Protesting workers have shutdown the nation’s premier Federal University of Health Sciences Otukpo (FUHSO), Benue State.
As of press time, neither students nor workers are allowed into the main campus of the university by the protesters who are mainly security personnel.
A member of staff who spoke to Nigerian Anchor on condition of anonymity explained that the protest is over non-payment of their salaries.
Explaining further, the staff said the university is currently on autopilot as neither the Vice Chancellor, Professor Innocent Ujah nor any of his deputies is on campus to address the protesting workers.
IGP assures the public of the commitment of the police to neutrality and adherence to legal directives.
The Inspector-General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun, has dismissed Rivers State Governor Siminalayi Fubara’s allegations about the police’s role in the recent local government elections.
Egbetokun described Fubara’s remarks as baseless and unnecessary, emphasizing that the police acted lawfully.
Fubara had accused the Nigeria Police Force and its state command of attempting to disrupt the elections by attempting to seize materials. The Governor warned Egbetokun to be mindful of his position.
In response, Egbetokun clarified that the police only followed a Federal High Court ruling from July 19, 2024, which restricted their involvement in the elections.
He explained that the Rivers State High Court later issued a conflicting order on September 4, directing police to provide security at the elections.
However, the Federal High Court reaffirmed its earlier stance on September 30, declaring the police’s involvement unlawful.
He stated that all court orders were reviewed by the police’s legal team, who advised compliance with the Federal High Court ruling.
He urged the public to disregard misinformation and emphasized the importance of political decorum, stressing that the police would not engage in any political disputes but remain focused on their mandate.
President Bola Tinubu addressed the nation on October 1, 2024, marking Nigeria’s 64th Independence Anniversary.
In his speech, he outlined the steps his administration is taking to tackle current challenges and implement reforms.
Tinubu acknowledged the economic struggles many Nigerians face, emphasizing the government’s commitment to finding sustainable solutions.
He noted that, since taking office, his administration has reformed the political and defense sectors to foster long-term progress.
In the area of security, Tinubu highlighted successes in the fight against terrorism, banditry, and kidnappings.
He announced that over 300 Boko Haram and bandit commanders have been eliminated, and efforts to completely eradicate these threats are ongoing.
The President also announced the approval of a Disaster Relief Fund aimed at mobilizing both public and private resources for faster responses to emergencies, particularly after recent flooding in the country.
Tinubu revealed that foreign direct investments totaling more than $30 billion have been secured within the last year due to ongoing reforms.
Furthermore, the Central Bank’s policies have stabilized the foreign exchange market, reducing the country’s debt service ratio.
Plans to implement the Supreme Court ruling on local government financial autonomy were also disclosed.
Additionally, Tinubu reassured citizens that his administration is working on multiple initiatives to lower the cost of living, particularly food prices.
He spoke on the government’s push for energy transition, including the use of Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) in mass transit, a move aimed at reducing transportation costs across the nation.
In conclusion, Tinubu announced the launch of a National Youth Conference, set to unite the country’s youth in shaping policies on education, employment, and social justice.
This 30-day event is expected to foster collaborative solutions for the nation’s future.
“Bello, a fugitive, according to the EFCC, visited the offices of the anti-graft agency in the company of Governor Ododo in broad daylight. They loitered around in the open. They exchanged pleasantries with the operatives and the staff of the EFCC. It was even alleged that they sent a message to the chairman of the EFCC announcing their presence and the desire of the former governor to be interrogated.”
LAST week was draining for many citizens. This opening statement sounds stupid. The question that should naturally strike anyone who has lived fairly consistently in this country for 25 years since the inception, or rather, return of rule by civilians in 1999, is how many weeks these past two decades and a half have we been spared the debilitating and wearisome drama of the absurd? How many times? And the absurdities are carefully crafted and orchestrated by a section of the ruling elite to keep Nigerians chewing their thumbnails in disgust and disbelief. But the joke has always been on us, though we do not get it. It would appear that our mumu (local lingo for collective foolishness) is factory made, or as we say in this clime follow come.
