Nigerians didn’t offend God, leadership failed the people

Nigerians didn’t offend God. Our woes are manmade, strictly a failure of leadership. So, should we pray for Tinubu? Why not for those so inclined! But what will be the essence? That God should come down from heaven and do for us what Tinubu was elected to do? What then is the responsibility of leadership.

In Nigeria, to borrow a cliché, principle is as rare as the hen’s teeth, which explains why the country’s political, business and religious elites cannot speak truth to power. They would rather speak tongue-in-cheek: flippant and insincere.

This trait has become more evident since the All Progressives Congress (APC) dislodged the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) from its high perch in 2015. Schooled in the arcane art of propaganda and doublespeak, deliberately obscuring and distorting reality, the party apparatchiks were able to wheedle the largely unwary Nigerian populace.

Even when it was apparent that President Muhammadu Buhari was the greatest disaster to befall this country since independence, APC still blamed the country’s mounting woes on the “16 years of PDP.”

Yet, every honest observer knew that the worst of PDP was by far better than the best of APC government under Buhari’s watch. Not even in the so-called war against corruption did Buhari excel. The APC government became corruption personified.

Nigeria’s economy was destroyed by Buhari’s incompetence and the insincerity of the ruling party. But, as the Germans say, “Lies have short legs.” What the APC ideologues, including Buhari’s successor, President Bola Tinubu, know for sure but pretended otherwise is that when life becomes a labyrinth of self-pleasing lies, the legs needed to carry that load are always too short. Lies beget lies, and sooner than later, the story becomes so absurd that those trying to get away with it are trapped.

We have arrived at that juncture. Eight years in power and counting, it has become politically inexpedient for the APC to continue blaming the 16 years of PDP for Nigeria’s woes. Now, even those that said Buhari was the best thing that happened to Nigeria are blaming him for the country’s extant woes caused, no doubt, by Tinubu’s missteps.

Agreed, Buhari did a terrible job. But Tinubu has succeeded in pushing the country over the edge in the eight months of his presidency. To pull the economy out of the mess where Buhari left it, there ought to be a new thinking, a dose of fresh perspectives. Right now, there is none.

The truth which a lot of people are shying away from is that the trio of Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Wale Edun; Minister of Budget and Economic Planning, Abubakar Bagudu and Central Bank Governor, Olayemi Cardoso, do not have the gravitas it takes to pull Nigeria’s economic chestnuts out of the fire.

In any case, as criminal as Buhari’s mismanagement of Nigeria’s patrimony was, what pushed the economy over the edge and brought the untold hardship in the land are the ill-conceived and hasty policies of subsidy removal and floating of the Naira.

So, when the former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, and former Edo State governor, Senator Adams Oshiomhole, blame Buhari’s administration for the raging economic woes, they are being economical with the truth. They are only trying to cut Tinubu some slack.

Speaking virtually on Sunday at a religious event in Abuja, Sanusi said it will be unfair to blame Tinubu’s administration for the country’s current economic woes.

His words: “I have been, over the years, talking about the pending crisis ahead of the current economic hardship. Any economist who has studied monetary policy in the last eight years knows that Nigerians will fall into this difficult situation… If I am to be fair and just to President Tinubu, he is not to blame for the current hardship.”

But Sanusi did not say what Tinubu has done differently from Buhari’s economic policies or the new thinking he has brought to bear on the dire economic situation he inherited.

Then, the former national chairman of the APC, Senator Adams Oshiomhole, in his rabble rousing style, echoed the same sentiments same day on Channels Television.

“My first loyalty is to Nigeria,” Oshiomhole, who was governor of Edo State, claimed. “At some point, before the last President left office, I lamented loudly what I saw as reckless policies that were designed to dehumanise the population that was already in pain. I felt that it was not what the then president promised. I dissociated myself from those policies and I’m happy that I was not the only one… It is the long-term consequences of those policies that we are still grappling with now,” he said.

Of course, Oshiomhole was talking about the ill-fated Naira redesign policy of the Buhari administration. But it is sheer dishonesty for him to claim that the policy alone is at the root of the mess the APC administration made of governance in the last eight years.

Oshiomhole said Tinubu should not be held responsible for whatever decisions the Buhari government took because “he was not a minister or adviser. He never took a contract in that government and he cannot be held responsible for what the government did right or wrong.”

