It is two years and two weeks since President Bola Ahmed Tinubu took over power from former President Muhammadu Buhari. His four year tenure started 29 May 2023. Until Buhari declared 12 June Democracy Day in June 2018, as part of his strategy to win a second term, ahead of the 2019 elections, 29 May used to declared Democracy Day to mark the anniversary of the current civilian rule in Nigeria.
To mark the occasion this year, the President abandoned the traditional national broadcast to the nation and decided to address us through the National Assembly where his cronies hold court. This may presage the plan by the National Assembly to enact a law for future Presidents to be inaugurated within the precinct of the National Assembly rather than the traditional Eagle Square, Abuja. The Senate leader, Opeyemi Michael Bamidele has said that much. Regardless, where the President is sworn in or stands to make his speech on ‘Democracy Day’ is irrelevant to good governance and the wellbeing of Nigerians.
The President’s speech was a potpourri of the good and the not-so-good; the truths and the half truths; the presidential and the unpresidential. Being a midterm address to the nation, it was short on addressing the myriad challenges facing the nation today. I will come to that shortly.
The only aspect of the President’s speech that has gone down well with most Nigerians is the recognition accorded many known activists who fought against military dictatorship. It was good that many of the long forgotten heroes of the struggle were eventually honoured, most posthumously though.
But in a way their recognitions were an oxymoron of some sort. See this: these heroes fought for democracy but till date we are yet to witness true democracy. A few of those honoured who are still alive today have turned themselves into enemies of the ideals of democracy. Worse, the government of the day preaches several verses of democracy but practices the exact opposite.
As a young journalist in the early 1990s, I participated in and covered some of the events that culminated to what Nigerians know as 12 June today. My editor, the late Godwin Agbroko, was locked up in underground cell by the Secret Service for months during that dark era. Most of the journalists recognized in the President’s speech put their lives on the line for Nigeria. But what we are witnessing today is very far from the ideals we fought for. It looks as if we were only fighting for a change of clothes from khaki to agbada.
Intolerance of others’ views is still rife. Suppression of negative happenings in government is the in thing; and subtle state sponsored suppression of opposition is not uncommon. Corruption is so entrenched so much so that those who elect to live decently are frustrated by the system; and a stand offish attitude to rulership has been elevated to statecraft. It is not that the media has been muzzled by the state but that it has been so compromised that it is difficult to find out what is truly happening in governments at both the federal and state levels.
It does appear that under this administration, you can get away with anything so long as you can show that you are a card carrying member of the ruling party, the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Though the President said in his speech that he would be the last to go for a one party state, his government is doing everything possible to ensure that opposition parties are tamed and ineffective. The biggest opposition party, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), is all but defeated by the antics of the minister of the federal capital territory. Its four limbs have been removed, yet its traducers are not done. The government is also behind the thorns in the Labour Party (LP). It is still unthinkable in government circles that a Peter Obi used this platform to defeat the President in Lagos, in Abuja and in Wike’s Rivers State during the 2023 election. For this last location, forget the amateurish doctoring of the votes. As far as this government is concerned, Obi should find no platform to challenge the incumbent in the next general elections.
The government is also using the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), to literally force opposition leaders to decamp to the ruling party. A case in point is the capitulation of Ifeanyi Okowa, former Governor of Delta State and former vice presidential candidate of PDP in the last election. Okowa did not only decamp to APC, he made sure that the government he helped install moved with him to a strange party as part of the conditions to get him off the hook for allegedly stealing state funds.
Since he moved to APC, no one has heard of his case with EFCC again. So, the clear signal from the ruling party is that no matter how unclean you are, once you move over to APC, your sins are washed away. This is not the way to build democratic institutions or a nation for that matter.
Today, there is only one dominant political party; all others are Lilliputians. Put together, they will not be able to pose any threat to the ruling party. That is what the President wants so that come 2027, it will be clear that he won the election squarely.
The two aspects that concern all Nigerians were lightly addressed by the President in his speech. These are the economy and security. Economically, the country has changed from what it used to be two years ago; no thanks to the government policy or lack of it. Nothing that was promised during the electioneering campaign has worked. Unemployment rates are higher, inflation rate has risen, disposable incomes of many have dropped, interest rates are rising, productivity has fallen, taxes have gone up, power outages have increased, domestic and foreign borrowings are rising, foreign direct investments come in trickle, the national currency has plummeted but the governments and the super rich are making much more money than ever; tons of money. And they are the only people seeing and singing the praises of economic miracles of this government yet the people are scratching their heads about miraculous mirages.
Unsurprisingly, the government has mastered the art of spinning positive stories about a terrible economic situation. An arrogant minister would tell you that this government has taste to explain away the obviously inflated price of renovating a facility with enough money to build two fresh ones. Meanwhile his Western-trained counterpart in the ministry of agriculture and food security is busy organizing series of prayers for abundant food supplies as a means of ending food shortages in the country.
On security, it is clear that government has lost touch with reality. Boko Haram attacks in Borno State have resurfaced. Plateau and Benue States remain major killing fields for herdsmen. Much of the North West is still under siege by insurgents. Kogi, Niger and Kwara States are also witnessing sporadic killings. Kidnapping and ritual killings in the South West are common while insecurity in the South East is still a challenge, no thanks to Biafran separatists.
In all, not more than 10 states are relatively peaceful in the country. Yet governments sit pretty well issuing vacuous statements that are not matched with actions to root out the non-state actors holding the country by the jugular. The simple question to ask those who propagate the exploits of our security services is: Are we safer now than we were few years ago?
The government of President Tinubu is out of touch with the sufferings of the people. Much of what it focuses resources on will not yield results for the majority of the people. It does occur that it will not change and the options for people are limited if not nonexistent. The political climate for change to happen is not there either since government controls the electoral and the judicial processes.
Nigeria is still on a long walk to freedom.
Esiere is a former journalist!