If the truth be told, it has not always been like this. Citizens’ activisms against repressive governments from the colonial era to successive military dictatorships have been the fact of our national life. Protests by university students in the 1960s helped to abort an obnoxious Anglo – Nigerian Defence Pact early in the life of an independent Nigeria. There was also the bloody May riots of 1989 or so that moderated the Ibrahim Babangida plot for a wholesale adoption of the International Monetary Fund (IMF’s) Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) prescriptions for economic recovery. We have lost the verve as a people and the younger elements whose futures are more in jeopardy do not seem interested in looking for where the ball was dropped.
Many decades ago, flamboyant journalist the now late Dele Giwa wrote two articles which were published about the same period. In one, he titled it: ‘Adewusi’s men can’t shoot straight’. Sunday Adewusi, also late, was the inspector – general of the Nigerian Police Force. Almost 40 years after the provocative headline, police operatives under Adewusi’s successors still can not shoot straight unless they are targeting innocent and unarmed protesters.
Two recent examples will illustrate the state of the police – the murderous put down of the August 1-10 #EndBadGovernance nationwide protests, and the show that was put up at the Kogi state government lodge in Abuja last week. In the August protests police killed scores of Nigerians in cold blood while those who survived are currently in captivity facing charges ranging on terrorism, treason, treasonable felony, subversion and attempt to overthrow the federal government. The charges may sound phony, and they certainly do, but they are in sync with the ways of repressive regimes worldwide. However, last week the police/security details of Kogi state governor Musa Ododo and his predecessor Yahaya Adoza Bello, the White Lion, and the police of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), both federal police, shot at themselves in a firefight, shattering the peace of the Asokoro-Abuja night for a considerable length of time.
When the dust settled in the morning of the day after, a Thursday, there were no deaths; no reports of injuries; and, there were no arrests. It would not matter that there could have been some residents of that neighborhood with heart and/or other pre-existing health conditions whose situations could have been exacerbated by that night of madness by government security agents. In a sane place, the expectation is that there may at times be collateral damage in the course of an official task by security agencies. But that was not the case in this Abuja ‘shootout’. The EFCC police and those of Ododo/Bello were merely entertaining themselves at the expense of Nigeria.
The sorom chia (Igbo for comic display) by the EFCC and their ‘prey’ Bello, will be a box office hit any day, and a classic in later years. Creative Nollywood must have taken note. What’s the genesis? Bello was governor of Kogi state for eight years until last January. Corruption allegations swirled around him even as a governor. He had absolute immunity, so nothing could be done to him. We have conveniently forgotten that there’s an existing court decision that a sitting governor can be investigated but not prosecuted while in office, thanks to the efforts and doggedness of the late Gain Fawehinmi, a renowned and unblemished anti-corruption crusader. Well, Bello installed his relative Ododo as governor. Then the EFCC slapped a charge of N80blllion misappropriation/money laundering on Bello. The former melted away but tied up the case in court through proxies. He did not for once appear in court. At one point he even insisted that only the courts in his Kogi state and the judges he appointed while he was governor had jurisdiction over his matter. He fought his cases up to the Supreme Court. And he lost all of them.
Yet he would not answer to the summons of the EFCC for interview nor present himself in court for arraignment and to prove his innocence. In what has now been exposed as a contrived frustration, the anti-graft agency declared Bello wanted and caused his name to be published in the Red List of the International Police Organisation (Interpol) as a global fugitive. Interpol may have taken the notice seriously. But not Nigerians. And now with the events of last week not even the EFCC took their wanted notice on Bello seriously. Nigerians and the EFCC knew that Bello was in this country and enjoying immunity by other means. In April, the EFCC had besieged the Abuja residence of Bello but failed to apprehend him, just as it failed again last week. But this time what transpired was different. It could have been treated as comical but for its national implications.
Yahaya Bello at the premises of the EFCC that declared him wanted. Yet he was not detained.
