“This nation asks for action, and action now. This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper,” President Franklin D Roosevelt, (32nd president of the United States).
I guess many people who knew President Ahmed Bola Tinubu before he became president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria might be asking themselves questions such as this: “That fellow in there is not the same fellow we used to know.” Likewise, many who voted for him across the country might also wonder if he is still the same man they voted for in the 2023 presidential election.
But looking at this assumption critically, one would discern that the current economic, security, and political crises he met on the ground have thrust him as it has thrust other presidents in political history to a level of effectiveness during critical moments.
Thus, the President they knew was at this critical junction being cautious, prudent, and fervent in his attempt to turn the fortune of the country around amidst the current crises in the country.
Lois Koenig in his book, ‘The Chief Executive’, summed it up rightly that crisis is a crucible in which a President and his administration are tested as nowhere else.
“No other event tries so rigorously the physical endurance, self-confidence, and prudence of the President and his aides.At no other time are the stakes so high. The consequences of his actions are enormously magnified; his decisions may determine nothing less than national safety and survival.”
Most great American Presidents have been in crisis as they met critical challenges, he rightly declared. From President Lincoln who brought the nation through a devastating civil war to President Wilson whose doggedness saw the country through World War 1 and President Franklin Roosevelt who skilfully piloted the nation through the Great Depression and World War 11 and of course, President Kennedy who craftily navigated America through the Civil Right crisis and the Cuban Missile Crisis and avoided the much-expected 1962 confrontation with the USSR.
So, like great American Presidents, Nigerian President Bola Tinubu so far has exhibited tenacity in his policy and faithfully defended them with a conviction that he wants nothing more than the progress and development of the country.
And just like President Herbert Hoover who just seven months after his inauguration had to confront the severest economic depression Americans had ever known which commenced with the great stock market crash, President Tinubu is also being confronted with the most severe economic crisis Nigerians have ever known coming just a few days after his inauguration.
No one knows how big or small a shoe is until they step into it. I believe President Tinubu so far has the shoes fitted on his feet and skilfully moving towards a new dawn for the country with his Renewed Hope agenda. This he has so far exemplified through his various policies and projects across the country since his inauguration on 29, May 2023.
His first bold move to remove the corrupt and unrealistic fuel subsidy from the nation’s economic calculation proved he knew exactly where the nation’s purse was hitherto leaking from. So, he did the most sensible thing, he plugged up this wasteful leak just as he plugged up some other sensible leaks across the banking sector and other vital financial sectors of the economy.
His administration’s focus on reviving the country’s moribund refineries on assumption of office is also a master stroke. Fuel importation into the country has now reduced by 58 per cent and local refining is up to 32 per cent.
Crude production has also risen from one million barrels per day to 1.3 million propelling the country back to its position as Africa’s top oil producer.
The country under Tinubu’s administration now has a trade surplus which hit a remarkable N3.5 trillion last year and achieved a GDP growth of 3.4 per cent.
Tinubu’s administration education policy so far, no doubt is one of the best initiated in the country since the return of democracy to the country in 1999. His sensible Student Loan Scheme to ensure that disadvantaged Nigerians from all backgrounds get University Education is quite motivating and would breed new crops of Nigerian leaders cut across all regions of the nation.
President Tinubu has also taken a decisive and commendable action by signing a bill passed by the National Assembly to start paying the vulnerable, aged, and unemployed graduates a certain amount of money every month which will renew the hope of many neglected aged people and other vulnerable citizens across the country including the mass number of unemployed graduates with no source of livelihood.
The administration’s focus on infrastructural development is also commendable with the commencement of work on important highways across the country like the strategic Lagos- Calabar Coastal Highway and also its foresight to approve the Kano-Lagos narrow rail express service to help farmers move their goods and aid quick products export from the hinterland.
The country’s continental shelf has also been expanded in line with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) 1982 with Nigeria gaining territory for the first time since 2002 when it lost the Bakassi peninsula.
The Tinubu administration no doubt is working, I could see from the prompt infrastructural development going on in the Federal Capital Territory, and like every strong and effective ‘Chief Executive’ all he needs is tough support from the citizenry and patriotic action not only from the President and his team but also from all of us.
So, to borrow from President Roosevelt, I have this strong conviction that this great nation called Nigeria will endure as it has endured and it will revive and prosper. It was just a matter of time, a very short time under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu as he skilfully and prudently kept on managing the various leaks draining the country and plugging them effectively.
• Yusuf Aliu, PhD (CMGR FCMI), France, writes via: draliu5th@gmail.com
