserves of the bourgeois class! What about the condiments for soup such as peppers, tomatoes, beef and fish? I can tell you without mincing words that you just cannot can! No capping! Most people these days eat swallows with most of all the usual ensembles mentioned above conspicuously missing or used sparingly. It’s that bad!
In fact, to borrow the street lingo, everywhere red and everybody dey pepper Allah Walahi!
Granted that the Tinubu administration has taken some far-reaching decisions such as the removal of subsidy on all petroleum products, refloating of the Naira, approval of the N70K national minimum wage, disbursement of students’ loans, to mention just a few; unfortunately these measures haven’t translated to the much desired gains anticipated as they’re yet to put food on the table of the masses.
The degree of hunger pangs being felt by the populace came to the fore some days back when some people embarked on protest matches across the states of the federation including the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, in what the organisers tagged 10 days of rage to #endbadgovernance#
In some parts of northern states the protesting youths carried out arson attacks, looted shops and confronted law enforcement agencies, with the fiasco leading to loss of lives and property roughly estimated at a whooping N500billion by the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Doris Nkiruka Uzoka-Anite, during an interactive session with newsmen in Abuja.
Can we then justify the outcome of the violent protests? Of course, no sane person will do that just as no sensible government will sit idly by and watch the cherished investments of the state being maliciously destroyed by a mob action.
That said, Tinubu as the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Federal Republic of Nigeria has a constitutional mandate to not only serve Nigerians, but must be seen to be doing so without any fear or favour.
The same thing applies to the rest of the cabinet members working in the corridors of power. Methinks they need to be reminded that they’re not just occupying their current positions strictly because of political patronage. No. Just like Mr. President, their unalloyed loyalty should be and must be for the rest of Nigerians first before any other consideration.
Whilst one can readily single out some of the serving ministers like Nyesom Wike, David Umahi, and a few others dutifully playing their parts in the scheme of things, a good number of them are yet to prove their worth and mettle.
Majority of the other ministers score very low as far as competence and performance quotients go. The indices are not favourable at all. Most of these ministers must be shown the way out, and very quick too!
It’s a good thing that the ministers signed a performance bond with the President Tinubu and it is therefore expedient that those found wanting as far their key performance index shows should be shown the way out.
President Tinubu, regardless of other consideration, must ensure that all the excess luggages in his cabinet must be dropped, for as Niccolo Machiavelli noted in his now famous treatise on leadership, The Prince: The Philosophy of Niccolo Machiavelli, “The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.”
- Alli Smarts, a public affairs commentator writes from Lagos