So what was different this time? Bello, a fugitive, according to the EFCC visited the offices of the anti-graft agency in the company of Governor Ododo in broad daylight. They loitered around in the open. They exchanged pleasantries with the operatives and the staff of the EFCC. It was even alleged that they sent a message to the chairman of the EFCC announcing their presence and the desire of the former governor to be interrogated. The chief of staff to the helmsman was alleged to have told the VIP visitors that the chairman was busy and so had no time for them. The guests were allegedly told that the EFCC would revert to them to arrange for a meeting at a convenient date and time. After about four hours of loitering around what otherwise should be a security zone, Gov. Ododo, former Governor Bello and their team triumphantly left the EFCC complex.
A report even claimed that the EFCC staff and operatives who encountered Bello were very noisy in hailing him. Bello the fugitive, Bello the villain, Bello the accused plunderer is about to become Bello the law, Bello the warrior, Bello the saint, Bello the saviour, and Bello the persecuted. There’s no doubt that the depth that the country has fallen may yet be difficult to fathom, but some tales about some things that happen here still beggars belief. A fugitive over whom you had asked for global help in arresting walks into your den noisily exchanging pleasantries with your operatives, requests for a meeting, and you let him walk away freely could only fit tales under the moonlight. The greater tragedy is that the man who heads that agency was still sitting pretty in office as at last weekend when we wrote this. And he has also not been fired by his appointer, Nigeria’s president, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu. But truly, that the EFCC chairman, Ola Olukoyede, was not summarily suspended preparatory to his being fired on the heels of this global embarrassment should not come as a surprise. It is a case of akwu rere ere nime ikwo puru epu or rottenness on top of rottenness equals rottenness.
By the way, the accounts we related above about Bello’s visit to the EFCC offices came from the media team of the ‘fugitive’. So the natural question will be why not balance their claims with the position of the EFCC? Sadly, there’s nothing to balance or counter. The EFCC did not refute the story that Bello was in their premises on Wednesday, September 18. It did not deny that Bello’s company made contact with the office of the EFCC chairman while they were around. EFCC did not disclaim that Bello met some of their staff whether at the agency’s parking lot or anywhere else in the complex. The agency did not deny anything that was propagated by the media team of ‘fugitive’ Bello. All that the EFCC said in their shameless and pitiable counter press statement can be summarised in six words – Bello is not in our custody. Read it again. Do not try to digest it because it will cause you indigestion.
Hours later that same day but this time under the cover of darkness, the same EFCC allegedly made contact with Bello’s people, established the location of the ‘fugitive’, and then dispatched a team of police ‘sharpshooters’ to apprehend him. Of course, the EFCC failed again. All they succeeded in doing that fateful Wednesday night was to humiliate and embarrass themselves, disturb the peace of the upscale Abuja neighbourhood, frighten residents and passersby, and then retreat with their tails behind their backs.
Memes have gone viral in the social media world about the magical powers of Bello, the (in)famous White Lion, and the invincibility of his juju man or men. A marabou that could pull off a feat that could rival the biblical story of Daniel inside the den of a lion deserves more than a passing attention. Indeed, some Nigerians have suggested that instead of wasting taxpayers money on domestic and offshore trainings of the EFCC operatives with little or no results to show, it could be more beneficial if the EFCC befriended Bello, forgave him of his alleged transgressions and encouraged him to introduce the agency to his juju man or men. Fortified with such magical powers, the EFCC will easily fish out corrupt persons, bring them to court and cast a spell on judges to quickly return guilty verdicts, and pronounce long term jail sentences. This will also work well for plea bargains. The harvests will be bountiful with corrupt people being made to disgorge all that they stole from the commonwealth. Nigeria happens to everybody. It’s a matter of time.
Ugo Onuoha
A veteran journalist.
He was the Managing Director/Editor-in-Chief, Champion Newspapers Ltd.
President Bola Tinubu has condoled with members and leaders of the Tijjaniyya Movement in Nigeria over the death of 40 members killed in an auto crash on Sunday.
Scores of others were injured.
The victims were on their way from Kwandari in Plateau State to a Maulud Nabiy celebratory event in Saminaka, Kaduna State when their bus collided with a truck at Lere town of Kaduna State.
President Tinubu condoled with the families of the dead and injured and with the governments of Kaduna and Plateau states.
