I will not be surprised if someone is asking: what’s the meaning of this headline? It’s not a puzzle. Here’s the fact: According to Dan Quayle, the 44th Vice President of the United States, sometimes, spelling and grammar don’t really matter in politics any more. Coinage matters. It’s neologism. For example, in 2015, Donald Trump, the former President of US, and presumptive Republican candidate in the Nov 2024 presidential election, told a South Carolina rally, “I know words…I have the best of words”. Ever since, Trump’s big, beautiful words have changed the way Americans talk. “You are fired”, “Fake News”, etc . They have all become informal, Trumpification style guide, sometimes a perfect fit in describing issues in our politics, especially about leaders whose attitude to governing and governance have wrecked lives and livelihoods .
To cut story short, the message in the headline by way of question is: Between Buhari and Tinubu, who is better or worse? I recall watching a film comedy, titled, “Horrible Bosses” that made a pure box office success the USA, in 2011. The plot was all about how some dreadful managers made their employees’ lives miserable. Imagine working with a boss from ‘hell’? The first boss in the film was a cruel executive who dangled a promotion in front of a subordinate as bait, only to snatch it away once his stupid demands have been met. The second boss was a mean cokehead who inherited the family business from his kindly deceased father. The victims in the movie are the workers, but they couldn’t quit. Reason: they needed the job, not that they liked the maltreatment meted out to them. In real life, horrible bosses are the stuff of tragedy, not really comedy. Whether in workplace or in a country, discontent runs deep when you have horrible bosses at the helm. As the film nears its end, people were meant to understand that that it’s not just insults that cause the greatest harm to the people, it’s sheer callousness of the bosses who expected their subordinates to be on duty 24/7 and to hit unrealistic deadlines with limited resources while the horrible bosses go on a binge, a revelry of some sort at the expense of public resources. They don’t care a hoot about the hardship being faced by the people. The message is simple: What leaders do while they are trying to get political power is not necessarily what they do after they have it. That, in itself, is lesson in power. Now, you get my drift.
Anyone with a fair understanding of the inner workings of power, its nature, the complexity of ambition, and the role that the greater good can play in the making of a leader, will have a nuanced picture of how Muhammadu Buhari ruined Nigeria’s economy, and under his watch, Nigeria embarked on a borrowing spree and insecurity assumed a life of its own that persists till today. And now, his successor from the same political party, has, in just ten months, become the undertaker of what remains of Nigeria. Who says horrible bosses are not the stuff of bad governance and the collateral damage it can bring on the people? Is Nigeria cursed or are we the cause?(apologies to Peter Obi). Why is every present President worse than the one he succeeded? Special Adviser to former President, Buhari, and my former boss, Mr Femi Adesina may be grinning, perhaps to hear that his ‘prophesy’ has been fulfilled in such a short time after they left office.
Recall that less than three weeks before they left office, Adesina told us that Nigerians would appreciate Buhari after he had left office. Adesina was almost swearing when he told an interviewer that “those who seek to rewrite history and remember Buhari’s administration for all the wrong reasons, the man will be remembered for many of his achievements by fair-minded Nigerians”. He claimed that Buhari had the interest of Nigerians at heart and worked for the betterment of of the country with care and kindness” Some revisionists, he argued “are busy, trying to obfuscate issues and obliterate the achievements of the Buhari government. But truth is like cork in water, the more you press it down, the more it stays afloat”. Many will definitely dispute Adesina’s claims. But when compared with the present occupant of that highly-prized office, Adesina may not be far from the truth. If Buhari was King Solomon, Tinubu is fittingly his ‘son’, Rehoboam. If Buhari was the instrument to cause us pain and chastised Nigerians with whips, Tinubu’s policies have increased our burdens, and literally speaking, whipping Nigerians with scorpions. You can feel the pain everywhere. Now, do the comparison yourself: between the two, who is worse? Simple: Whatever former President Muhammadu Buhari made worse for Nigeria and its citizens, Tinubu presidency is striving to make breathtakingly much worse in scope. If Buhari was, for want of a better word, a nepotistic Northern President, Tinubu is careening dangerously towards becoming, to paraphrase Olusegun Adeniyi, columnist and Chairman, Editorial Board, ThisDay newspapers, an ‘Oduduwa President’. The evidence is no longer in doubt. What is unfolding before us beats one’s imagination. Tinubu, in ten troubled months, has lived truly to his promise, that he would “continue where Buhari stopped”. He has even surpassed that. Nothing is the same in Nigeria anymore. The economy is gasping for breath. The nation’s currency, the naira, is now according to latest World Bank report, the fourth worst currency in the world. Are Nigerians better off now or worse than they were before May 29, 2023? Tinubu’s choice of his political appointments speaks volumes of where he wants to take Nigeria and Nigerians to. Is this President irreversibly headed to a defined course of action and bent on satisfying sectional agenda? That Buhari did almost the same thing is not an excuse to justify this pursuit of narrow, dimwitted provincial presidency? All of this has revealed both his real character and shortcomings. As historians will tell us, without a vision beyond a leader’s own selfish agenda and advancement, a leader is almost paralyzed once the goal had been achieved. Tinubu didn’t hide his life ambition to be President, and claimed it was his turn(‘Emilokan’) after Buhari. He got it. But he failed to heed the advice in that cliché that says, “Be careful what you wish for, because the gods may grant it”.