Really? How revisionist can an argument get? Just yesterday, it was 16 years of PDP, but today, it is eight years of Buhari, which has nothing to do with the political party on which platform he contested and won the presidency and which manifesto he implemented.

Yet, this is the same Oshiomhole who, in explaining away Buhari’s apparent lack of capacity in August 2017, gratuitously told Nigerians that Buhari was doing well and APC never promised miracles.

So, what has changed? Buhari is no longer in power and Oshiomhole is having his pound of flesh from a man who didn’t come through for him when the APC sharks had him for dinner.

As if the rationalizations of Sanusi and Oshiomhole were not bad enough, religious leaders have also thrown their impious hats into the justification loop.

The General Overseer of Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), Pastor Enoch Adeboye, is now saying the challenges confronting the country require spiritual solution since political leaders appeared to have tried their best without much luck. “Nigeria, therefore, needs the help of God and it needs the help urgently,” he said.

But governance is not a lucky dip game.

Then, on February 12, the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Abubakar Sa’ad III, said the current difficulties in Nigeria were a direct consequence of people straying from the worship of God. The solution for him is for Nigerians to return to God in prayers.

Delivering a message at the grand opening of a Jum’ah Mosque in Guzape, Abuja, the Sultan, who was represented by a former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Alhaji Yayale Ahmed, said: “Everyone knows the situation in Nigeria right now but the solution is to go back to seek divine intervention and prayers.”

Unfortunately, neither Pastor Adeboye nor the Sultan told Nigerians what their prayer point(s) should be. That God should give Tinubu the wisdom to govern Nigeria aright? Was he lacking in the requisite leadership qualities? Why then did he contest to become president? Because it was his turn to further ruin Nigeria?

But that is hardly surprising. Nigerian leaders delight in using God’s name in vain. In April 2017, the then Zamfara State governor, Abdulaziz Yari, said the outbreak of Type C Cerebrospinal Meningitis was God’s way of showing his anger against Nigerians for turning their back on him.

At the time he was invoking God’s name, Zamfara was the worst hit state with over 200 persons already killed and the Nigeria Medical Association in his state had accused his government of failing to prepare for the outbreak despite warnings, and not responding adequately to the epidemic.

But not Yari, who said, rather gratuitously, that the outbreak was a punishment from God.

“What we used to know as far as meningitis is concerned is the Type A virus. The World Health Organisation, WHO, has carried out vaccinations against this Type A virus not just in Zamfara, but many other states. However, because people refused to stop their nefarious activities, God now decided to send Type C virus, which has no vaccination. People have turned away from God and he has promised that ‘if you do anyhow, you see anyhow’ that is just the cause of this outbreak as far as I am concerned. There is no way fornication will be so rampant and God will not send a disease that cannot be cured,” he said.

Today, Yari, an APC chieftain, is a federal lawmaker, sitting in the hallowed chambers of the Senate. Only in Nigeria!

There are no consequences for idiocy in office, which explains why now that all, including APC chieftains, agree that Buhari ran the most corrupt government ever and completely messed up the country, there is no appetite to call on him for explanation as to what happened.

In this very column on August 17, 2023, “Why Buhari must be put on trial,” I wrote that for the sake of Nigeria, Buhari must not be allowed to get off scot-free, having used his eight years in Aso Rock to destroy Nigeria.

“Even if no criminal charges are brought against Buhari – I don’t see why not having presided over a criminal enterprise in the name of governance – he should be put on trial, like the former Iceland Prime Minister, for not doing his job well enough and leaving Nigeria on the brink of bankruptcy and social anomie,” I wrote.

Across the globe, 78 countries, including here in Africa, have either jailed or prosecuted leaders who left office since 2000. That is the strongest deterrence against impunity. As long as Nigerian leaders are assured life immunity, incentive for good behaviour will remain zero.

Nigerians didn’t offend God. Our woes are manmade, strictly a failure of leadership. So, should we pray for Tinubu? Why not for those so inclined! But what will be the essence? That God should come down from heaven and do for us what Tinubu was elected to do? What then is the responsibility of leadership?

Truth be told, unless and until our leaders start taking responsibility for their failures, nothing will change. The only way to get Tinubu to deliver on his electoral promises is to hold his feet to the fire. Making excuses for leadership failures is the reason why Nigeria is plumbing the depths of misery.