He prayed for the repose of the souls of the departed.
The President directs the Federal Roads Safety Commission (FRSC) to improve highway monitoring and reduce the number of road accidents nationwide.
In a move that indicates further severance of relations with the regional body, the government of Burkina Faso has unveiled a new generation biometric instead of the old generation ECOWAS passport.
This moves puts pay to any likelihood of the French speaking West African country rejoining the ECOWAS fold despite appeals by regional authorities for a change of stand.
The new passport, unlike the one of the old generation, doesn’t carry the ECOWAS Logo or any related inscriptions on its cover page.
The new passport is produced by Emptech a Chinese biometrics technology company.
Following harsh sanctions due to military coups, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger—three West African nations currently under military rule—announced in January that they would be leaving the 15-member ECOWAS bloc.
Burkina Faso-Emptech Biometric Passport Launch
Reuters quotes the country’s Security Minister Mahamaou Sana as affirming that “on this passport, there’s no ECOWAS logo, and no mention of ECOWAS either.”
The government official adds that “since January, Burkina Faso has decided to withdraw from this body, and this is just a realisation of the action already taken by Burkina Faso.”
The ECOWAS bloc has a policy on visa-free movement for nationals of member states using either the ECOWAS passport or the regional biometric ID implemented under the World Bank-supported (West Africa Unique Identification for Regional Integration and Inclusion (WURI) program. Burkina Faso and Niger were among the first six ECOWAS countries to benefit from the WURI initiative.
President Bola Tinubu, ECOWAS Chairman
When the countries announced their departure from ECOWAS early in the year, regional officials raised concerns that citizens of the three countries will no longer be able to use the regional passport and ID card.
According to Burkina 24 TV, Arzouma Daouda Parfait Louré, the director general of the National Identification Agency, stated at the passport’s launch early this month that the accomplishment is the result of a procedure that began in 2022. He said that the outdated passport production system, in use since 2018, had undergone a comprehensive diagnosis.
The new passports will be produced with technology of the latest generation and in line with security standards for travel documents prescribed by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the official explained.
The head of the ID agency announced that one of the latest developments is that people can now apply online for passports using an easily customizable and streamlined data collection method. The passport application process may be tracked by applicants, and passports can be issued in as little as 24 hours, regardless of where the applicant is located in the world.
It is speculated that funding for this project may have come the $150 million World Bank’s International Development Association approved funding for Burkina Faso earlier this year to enable the West African country to its digital public infrastructure.
We are filled with a deep sense of betrayal as the federal government clandestinely increases the pump price of premium motor spirit (PMS). One of the reasons for accepting N70,000 as national minimum wage was the understanding that the pump price of PMS would not be increased even as we knew that N70,000 was not sufficient.
We recall vividly when Mr. President gave us the devil’s alternatives to choose from: either N250,000 as minimum wage (subject to the rise of the pump price between N1,500 and N2,000) and N70,000 (at old PMS rates), we opted for the latter because we could not bring ourselves to accept further punishment on Nigerians.
But here we are, barely one month after and with government yet to commence payment of the new national minimum wage, confronted by a reality we cannot explain.
It is both traumatic and nightmarish.
Yet, when we told government that it’s approach to resolving the fuel subsidy contradictions was patently faulty and would not last, it’s front row cheer leaders sneered at us, saying we did not understand basic economics .
But if truth be told, this act of betrayal is consistent with the character of this government. We recall the assurances we were given by the leadership of the National Assembly on the 250% tariff hike, that it had been dealt with and there was no need to openly engage the Minister of Power who was at that meeting.
Instead of the promised reversal, the rate has since been jerked up further putting more Nigerians and businesses in jeopardy.
The combined effects of government’s ferocious right -wing market policies brought Nigerians and Nigeria to their all-time low and led to the End-Hunger/End Bad Governance protests.
Rather than make amends, government arrested and hounded into detention some of those who took part and some of those who had nothing to do with these protests, charging them with criminal conspiracy, subversion, treasonable felony, terrorism financing and cyber crime with an intent to overthrow the government of President Tinubu.
