Someone to praise

To open 2025, I have good news.

Three months ago, I expressed delight to discover that the Immigration area at the Murtala Muhammad Airport in Lagos had been rebuilt and that the air-conditioning appeared to be working.

I also travelled through Customs with others without officials soliciting money.  As a former neighbour of the airport, I was experiencing those things for the first time in over 30 years, and I was overjoyed.

As a New Year gift, I am happy to report that I experienced even better on my way out: Not ONCE—in Immigration or Customs—was gratification requested by any official.

To put this in context, on one occasion during the if-we-don’t-kill-corruption-corruption-will-kill-us era, I was solicited NINE times!

Despite not knowing whether this was just happenstance, I again commend those in law enforcement, Aviation, Immigration or Customs for that achievement.  I hope it signals true hope.

Regarding hope itself, Senate President Godswill Akpabio continues to seize every opportunity to praise the man who has saved him from the noose of the EFCC: President Bola Tinubu.

Speaking during the Christmas break, he said that Tinubu was working very hard to fix Nigeria’s economy, and that Nigeria had been on life support prior to his coming into office, and that “he will take us to our El Dorado.”

“One day, I asked him, ‘Mr President, after becoming president and seeing the level of economy that Mr Emefiele left behind, are you excited?’  He said, ‘Well, I’m determined to change the situation.”

But this is exactly how we got where we are: leaders who cannot tell the truth.

Tinubu did not take over from someone called ‘President Emefiele;’ he took over from Muhammadu Buhari.  The problem is that nobody upstairs in APC—not Tinubu, not Akpabio—has the guts to blame Buhari, so they go witch-hunting, leaving Buhari and his close aides to get away with assorted crimes against Nigeria.

So, how can Tinubu fix Nigeria’ without admitting the truth about Buhari or probing the “life support” he inherited?

He cannot, and to ensure that the crime spree continues is the reason for people like Akpabio.

In the 2025 budget—to demonstrate how the menace continues—the Senate President is set to get a share of N10bn allegedly for “rent and furniture”.

The crime continues, with just 30 state governments lavishing N986.64bn, in just the first three months of 2024, allegedly on such basics as refreshments, sitting allowances and travel.  In nine months, they burned through N1.994tn.

Similarly, between 2022 and 2024, expenditure for food and catering for the President, Vice-President, and State House galloped by 20 per cent: from N702.95m for each of 2022 and 2023 to N845.07m in 2024.

Daily, the evidence mounts that the Tinubu administration’s commitment is to itself, not the people.  The presidency would rather buy more toys for itself than food for the children.

Consider that despite the expenditure of over N30bn for extensive renovations on presidential quarters in the last years of the Buhari administration, and the Tinubu government’s spending of an additional N15bn in 2024 on the Vice-President’s residence in Abuja, Tinubu in 2023 spent:

• N4bn for the renovation of his official residence at Dodan Barrack in Lagos,
• N3bn for the renovation of the vice president’s official quarters in Lagos;
• N4bn for the renovation of presidential quarters for the president;
• N4 billion for the construction of an office complex within the state house;
• N2.5bn for the renovation of the official residence of the vice president in Aso Rock; and
• N3bn on the acquisition, renovation, and rehabilitation of four EFCC fortified quarters as a state house complex at Mabushi and Guzape in the FCT.

Note that for his “Promised Land” oratory, Tinubu chose not the opulence of his Dodan Barracks spread down the road in Ikoyi, but his personal mansion.  There is a clear dissonance between word and action.

And 2025 is looking good for people in power nationwide: For instance, Osun State proposes N45.5bn for such “Miscellaneous” items as “Welfare Packages” of N15.6bn; “Subscription to Professional Bodies” of N11.3bn, and “Refreshments and Meals” of N2.5bn.

The Kano House of Assembly will spend a miserly N7.1m on books in 2025, but N21m on office stationeries (sic) and computers, and a whopping N1.027bn on travel.

Governors make and unmake, especially when it comes to personal luxury.  In state capitals, Abuja and even Lagos, they build, rebuild, reconstruct, upgrade or repeatedly renovate and re-furnish the Governor’s Lodge.

When his successor arrives, he does the same thing.

In one notable case, a governor approved payment for the building of a lodge in each of his state’s local councils, none of which was ever completed.

In 2023, Tinubu rewarded that man with a ministerial position.

This is the terrain in which Nigeria’s ruling party, having failed to find the manhood to generate the C-H-A-N-G-E it promised in its  2015 Manifesto—a document I have called a historic swindle—for eight years, pivoted to the propaganda of Renewed Hope.

Nearly two years after he took office, Tinubu is still in the marketing phase.

Speaking to a close circle of supporters on New Year’s Day, he put it this way: “We are determined, we are capable, and we are resolute, and we will be there. We will take Nigeria to that Promised Land with you.’’

Keep in mind how they are now deploying such metaphors as ‘El Dorado’ or ‘Promised Land’.

Will Tinubu put Nigerians in his presidential jet to take them there?  This implies good governance, but what Nigerians continue to experience is governance that refuses to move on from primitive rhetoric. They see no evolution from the age-old leadership greed and self-indulgence which has prevented Nigeria from taking off.  What public resources do you use if you have spent it on paying hotel bills for your daughter?

Every Nigerian knows we can do better.  But it must commence not from the pain that the leadership continues to demand of Nigerians but the one it must demand of itself: example.

Is Tinubu capable of example?  At the turn of the year, the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project listed him among the world’s most compromised leaders, defined as those “extensively involved in organised crime and corruption.”

Nigerians do not deserve to hear their leader so addressed.  Neither do most people appreciate being so characterised.  But unless Tinubu does something different to establish a measure of integrity, his words will always travel with a credibility echo.

And once the door shuts on the cameras and microphones of the mass media, world leaders and institutions will shun him and Nigeria

It would take considerable strength and humility, but he can change the narrative, beginning with affirming a new day, publicly declaring his assets, and making restitution.

Because you cannot build the true on the false, or the right on the wrong.

In Esan, we say it is the eyes one eats first.  That is how you avert hostility or even poisoning.

Nigeria has had many bad leaders, but Tinubu has the worst challenge of all because he cannot pass that eye test.

Give us someone to praise, and we will.