By Nik Ogbulie
Indications that President Bola Tinubu will run a very bogus Presidency was rife from day one. The reason is that he has never hidden the fact that he lives like an emperor.
His antecedents portend a life of “living it full” because he has been very rich and never hid it. He wanted the world to know he was rich and never pretended to compromise his flamboyant lifestyle in the face of flowing national economic disaster. The second is that he has succeeded in installing a legislature that is largely compromised and full of the kind of backlog that has a mix-grill of unimpressive characters that came into power very unqualified.
The third reason is the fact that the last election dealt a dastardly blow on the fabric of Nigeria’s unity, sensitivity and intellectualism, to the extent that what even comes from the ill-prepared leading political party is legion. The worst is that the actions and reactions of the current Nigerian leadership look so much admired by a section of Nigerians who have since 65 years opposed any government programme no matter how good such policy looked, as if they were cheated. This now creates a divide where we are faced with the choice of “we and them”, where even those standing on the side of “we” are also affected by the very poor actions of government they are unconventional dying for.
At the end of the day, who is fulling who? Nigerians do not care how their lives are affected by decisions of government provided such decisions are taken by their brothers whose entire family lives overseas. When the issue of a presidential yatch was muted, a very knowledgeable friend told me that presidents all over the world have yatch and that’s the trend. He went further to tell me that Buhari rejected it because he was busy with his cattle and ginger farming and did not know any form of luxury before becoming a president.
But the fact is that between Bola Tinubu and Buhari stands a huge trough or a conflict where modernism and corruption become difficult to interpret. They are two personalities who have chosen a lifestyle of different statures which end up with the same meaning; whether Yatch or Ruga, they are same developments that serve personal interests with overriding consequences on the fabrics of Nigerian economy.
The expose by Senator Ali Ndume last week was an indication of a huge ‘state capture’, where those who have been entrusted with the growth of the Nigerian nation have conspired to hold down on all the fabrics of national development, no matter the state of the economy. Senator Ndume 5told Nigerians that the yatch has been delivered already, so those who hold contrary opinion can go to hell. What a mess? Maybe, the government has many more questions to answer because Nigerians will like to know why we can secure such procurement credit when we have not been able to secure credit lines for some more important national assets like the refineries and power or other investments on health and education.When one looks at the national revenue, it looks as if those who are positioning the procurement of such “still assets” are very far from any thought that can renew our economy in anyway. For a country that is already running a huge budget deficit under a continuous borrowing streak, there is the belief that there was no real manifesto in place to guide them. Many have started to think that the APC as a political party doesn’t have a programme of activity other than what Buhari left on his desk before leaving.
If they do, they would have known that it is not possible that the government can run this economy from a reverse perspective or from a kitchen cabinet whose ideas are nothing more than a “trial and error” pattern. This indicates why the two major policy objectives pronounced early in the life of the administration have failed and have been reversed.
For instance, if subsidy has really gone as announced by the President, why are we still battling with price differentials in the market and if they have religiously began to implement total deregulation in the economy , why did they borrow 1.5 billion dollars for the forex market..to close the gap? As a matter of fact, the economy is not healthy enough to accept a luxury called yatching just like why Ruga. The revenue situation is so bad that it would be better to say Nigeria has started running a “Debt Economy” where all major developments are predicated on borrowed assets from either the multilateral institutions or the domestic economy, most of which multiplier effects on the local economy are the reasons why all the growth indicators like standard of living, unemployment, rates, security, capacity utilisation, are pointing South.It looks so funny to mortgage the only visible and major sustainable revenue source, and the country’s biggest asset has been collaterized for five years because of lifestyle asset for people whose duties in the next five years, appear so tankanterous that they may not need the luxury of a yatch unless something is wrong with their brain.
If Nigeria’s dividend in the next five years from NLNG becomes the collateral for a mere yatch, that is enough signal not to consider the entire bunch for re-election in 2027. But we can say this to a country whose entire population reason towards same direction and think like a people, not a nation whose 133 million people are hungry while only the remains 67 million can feed themselves three times a day, or a nation who wants their tribesmen to come into a boat without a pad, but still feel cool. This is our predicament. Yatch or no Yatch, the devisive tendencies in our expenditure management have been identified, just like the Ruga controversy was a pointer that there was no solution in sight to our local security issues. Unfortunately, in all these, those we elected to improve our state as a people are the people smuggling ants into our governance.
