Special to USAfrica magazine (Houston) and USAfricaonline.com, the first Africa-owned, US-based newspaper published on the Internet.
Amaopusenibo Bobo Sofiri Brown, editorial opinion contributor to USAfrica and USAfricaonline.com, served as pioneer Manager of PR at NAFCON Nigeria, founder of the SUNRAY multimedia group in 1992 in Port Harcourt and is currently CEO of GRAIN Consulting.
It would seem that perhaps contrary to the intentions of Nigeria’s President, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the countdown to his first 50 days in office has exposed some officers in his team to high blood pressure concerns. That is an “on- the- job” killer!
Serving in the media team or protocol office of those in government in this unfolding political era in Nigeria, is now looking like an appointment from a wrong strategy book.
Nollywood, in the hey days of Chief Peter Edoche, Kanayo Kanayo, Jennifer and Omotola would have titled it as: “The Devil’s Alternative in Nigeria Part 1 & 2”.
Those who occupy the positions appear to be exposed to a steady blast of life threatening heatwave. Please note that it is not their first 100 days — as yet!
Why is it so?
- On May 29, the day Mr President announced himself to the nation and a global audience, many Nigerians who listened to the speech remembers the agony that was unleashed on the people. Fuel subsidy is over, Mr. President said. What arrangement did government announce to punish those who robbed Nigeria daily with the subsidy scam for years? None!nWhat was the arrangement to give Nigerians a better petrol supply system that is cheaper and more efficient? There was none on May 29! Still, none today, as July 19, 2023. President Tinubu’s communication team found themselves out on the river without a paddle.
His first address left his Communications team as victims of “friendly fire” as people in the security services would say.
It was the same way his Protocl team suffered when he took a 100-car convoy into Lagos on what seemed like a personal triumphant ride.
Nobody has explained to Nigerians why that trip was an important government business that required the President’s personal presence. It was paid for from the public treasury.
The May 29 address set the stage for Nigerians to pay two times more, as pump price of petrol per litre: from N198 per litre to N511 per litre! Nigerians across different political parties don’t like that.
People are not in support of the fuel subsidy. It was a scam as Adams Oshiomhole said before he joined the APC porridge train. mLate Chief Aret Adams former GMD of defunct NNPC said so too
According to a report in Newswatch magazine in March 2001, late Chief Aret Adams said that deregulation should not necessarily become higher pump price of petrol.
Late Professor Tam David -West, former Minister of Petroleum ( 1983-85) also debunked claims of subsidy.
Let us not forget that Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu in a letter of January 2012 to President Goodluck Jonathan argued convincingly that fuel price should be about N40 per litre.
He didn’t believe there was fuel subsidy in 2012. Why did he scrap what didn’t exist in 2023, without giving us evidence to prove the case one way or another?
In the same vein President Tinubu’s trip to Lagos in June 2023 showed a President who condemned his citizens to pedestrian status while he went to flaunt a long convoy of over 100 vehicles under their noses.
It automatically put his media team and protocol personnel on the hot seat of public scrutiny and incremental anger.
Mr President’s official outing to Lagos & Ogun states by June 29, triggered so much anger in the public domain. People were left to wonder if Lagosians were feeling that the carbon blanket of the exhaust fumes from his 100- car convoy was that of an invading army from Abuja.
It didnt make members of his team want to stand as the poster faces of a new administration. Do you blame them?
The trip seemed to show Nigerians that Tinubu hugs his job title but not the people the title it’s meant to serve their interest.
By July 15 which was his 45 days on the job as President, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu won the news headlines again.
This time it was for producing a brand new “Palliatives palaver” that makes no economic or social sense to most citizens.
So far, Nigerians have been left panting.
2) Mr. President’s policies and postures appear to be drawing a line in the sand to divide Nigerians into two groups: on one side are the few who have political power and must enjoy at all cost the fat of the land and proceed to do so in a hurry.
But on the other dry and parched side of the divide, more than two hundred million ordinary citizens are left to be crushed in a daily stampede for survival, by an economy that seems wired to kill them faster since May 29.
Those who are advising Tinubu on his policies appear to be in a haste to finish off Nigerians by taking from them every vestige of hope! They are looking pretty good at it.
3). But President Tinubu and his adminstration are also products of Nigeria’s cycle of sustained underdevelopment. They are victims too!
Like other Presidents since 1999, President Tinubu is systematically being distanced and alienated from ordinary citizens.
Even worse is that his policies increasingly take from us as citizens our right to be stakeholders whose voices and preferences must be represented in policy making.
It is the same in States, where most Governors according to reports seem to act as if they conquered their fellow citizens in a war.
The Feudal System that runs Nigeria continues to keep us far from our potential by giving political power to only those who are put in place to rearrange the allocation of wealth to their own cabal of unproductive politicians and their cronies.
That process also disconnects and broadens the divide between those who hold political power and those whose necks have been held under the boots of the men in power.
Obasanjo regime’s attempt to get our governments at State and Federal Government level through the deployment of NEEDS and SEEDS as frameworks for development in Nigeria were largely designed to make Nigeria experience an industrial boom by hosting international processing facilities, ran into s brickwall.
Governors and Ministers travelled around the world at great cost of foreign exchange.
They claimed to be wooing investors to come to do business in Nigeria.
But the investor communities overseas saw through the call.
How could they bring the kind of investments to energize the Nigerian economy afresh, when our governments were busy carting scare foreign exchange from Nigeria to Dubai, Johannesburg, UK, US and anywhere else they could hide stolen funds as private wealth? .
