Interrogating Tinubu’s T-Pain moniker     

In decoding our subject matter, we meet with problems of a purely practical nature such as personal acquaintance with the protagonist of our essay, the narrator’s own social standing or prestige, and the requirement of a possession of some kind of detective skill.

There is something ungainly and even unscholarly about the very attempt to formulate the assumptions on which this character sketch is to be mounted. It is also unattainable or presumptuous to want to survey and evaluate the varied attempts that may have poured forth respecting an investigation of this type.

In every attempt like the one being undertaken here, the one whose character is being sketched will invariably be dissatisfied with the narrator’s account about him. His army of acolytes too will take umbrage. Even as every man is a convergence of types, man is better observed when shown in different contexts – public life, private (ie at home or at leisure), in foreign lands and in many other theatres of life.

Nigerians are forever at ease with their politicians. They perceive in them a curious essential humanity as may be found among nobles, in royalty and in the aristocratic class elsewhere in some distant lands. They are easily amused or carried away by the empty or hollow promises which their politicians mutter at campaign hustings or, indeed, at “A townhall … different from Bala blu….”

Whereas politics creates a space for fantasy, imagination, reasoned expectation, and history as a basis for making informed choices about persons who put themselves forward for election, the Nigerian electorate is reluctant to admit that he is the reason even for politics. He also does not not recognise that he is the raison d’etre of the perilous hopeless situation of  Nigeria. His docility and inexplicable subservience are unforgivably egregious.

Tinubu’s indecisive efforts to combat the ravaging hunger in the land, the benumbing open revelation of graft and corruption in many spheres of governmental activity, the ever-escalating food prices in the market place, the frightful spectre of hundreds of thousands of young unemployed walking the streets, the mindless privation suffered by millions of young people facetiously referred to as out-of-school children, the unspeakable insecurity nationwide, etc have not been enough to stir the people out of their somnambulant slumber.

Even as politics is far more connected with concrete economic, political and social situations, there are interrelationships between all spheres of human activities. We can, for instance, establish some connection between the modes of production and the politics ensuing there from since a political system usually implies some system of power which directly or obliquely affects family life.

Tinubu’s position as president metaphorically presents an oxymoronic situation. The dispensing of pain is antithetical to the mandate of the office of a president presumably freely elected to offer or spread joy, hope and optimism. Etymologically, “oxymoron” as a literary device is a rhetorical antithesis bringing together two contradictory terms. Such a contrast makes for sharp emphasis e.g. “a cheerful pessimist”, “a wise fool”, “sad joy”, “a wicked nurse”, “a thieving Treasurer” or “a non-performing or lame duck Executive”.

Instead of Tinubu doing the needful regarding the terms of his office, he has been busy performing the exact opposite of the role of a humanist ideologue which role the office of president typifies. Tinubu had, as an ardent seeker after the office of president, positioned himself as an exponent of the programme advanced by himself and his cohorts in the name of progressivism to challenge a pre-existing feudal order.

For Tinubu today, however, the concept of humanism is essentially relativistic. To the dwindling band of Tinubu disciples, the degree of the integration or interrelationship among different activities of men is relative from person to person or from place to place. It is not cast in iron bars.

So the requirement to forge a community of interests respecting the socially desirable imperative to unite the people is advised to be approached cautiously or with “historical realism”. Tinubuesque!

Tinubu’s somewhat naive attempt to conceal the provenance of his political illusion has exposed his lack of depth or breadth respecting his nebulous search for an ill-defined answer to a question he faintly understands. The origin of his “Subsidy is gone” drivel is disputed even by its supposed ideologues or patent owners. The IMF, for instance, say Tinubu is on his own. They have disowned the alleged co-authorship of Tinubu’s “magnum opus.”

In local parlance we ask irritably, “Who sen(d) am?”  Tinubu’s reformism has brought in its wake pain, anguish and gnashing of teeth across board even as the people eerily perceive it as sadism. The retort of Tinubu ideologues is as baffling as it otiose. They say ex cathedral that reforms necessarily entail pain. They glibly speak about the after joy of birth pangs. They argue that their reformism is positioned to have a soothing effect ultimately or … in the end.

Thankfully, they have been shy to say all reforms have ipso facto been attended by excruciating pain or that the proponents of reform models all over the world have had to be inhuman in the exercise of their reform programmes. Is inflicting pain inherent in the nature or execution of any reform agenda by whatever name called?

One difficulty in analysing the Tinubu fiasco with regard to his reform programme is the uninterrogated, freely bandied aphorism that you cannot make an omelette without breaking the egg. There is the further misconception regarding the true value of the Nigerian economy. Nobody seems to know the social truth regarding it. One major deterrent to our collective knowledge or understanding is the opaque nature of its operational methodology and the lugubrious or mournful language of its explanation by its practitioners who are variously styled as economists, financial analysts, brokers,  bankers, etc and a host of shadowy characters acting behind the formal scenes.

These ones never agree among themselves even on the basis of their verbiage or dictum.

Either we remain content with the old rhetorical gibberish which, in the main, is unsatisfactory in their preoccupation with apparently superficial interrogation of the social and economic panoply or we seek recourse in the “emotive” human language for describing the effects of the current gerrymandering or redrawing of the game plan of our future dilemma. We will thereby recognise that our future is imperilled or is being inexorably postponed.

We must all in sobriety regard this period of our national life as troubling indeed. It is mournful too.

Never has ability so much below mediocrity been so well rewarded. Elsewhere,  a man of small capacity would have been found a vocation where principles, public or private, are of not much consequence; where the sole spring of action would be just an inordinate ambition – a Macbethan kind of vaulting ambition. But our system avidly permits of the triumphal entrance into its governance portals of an overly ambitious, selfishly partisan guile with much “genius” but little public or human spirit.
We close by citing the far-sighted admonition of Chief Obafemi Awolowo offered at a political rally in Minna, the Niger State capital in 1979.

Said inimitable Awo:  “Look in whatever direction you like, the omens for Nigeria are dreadful and too uncomfortable to contemplate “Awo’s patriarchal voice still rings true today.
Rotimi-John, a lawyer and commentator on public affairs, is the Deputy Secretary-General of Afenifere. He can be reached via:[email protected]