The police and other security agencies have since been on rampage terrorising the citizenry in pursuance of government’s agenda of muzzling lawful dissent.
In brazen pursuit, they have defamed and libeled not a few individuals.
They have gone as far as appropriating the statutory roles of the Ministry of Labour and Employment in resolving trade dispute matters and issues considered outside the jurisdiction of the security agencies.
That the government is on rampage in the face of stifling conditions of living is an understatement but we promise Nigerians that we at the Nigeria Labour Congress will not be cowed into submission. Together with civil society, we brought about this democracy when some of the actors in power today were conspiring with the military on how to perpetuate their hold on political power.
When the State and the security forces picked on us in a hybrid war, we had our suspicions. We knew they were up to something sinister and needed to distract/divert our attention or possibly frighten or weaken us before they came out with it so that we would not have a robust response.
Now that they chickens have come to roost, we were right in our suspicions. However, we want to let Nigerians know that the clandestine/surreptitious increase in the pump price of PMS is the first among the equally sinister policies government has up its sleeve.
On our part, we stand resolute with the people and will neither be distracted nor intimidated by the government or its security agencies.
We insist that government cannot criminalise protests or basic rights in the domain of the citizenry.
Accordingly, we demand the immediate:
1). Reversal of the latest increase in the pump of PMS across the country;
2). Release of all those incarcerated or being prosecuted on the assumption of having participated in the recent protests;
3). Halt the indiscriminate arrest and detention of citizens on trumped up charges;
4). Reversal of the 250% tariff hike in electricity;
5). Stop to the hijack of the duties of the Ministry of Labour and Employment;
6). End to policies that engender hunger and insecurity;
7). Halt to government’s culture of terror, fear and lying.
We are guided by our belief in our country and the need to secure and sustain its sovereignty, integrity and welfare of the people.
In the coming days, the appropriate organs of the Congress will be meeting to take appropriate decisions which will be made public.
Comrade Joe Ajaero is the President of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC)
“But Nigeria’s president moves around as an Emperor of a rich Gulf state with a N5 billion yacht, a N2 billion custom-made, armour-plated and bomb-resistant American Escalade Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV)- fit only for a monarch or for the leaders of the first world superpower countries such as the United States, Russia and China.”
LAST week the presidency said in a statement that Nigeria’s president, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu, would be travelling to the People’s Republic of China in the first week of September. Unless something has changed in our comprehension of the English language, the first week of September will ordinarily mean between Sunday, September 1 to Saturday, September 7.
For a fractured presidency this understanding does not apply. Now let’s quote aspects of that statement issued by his media adviser, Chief Ajuri Ngalela.
“His Excellency, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, will depart for the People’s Republic of China, most specifically, Beijing, from nation’s capital (Abuja) within the first week of September, to engage in a series of meetings and activities with immediate and future benefit to the Nigerian economy and the Nigerian people”. However, 48 hours before the start of the first week of September, the president hopped into his jet, in the ‘nation’s capital’, and left the country.
So, as you read this, Tinubu is reportedly already in China meeting with his counterpart, President Xi Jinping, or visiting big corporations in that Asian country, or interacting with the chief executive officers of companies that boast trillions of dollars in assets. Unlike my wife, I have not been to China, but stories abound that China is, in some respects like New Zealand – a world away. But the import in the conflict in the presidency’s statement and the early departure without further clarification is that the disdain of Tinubu for Nigerians extends to those who directly work for him. It could also be that he chose to leave early so as to savour his new but old (pre-used) super luxurious N250 billion widebody A330 Airbus presidential jet.
I concede that it will not be uncharitable for any reader to read mischief into the monetary value I have, on my own, assigned to the ‘new’ presidential bird. For a start there was no proper and conventional appropriation and provisioning for the Airbus jet acquisition in the 2024 national budget. It was just bought so that our president will not die in an aircraft crash given that the Boeing Business Jet (BBJ) in the presidential fleet, 19 years old, had become unserviceable and prone to annoying downtimes which embarrass the president and the country in foreign lands. The $150 million USD purchase price for the Airbus was a product of conjecture by the media. It is the same for the $50 million allocated to retrofit and upscale the jet to fit the status of a feudal president. Depending on who you ask, we have between eight to 10 aircraft and choppers in the presidential fleet of a poor country led by a poor president who soaks garri and eats groundnuts for lunch according to Vice President Kashim Shettima. This diet inside a presidential jet will be a spectacle worth beholding.