Of course, Nigeria’s banking system helped to deflate the dream of productive economic development in. NIgeria.
It helped politicians to rob the nation by facilitating foreign exchange flight from Nigeria.
In addition the banking system decided to give loans only to politicians in top positions and their cronies.
As AMCON ( Asset Management Company of Nigeria) performing loan status report shows, the rich political heavyweights don’t pay debts. Period! For instance in 2021 Heritage Bank staff in Abuja had to do a self help picketing in front of the house of a big member of the National Assembly who reportedly refused to service his account.
Most Governors, Ministers and their mates in the National Assembly or State Assembly saw the move to private Sector- led investment as their chance to plunder public sector wealth and use the proceeds to buy Nigeria. It changed the purpose of government to one of daylight robbery.
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The Feudal System makes provision for officials in the bureaucracy, party officials, business fronts, lawyers, security agencies, judicial officers and different cadres to stay profitable from exchanges that keep the operations legitimately viable in many cases.
But it is manifestly lucrative for those who do the specialised job of “white washing” well loaded suspects.
A full blown criminal enterprise was thus born by some people in government.
4) The Feudal System maintains a dynamic structure where anyone can be picked and annointed to join the rank of a few elite who hold their respective state treasury or significant portions of the national economy, in their pocket calculators.
By the same process the system constantly threatens those occupying juicy positions.
They know they can be dropped at will.
So loyalty is a premium currency but does not guarantee constant progress or even a stable position for the moderates among the political elite.
Those who find favour promptly enjoy monopoly of state resources and other opportunities they fancy, without any productivity or self denial investment of funds in any factory or legitimate business.
They and their cronies are encouraged to indulge in a form of “body building” to accommodate a huge appetite for consumption of luxury goods.
The Feudal System makes you accountable to only your self.
But you learn to keep a few members of the cabal, happy and ready to be used!
The system occasionaly finds itself embaraased by this Nigerian or that Nigerian who refuses to be bought, like one female Professor who went to serve INEC as an election official in Abia State or her counterpart ( another female Professor) who reportedly also resisted “envelope power” in Rivers State and refused to “doctor” results.
But the Feudal System simply earmarks such people, isolates them and still stands firm because it controls the institutions and establishments.
So Tinubu’s handshake with National Assembly and similar institutions, is something to be watched closely.
5). The idea of building competitive production of basic goods to make life meaningful to the overwhelming majority of citizens, is not a priority of this stage of the Feudal System.
Unless as citizens we strongly organize ourselves in professional groups and trade or civil society associations, we cannot perform as stakeholder groups to make our voices count in the policy process.
That explains why such groups appear to be seen as targets to be conquered!
Isn’t it instructive that to “create savings” from public Sector expenditure it is the petty cash vote from where professional associations are supported by government that Tinubu’s administration is attacking with an axe?
Meanwhile government is even expanding the perks of the political class by adding new “ice cream wagons” to their luxury trailer.
It shoould be clear why this is happening.
Such groups as professional bodies, Students groups, Labour and business associations are historically not part of the power equation that a Feudal System can rely on.
By putting total resources in the grip of a handful that are enthroned as the ruling elite, the Feudal System makes those in position to firmly put their boots on the necks of over several millions in each state.
Their counterparts also join to do the same to about two hundred million people in the nation.
6). We cannot trust the goodwill of our governments or any branch of government at State or Federal Level.
Our governments have no goodwill to show the people!
We have to bring them to acknowledge us as stakeholders and recognize that government owes us a duty to listen to us.
Becoming conscious of our stakeholder duties and rights, is what democracy is about, not just elections.
6) President Tinubu’s Tsuanmi Convoy, showed us that there is growing incompetence and eye-service mentality in every public institution in 2023.
How can Protocol management team of the Presidency or any Government House in State capitals fail to tell their principals that a long convoy paid for from the public purse is alright?
How can that be alright when citizens are forced to trek, by government’s lack of forward planning before ending a fuel subsidy scam that has enriched the ranks of the political elite?
It is like rubbing salt on an open wound.
7). Thank God the public reaction to President Tinubu’s tsunami convoy forced those in charge to respond with statements to explain that it is the fault of others.
They didn’t see their own glaring incompetence.
How childishly arrogant !
Now we must do more to resist what appears to be a new era of higher corporate arrogance by our institutions and establishments.
Opinion Surveys conducted by GRAIN Consulting in every general election cycle in Nigeria since 2011 show that respondents of 16 stakeholder groups rank the arrogance of those in power among Top 5 public dislikes by citizens.
The protocol and media teams have a duty to regulate how they want the President to present himself to the public. They should not and cannot dictate to us how they want us to see the President and his government.
The team failed to do so by not regulating those who should join the President’s convoy at any point on his trip.
Or is it that they don’t care how we the people see them?
Every where at State and Federal levels we are beginning to see a discomforting but predictable visual messaging. It is of a Conqueror’s triumphant ride!
Any such show-casing of insensitivity to public mood by media and protocol teams of those who govern us, will tend to force more Nigerians to speak out and then get organized into well -informed groups.
We need such groups to resist the monster of this feudal system at State and Federal government levels. What choices can we consider, going forward?
We must decide to get organized to speak up against such abuse.
A triumphant ride over our broken backs as victims at State or Federal level, should no longer be encouraged. Each “victor” who grabbed office to serve the feudal system can do so but we have to organize ourselves into professional and business stakeholder groups of patriotic Nigerians.
We must take a stand to recover the dignity of citizenship that has been taken from us.
Great thanks