Some of us did warn in 2015 when Buhari embarked on this cynical, self-destructive ambition, but it was not heeded. And this is where he left Nigeria, in the worst rung of leadership scale, and the people in hunger and extreme poverty, a collapsed economy and misery ever imaginable. In the case of Tinubu, what we are witnessing is the temperament and behaviour of the most ambitious, cynical political player adept at amazing power that is at odds with federal character. Having acquired that power he so craved for, Tinubu feels, and perhaps truly so, that nothing is beyond him to get in Nigeria. But as some commentators have argued, one man’s ambition should not override the collective good and reputation of the country. But who is listening to wise counsel anymore in Nigeria?
Looking at the horrible bosses that have become the misfortune of Nigerians today, reminds us of the immutable law of Karma, and what former President Goodluck Jonathan said in his memoir, “MY TRANSITION HOURS”. He said, “if you embark on digging a hole for your enemy, you better make it shallow, because you might end up in the hole yourself”. He further asked, “how do you attract investors you already repelled through your utterances”? No unkind words were spared by the All Progressives Congress as opposition party then, to destroy the economy, and no slanderous language was spared against Jonathan and his wife, Dame Patience, by even reverred Nobel laureate Prof Wole Soyinka. For me, that was the first step downhill to the present sorry state of affairs in Nigeria. You see, oftentimes, Karma has a way of telling your side of the story better than you could. By the way, where is the Goebbels of that time, Chief Lai Mohammed? I like this cliché that says that the “most dangerous liars are those who think they are telling the truth”.
You see, the tongue has no bones, but it’s strong enough to break a heart. That’s what Lai Mohammed was paid to do against Jonathan’s government. It has returned to haunt the present administration.
I did make the point in this column, June 7, 2022, that in all his political life, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu has held before himself the image of a daring cowboy, cast in the mold of a lion. He sees himself as the man with the capacity to outrun the wild herd, riding in the dark of the night, knowing there were prairie dog holes all around him. This is a definition of a man to whom power means being able to bend people to his will, if possible. That is what may have driven him to fill key political appointments with people from his own ethnic group.
No fewer than 35 of Tinubu’s appointments are Yoruba. Consider these: Wale Edun, Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of Economy, Dr Olayemi Cardoso, CBN Governor, Kayode Egbetokun, Inspector General of Police, Zacch Adedeji, Chairman Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Adewale Adeniyi, Comptroller General , Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) , Dele Alake, Minister Solid Minerals, Femi Gbajabiamila, Chief of Staff to the President, Chief Adebayo Adelabu, Minister of Power, Olanipekun Olukayode, Chairman, EFCC, Chief Lateef Fagbemi, Attorney General and Minister of Justice. Other key ministers from the President’s South West and part of Yoruba North Central are: Gboyega Oyetola, Minister, Marine and Blue Economy, and Dr Bosun, Minister of Communication, Innovation and Digital Economy, Mr Gbenga Alade, MD; AMCON. Chief Bisi Akande family has been gifted with three appointments, two for his daughters, and one for his son in-law. Buhari did same thing, but President Tinubu has achieved a new record- high in favouring his own friends and region. Who says Nigerian politics is not a fun to follow? I don’t think we have had it this bad since this present dispensation. Is there an unfolding agenda that we don’t know yet? Or is this the emergence of an imperial president who can do no wrong? To be honest, I don’t think many Yoruba support this parochial agenda, and some of them have spoken out against the nature of these appointments. I suspect in the months ahead that more of Tinubu’s kinsmen in critical sectors of the economy are coming. Watch out! This will surpass the outrage that greeted Buhari’s northern appointments in his 8 years in office as President. Altogether, it bears repeating that Tinubu in ten months in office has sacrificed national interest on the altar of sectional interests.
More than any thing else, our president has revealed to us what he wanted to do with the office all along. But he needs reminding that the essence of Presidential power, according to Grant McConnel, the author of “The Modern Presidency”, is the ability to appeal to both large and wide different constituencies at the same time. Every section of the country should receive equal treatment. For this reason Grant warns that any elected President who ignores this timely advice risks running aground in the office. While it is hard to exonerate Buhari from the mess Nigeria is now, both in economic and security areas, but it harder not to blame Tinubu for making things worse than he met them. He can still make amends. That’s one of the lessons in power. Perhaps unknown to Tinubu and his close aides, the President could be harming himself politically if he continues in this way. And here is the message: the true nature of power may remain elusive to him if he continues to rely on this regional political calculation. He needs to realise that no leader can be great who does not know how to use power for great purposes.