As usual the president and the regime he heads do not deem it fit and proper to account to Nigerians on how they came about the aircraft; where it was sourced from; when; and, for how much? All Nigerians were told, and grudgingly so, by a low-level presidential staff on the social media, was that the aircraft was snapped up during an auction, and paid for through a now veritable slush fund called service wide vote. The service wide vote can be likened to the notorious security vote, a channel through which heads in the executive arms of government use to steal money from the public till. The notoriety of the abuse of this budgetary provision was unearthed in a research paper published in 2019.
The research work conducted by Messrs William Smart Ekong, Sunday Effiong, Charles Effiong, and, John Ogenyi Oboh under the title ‘Use of Service -Wide Vote (Contingency Budget) for National Development: Evidence from Federal Ministries, Departments And Agencies in Nigeria’ revealed that government ministries and agencies, and even the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) abused the service wide vote “to the tune of over N4.17 trillion between 2004 and 2018 due to non-compliance with rules governing the use of the vote”. The researchers, after observing that the abuse had stunted and blunted national developmental objectives of the vote, proceeded to make recommendations to help police the vote including allocation of 5% of the annual budget to service -wide-vote, regular replenishment of releases from the vote, obtaining approval from the National Assembly before releasing funds from the vote, roll over of unspent funds, prosecution of corrupt MDA officials, and avoiding those sharp practices that “will make the use of the service-wide-vote ineffective in achieving national developmental objectives”.
“But Nigeria’s president moves around as an Emperor of a rich Gulf state with a N5 billion yacht, a N2 billion custom-made, armour-plated and bomb-resistant American Escalade Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV)- fit only for a monarch or for the leaders of the first world superpower countries such as the United States, Russia and China.”
Two things confront us in the findings and recommendations of these researchers, two of whom were said to be of the University of Calabar in Cross River state. First, there’s no evidence yet that the five year – old study which was published in the Research Journal of Finance and Accounting 10(10): 45-62 found favour with Nigeria’s rulers. Secondly, the scholars may not have envisaged that this country will be burdened with a national assembly that is completely beholden to the executive arm of government. But it does not really matter because it is not beyond Tinubu and his cheerleaders to argue that the acquisition of a N250 billion jet in an opaque manner was one of the reasons for the creation of the service-wide-vote. This is what you get when a ruler is brazenly contemptuous of the people.
Meanwhile, Nigeria’s population is currently put at anywhere between 200-250 million. Since nobody knows the country’s population for sure, we are bound to rely on projections, conjectures and guess-estimates. About two years ago, Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) found that not less than 133 million people were dimensionally poor – food poor, health poor, education poor, housing/shelter poor, potable water poor, sanitation poor, etc. Since May last year, many more Nigerians have dropped into the category of the dimensionally poor in the wake of the no brainer economic policy options of the extant regime, with the figure unofficially put at over 150 million citizens.
“He described Tinubu as “arrogant, ignorant, and incompetent” for prioritising flamboyant lifestyle and luxury travel amid ongoing economic struggles in Nigeria, where according to him, inflation rates were reportedly as high as 114%.”
Nigeria has consecutively remained the global capital of poverty since 2019 when it inherited the dubious tag from India. By the way, India is about six times the population of Nigeria. But Nigeria’s president moves around as an Emperor of a rich Gulf state with a N5 billion yacht, a N2 billion custom-made, armour-plated and bomb-resistant American Escalade Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV)- fit only for a monarch or for the leaders of the first world superpower countries such as the United States, Russia and China. The stark and painful difference is that these other leaders drive vehicles made in their countries. But Tinubu luxuriates in an Escalade made by Cadillac, the luxury division of General Motors, a jet manufactured in France, and a yacht of unknown origin.
