President Bola Ahmed Tinubu told a story about meeting “a friend who used to use five Rolls Royce, but I saw him driving a Honda Accord. When I asked him what the matter was, he told me that ‘I have made the country very hot for everybody,’ and I laughed and said that the country would no more sponsor freeloading on anyone again.”
A tall tale, that must be, because the same president had the country purchase brand-new aircraft, a brand-new yacht, and a brand-new Cadillac Escalade for him to add to his fleet of official vehicles. He also singlehandedly awarded a mind-boggling N15.6 trillion contract to his associate, the Paris-based Lebanese businessman Gilbert Chagoury.
Despite his apparent determination to undermine democracy by any means possible, some people still believe in the country’s ‘elected’ president, especially the many power- and money-hungry Northerners who would do anything to achieve their goals. These people support him and his avowed desire to sideline the region from the nation’s development. The corrupted ‘rubber-stamp’ National Assembly (NASS) is not helping matters, as it pliantly does whatever the president wants.
It is now becoming clearer why the president and his crowd of loyalists are confident about rigging the 2027 general elections. The president and his ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) have successfully factionalized the two leading opposition parties, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Labour Party (LP), into two factions each. The factions recognized by the courts to run the affairs of these parties are appendages of the presidency.
A trending video clip from ‘The Honest Bunch,’ aired by ‘@glitchafricastudios,’ which refers to itself as ‘Home Of Africa’s Most Viral Podcasts,’ claimed that the two opposition parties were all serving the APC.
According to the unnamed speaker in the video: “The current PDP is in the pocket of Nyson Wike at the national level. The current PDP Chairman goes to serve tea in Femi Gbajabiamila’s house, the Chief of Staff to the President. While the National Chairman is serving tea, the National Secretary, Sam Anyanwu, brings kilishi from the kitchen. They eat. They are the people who are in charge of the PDP. They are Tinubu moles. Just like Julius Abure in the Labour Party, he is an APC mole.
“That is why none of them is challenging the system. Right now, there is no opposition in the country. There is no opposition to the Tinubu government. That is why there is practically nothing Tinubu wants to do that he does not do. They just approved a $2.2 billion loan. Where are the PDP lawmakers? Where are the Labour Party lawmakers? Where are the other political parties in the NASS? They have not opposed one thing of this government.”
Meanwhile, the president continues with his so-called reforms, which have turned out to be nothing but unproductive, unnecessary, poverty- and hunger-inducing, and corruption-driven policies meant to keep the commonwealth at the disposal of Tinubu and a select few in government. This is despite the people’s strenuous and often fatal opposition to these reforms, as the democrat-turned-dictator president knows that the NASS will always be at his beck and call. Good or bad (bad most of the time), the NASS will always do his bidding.
Some of these reforms include the removal of fuel subsidies, which led to the price of fuel skyrocketing from N195 to N1,000 per liter; currency devaluation, with the naira plummeting to N1,750/$ from N460/$; and electricity tariffs, forcing many people into the so-called ‘Band A’ category with higher tariffs but less than seven hours of electricity per day—far from the promised 20 hours. On food security, a bag of rice jumped from N30,000 to N130,000.
The president also introduced reforms in the education sector, making Unity Colleges unaffordable for most parents due to exorbitant fees. Reforms in the aviation sector have made local flights as expensive as international ones. Customs and Excise reforms have led to astronomical rises in import duties, sometimes surpassing the value of the imported goods. Most recently, the president introduced a contentious tax reform that surreptitiously includes the government as a beneficiary of wealth left by deceased individuals. His company, Alpha Beta, has been handling tax collection in Lagos State since his tenure as the state’s first civilian governor in the current (4th) Republic.
Just this week, the Nigerian president was embarrassingly declared the third most corrupt leader in the world on the 2024 list of the most corrupt individuals compiled by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), an international corruption and criminal investigation organization.
The OCCRP claimed it had conducted polls worldwide to identify those primarily responsible for bribery, injustice, and the increasing poverty and hunger in their countries. Former Indonesian president Joko Widodo came second, while President William Ruto of Kenya topped the list as the most corrupt person in 2024.
This backward compliment to the Nigerian leader is no surprise to many, least of all Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the former Vice President of Nigeria. Alhaji Atiku, the PDP presidential candidate in the 2023 election, repeatedly accused Tinubu of being a drug pusher—an allegation echoed by the then-PDP spokesman, Mr. Daniel Bwala, who now serves as one of Tinubu’s spokesmen.
Northern female politician Hajiya Naja’atu Mohammed has also spoken publicly about Tinubu’s lack of vision, particularly for the North, citing insecurity, lack of electricity, poor education, and excruciating poverty. Similarly, Dr. Garus Gololo, an APC stalwart from Nasarawa State, accused Tinubu of being undemocratic and using state apparatus to achieve his goals.
Allegations by the Nigerien military leader, General Abdourahamane Tchiani, that Tinubu received funds from France to host military bases in Northern Nigeria only added to the controversy. Western countries have begun issuing travel advisories, warning of potential unrest in Nigeria.
While Tinubu’s PR machinery works overtime to paint his administration positively, the glaring poverty and hunger among the populace tell a different story. Vanity will not save anyone in the end, and it is a reminder that our actions, not our possessions, define our legacy.
May God guide us away from the temptations of this world and toward the path of righteousness.
Labaran wrote from Katsina.
