Almost everyone thinks they know what is wrong with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and his government, except Tinubu himself. And to show that it\u2019s not just bellyaching, there are plenty of examples to beat the president over the head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Headline inflation has risen from 22.2 percent in April 2023 to 33.7 one year after \u2013 and is still growing \u2013 while attempts by the government to tame it have been largely ineffective. Food inflation has nearly doubled. The naira has been devalued by 70 percent in one year, and poverty levels, even among the once-comfortable urban population, have risen dramatically. Hardship has never been starker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But that\u2019s not all. Where Tinubu promised leaner government parastatals, they have increased. The talk about cutting the cost of governance is being crushed under the wheels of longer executive convoys and a parliament out of touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Events around the continent, especially in West Africa, where Nigeria is supposed to be a powerhouse, offer little comfort. On Tinubu\u2019s watch, and some might even add, because of his mishandling, three countries \u2013 Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso \u2013 have pulled out of ECOWAS and formed a band of rebellious Sahelian states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And on the continental stage, Nigeria has dropped from Africa\u2019s largest economy to number four, a blow that a country with an oversized ego can still not reconcile with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Crucify him
If one called for nails to crucify Tinubu, volunteers would supply more than enough to cover every inch of his body, with bags of it to spare. You will be reminded that this was self-inflicted misery when he removed the petrol subsidy on day one and attempted to merge the exchange rate without a clear plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s just as well. I can\u2019t wrap my head around some of the events that happened in the last year. And I can\u2019t remember how often I have asked if this is the same Tinubu I\u2019ve known since 1998. Well, it\u2019s the same Tinubu, more or less. It\u2019s the same Tinubu, seasoned and buffeted almost equally from age and circumstance in a country that has also changed by far greater measure in the last nearly three decades!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tinubu asked for the job, so there can\u2019t be excuses for why the country is in such misery. It\u2019s, however, fair to say, almost at the risk of attack, that those who judge Tinubu harshly underestimate the determined, active efforts of interest groups \u2013 both from within and outside his government \u2013 to ensure that he fails, despite his best efforts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The heart of the matter
His government’s two most consequential decisions \u2013 announcing the removal of petrol subsidy and attempting to create a more transparent exchange rate system \u2013 touched a raw nerve. The biggest beneficiaries, primarily wealthy, powerful and deadly people across the country, but particularly in the North, are determined to fight his government to a standstill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The pattern of last week\u2019s #EndBadGovernance protests showed where poverty was starkest. But it also showed the locus of misdirected anger and resistance to change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The anger was against Tinubu\u2019s policies. But much more than that, it implicated sections of the Northern elite who have, over the years, underdeveloped and impoverished the region, primarily by playing the ethnic and religious card and refusing to be held to account. This same elite was on a roll last week, issuing Russian flags to protesters and pontificating how Tinubu had lost his way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
North\u2019s misery
Things didn\u2019t become suddenly hard for the North under Tinubu. As Kingsley Moghalu said four years ago, when Nigeria displaced India as the world\u2019s poverty capital under the government of President Muhammadu Buhari, the North, regrettably, also became the poverty capital of the poverty capital, with the incidence of poverty up to 80 percent in the North-west.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Decades of the elite prioritising politics and a sense of entitlement over production and accountability have radicalised millions of young people without hope or a future. Their anger should have been directed at the elite responsible for the mess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unfortunately, the same elite stoked the discontent, capitalised on it and managed to frame it as evidence of Tinubu\u2019s unfitness for office. And people who used soldiers to crush swathes of the civil population when they were in power are now teaching us lessons on civil management of public protests. The truth is more nuanced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The handling of the protests in several states was incompetent, disgraceful and indefensible. Nothing justifies using live rounds against primarily unarmed people expressing their right to dissent. It\u2019s a disgrace that live rounds were used to disperse mostly unarmed crowds, as a result of which about 13 people were killed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, the suggestions that people with a sinister agenda sponsored the violence in several Northern states to destabilise Tinubu\u2019s government and divert attention from their complicity in our current mess should not be dismissed out of hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Elite wars
It only takes a cursory look at the sections of the elite worst hit by the removal of the subsidy and the attempts to streamline the forex market chaos to understand why they won\u2019t give up without a dirty fight, whatever the cost. Those who think it\u2019s in their power to determine who rules and how long took advantage of the protests to fire warning shots about what they\u2019re determined to do, if not sooner, then by the next election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kenya, the UK, and, later, Bangladesh have been touted as models for managing dissent and examples of what may happen if a government fails to listen to the people. While economic hardship is the common thread, those who cite these examples in Nigeria ignore the sinister role of interest groups that fear a prolonged loss of political power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Insects within
Yet, suggesting that outsiders caused all of Tinubu\u2019s woes would be foolish. Amid the chaos of last week, there were members of his cabinet who were more than delighted that the pressure might finally compel the president to review his government\u2019s \u201ctight-fistedness\u201d. Under Buhari, the Ministry of Finance released quarterly capital votes to ministries and government departments, and they didn\u2019t have to account for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n