Except for the yacht, none of the luxury acquisitions of the president has the regime found the need to tell Nigerians how much they cost the taxpayer. And this is because Tinubu has an abiding disdain for Nigerians. And other government officials have copied him. Why bother when there are no consequences for being contemptuous of Nigerians. At the weekend, one American economist reportedly said Tinubu was an insufferable and ignorant person. But I wager that Tinubu knows what he is doing. Steve Hanke is a professor at Johns Hopkins University. He described Tinubu as “arrogant, ignorant, and incompetent” for prioritising flamboyant lifestyle and luxury travel amid ongoing economic struggles in Nigeria, where according to him, inflation rates were reportedly as high as 114%. This is about three times the figure given by the NBS. He appeared to suggest that the NBS inflation rate was a product of fiction. The message is that the world is taking note of the choices of the ruler of an underdeveloped and debt-ridden third world country.
Tinubu’s supporters who are to be pitied are wont to point us to other countries where people, according to them, are going through struggles and a cost of living crisis. They also point to some luxuries enjoyed by such leaders. But not once would they acknowledge that no two situations are the same. They won’t tell us that global poverty has since taken permanent residency in our country. Let’s illustrate with one example what a sensitive leader who finds himself leading an economically challenged country will do.
Keir Starmer is the new UK prime minister. Last week he told Britons and others that his first budget due next month “is going to be painful”. He said that he had no other options but assured that only those with the broadest shoulders will “bear the heavier burden. Starmer said his choices were limited because his administration inherited a £22 billion black hole as well as a”societal black hole”. But before Starmer warned about the sacrifices he would call on the people to make, he first started with himself and the privileges of his own office as prime minister. He announced that a £40m VIP helicopter contract used extensively by his predecessor Rishi Sunak for local travels will not be renewed when it expires by the end of this year. He said it will be in keeping with his promise when he sought the vote of the people to undo “14 years of rot” and profligacy under the Conservatives. Starmer is of the Labour Party.
Sunak had used the government – funded helicopters on several occasions while he held sway, even when it was obvious train travel would have been almost as quick and convenient, and certainly cheaper for some of the expensive trips with the chopper. Starmer’s action could be derided as cheap populism but no leader, except in Nigeria, has a right to ask for understanding and sacrifices from the people while he immersed himself in sickening luxury. Signaling, that’s what Starmer has demonstrated. And to think that the UK belongs to the first world. But here, Tinubu whose country may not even qualify to be designated as a third world country lives in a fortress renovated with billions of Naira before he moved in last year, glides in a N5 billion yacht, rides inside billions of Naira worth of a foreign made SUV, and junkets around the world in a foreign manufactured presidential jet on the excuse of wooing foreign investors.
There’s no doubt that world leaders look at him with scorn, knowing that every of the luxury items he uses were shamelessly acquired with foreign loans. And some of these lending institutions are domiciled in the countries of those leaders where he goes to show off. Tinubu is like that arrogant king in the Igbo nation who struts about in the market square to impress people but did not realise that his royal gown was smeared with feaces. Who will tell Tinubu this truth? But will he listen?
*Incipient tyranny and unfolding imperial presidency will, other things being equal, form the concluding part of this trilogy next week.
Arguably the most travelled Head of State globally, President Bola Tinubu departed the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) today, Thursday, on another foreign trip to Beijing, China, with a layoff at Dubai, UAE.
During this visit, Tinubu is scheduled to meet with Chinese President, Xi Jinping to discuss key areas of cooperation, including trade, investment, and economic development.
This was disclosed in a statement by the Special Adviser to the President of Media and Publicity, Ajuri Ngelale on Thursday, August 29.
The statement reads: “President Bola Tinubu will depart Abuja for Beijing, China, on Thursday, August 29, on an official visit.
“President Tinubu will have a brief layover in the United Arab Emirates.
“In China, the President will meet with President Xi Jinping and will hold meetings with Chinese business leaders on the sidelines of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation.
“President Tinubu will be accompanied by senior government officials on the trip.”
