By Alade Rotimi-John 

There is a grand delusion that has endured inordinately or inappropriately but which is thankfully wearing off respecting a hyped political ingenuity and suave management wizardry of President Bola Tinubu. The lid has been blown off by a staccato of ill-conceived, ill-timed and utterly egregious policy pronouncements of Mr Tinubu himself.

A forlorn hope even of an uneasy restoration to grace has been dashed: angry feeling has run so high that angry crowds have daringly picketed public spaces and hurled abusive epithets at Tinubu as president.

Tinubu’s performance in office has tended to make angels or saints of his predecessors as even their lacklustre tenures are being acclaimed to be of relative outstanding skill and devotion. Obasanjo’s era, for instance, is being wryly applauded today for a rueful sterling performance. Our people have become enured to a long string of unpleasant political choices. They have come to identify this Tinubu government as capping the people’s resentment of poor governance.

Is it not high time Nigerians of good track records or antecedents reclaimed their country from the scum that have possessed it? The air that preceded Tinubu’s campaign for the coveted office of president was that of a man in complete control of the processes of government going by his touted miraculous Lagos performance bogey, or so his visceral band of admirers marketed his bid.

However, in a biting dissent, the people have unmasked the alleged clear-headedness and daringness of the policy formulations and performance of Tinubu and have returned the verdict that they are clearly anti-people unfeeling, and amateurish in the main.

The current frightening spectre of pervasive hunger in Nigeria exemplified in the mass protests of the harsh or unsmiling economic and social policies of the Tinubu presidency is a fallout of the crisis of survival within the Nigerian family circle. Food-bearing trucks ferrying staple foodstuffs have been reportedly serially attacked and looted in the full glare of the public by hunger-stricken citizens.

This is a manifest sign of the frustration that has attended the promised but unfulfilled access to ‘palliatives’ which were touted to ameliorate the harsh situation of about 300 per cent hike in the pump price of petrol occasioned by the ill thought-out withdrawal of subsidy on the product and of other life-supporting social benefits, e.g. electricity.

The combined effect of these policies has been the untold depreciation of the national currency resulting in the falling or lowering of the people’s purchasing power, and of a general hardship situation. Cost of living has hit the rooftop even as hunger menacingly stalks the land. The nation’s economic managers have become overwhelmed and have visibly thrown up their arms in open despair.

Enter the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria!
The men in charge of God’s flock will not permit themselves to be found wanting in their fundamental charge to speak the mind of God concerning His people each time the occasion demands it. They have watched the people groan under a government that does not seem to know what the streets are saying. The bishops dutifully took their message to the fount of the people’s agony.

The bishops expected to find an eager-to-learn President Tinubu. They found, to their chagrin, a self-satisfied and cynical host who turned their expectations upside-down. The bishops may have momentarily forgotten that there is a curious contradiction between avowed determinism which assumes that consciousness must follow existence and the ethical and moral judgement which condemns the non-appreciation of basic social facts.

Tinubu denounced the ‘vulgar sociology’ of the men of God. He said to them: Hunger for which you have become today’s advocates is as old as when God created the heavens and the earth. It is unavoidable in the course of human existence, Tinubu pontificated.

He almost said God Himself approves of it.

But clerics are at their best when they expose the implied, or latent, social implications of policies that deny the humanity of social relations. Fearing that the government could turn the table against them respecting a probable doctored outcome of their meeting with the President, the Bishops took their case to the court of the people through the media. Pronto, the whole world knew what transpired at the meeting and have been reflecting on the President’s curious psychology and worldview. Social truth usually corroborates our collective sensibilities. A private psychology or worldview, like Tinubu’s, cannot substitute for the vaunted sociology of peaceable worthwhile living or for the stipulations of our social contract.

Chief Obafemi Awolowo, undeniably our social and political alter ego, has identified the most pressing problem facing Nigeria and the way out of it. Awo intoned: “I will like to be permitted to declare that our most urgent problem today is that which relates to the abject poor in our fatherland. As we have noted, about ninety per cent of our population belong to this class. So long as this number of people remain impoverished, our economic growth rate may continue to look good on paper, but our national development will remain depressed.”

The present hunger situation has put in sharper focus the requirement to address the place of the abject poor in our development strategy. Awo has intuitively imagined: “Look in whatever direction you like, the omens for Nigeria are dreadful and too uncomfortable to contemplate.”

The omens have been no less dreadful or relieved under the circumstances of a tedious succession of a vision-barren and confused leadership.

Happily, the Nigerian people, serene in their conviction that the danger that hovers over their environment today is transient, have resolved to contend for justice for right and reason; and never to indulge in uncritical, meretricious choice.

We close by urging President Tinubu to adapt Mr J.G. Lambton’s February 28, 1820 reply to Sir Thomas’ unsolicited advice:

“My dear [Catholic Bishops], in answer to your counsel, I beg to say that I feel gratitude for your frankness, compassion for your fears, little dread of your opposition, and no want of your support …”

The appropriateness of such an impudent reply manifested in the results of the general elections of that year.
Rotimi-John, a lawyer and commentator on public affairs, is the Deputy Secretary-General of Afenifere.  [email protected]