APA-Abuja (Nigeria) Newly installed President Chief Bola Tinubu has his job already cut out for him even before he had time to assess the enormity of the task ahead given the harsh realities of a broken nation, nursing a battered economy, heightened insecurity and that perennial nemises, corruption.
By Goddy Ikeh
Tinubu was sworn in on Monday in Abuja for a four-year term by Chief Justice Kayode Ariwoola shorly before his vice-president Alhaji Kashim Shettima took his oath.
The former Senator and governor of Lagos State was declared the winner of the February 2023 presidential election by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in an election largely described by local and foreign observers and media as flawed and the conduct below acceptable international standards.
The winning candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) polled a total of 8,794,726 votes to defeat his closest rival, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, a former Vice President and candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) who polled 6,984,520 votes.
Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) came third with 6,101,533 votes.
In his inaugural speech, Tinubu made commitment to remove the subsidy on petroleum products and that there was no provision for subsidy in the national budget from June 2023 and, therefore, “it stands removed”.
Tinubu also said that his administration would aim at the GDP growth of 6 per cent annually and that foreign direct investment would be given a boost by reviewing all complaints about multiple taxations.
Unfortunately, he was sworn in with several unresolved court cases in court challenging his declaration by INEC as the winner of the presidential polls of February 25, 2023.
Already, a few of the court cases had been dismissed by the High Courts and the Supreme Court in Abuja. But the lead cases instituted by the candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi of the Labour, before the election petition tribunal, claiming that they won the presidential election which the electoral body, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) remain.
It did not stop Tinubu being declared poll winner.
However, the courts have thrown out some of the cases filed against Tinubu by some persons and groups requesting for an order of court to stop his inauguration.
Despite the pending court cases hanging over the early days of his presidency, Tinubu is inheriting a broken nation battling with extreme macroeconomic challenges, galloping inflation, currency depreciation, foreign exchange illiquidity, high energy cost, heightened insecurity, weakening purchasing power, structural bottlenecks, trade facilitation issues and over N70 trillion debts.
Meanwhile, as Nigerians begin another perpetual cycles of hope and despair after eight years of failed promises of the APC under now erstwhile president Muhammadu Buhari, many stakeholders are still hopeful that the incoming administration may turn around the fortunes of Africa’s mst populous nation, which is endowed with huge oil and gas reserves and large deposits of yet to be exploited solid minerals.
Already, many prominent stakeholders as well as organisations have sent in goodwill messages to the new administration and advice on how best to heal the wounds inflicted on Nigerians by the last administration and return the nation on the path of growth, which they believe is hinged on fixing quickly the broken nation and its institutions.
In his inaugural lecture on “Deepening Democracy for Integration and Development” on Saturday May 27, 2023, former Kenyan President, Uhuru M. Kenyatta, admonished Tinubu to build a prosperous nation for all Nigerians, irrespective of ethnic, religious and political tendencies.
Kenyatta urged Tinubu to “learn to lead those who do not love you”.
The United States Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, tasked him on inclusive leadership that represents all Nigerians. Blinken, in a telephone conversation with Tinubu emphasised his continued commitment to further strengthening the US-Nigeria relations with the incoming administration.
According to the spokesperson of the US Department of State, Matthew Miller, Blinken noted that the US-Nigeria partnership was built on shared interests and strong people-to-people ties and that those links should continue to strengthen under Tinubu’s tenure.
Speaking on the incoming administration, the former Deputy Governor of Sokoto State, Mukhtar Shagari, expressed optimism that Tinubu can achieve greatness as president of the nation if he surrounds himself with the right people.
For the International Monetary Fund, IMF, the incoming government should take steps to increase the country’s revenue base. The Resident Representative of the IMF in Nigeria, Ari Aisen, said during a virtual forum on the Nigerian debt situation, that the incoming government should drastically reduce dependence on debt to fund expenditures. According to Aisen, resolving the debt issues of Nigeria requires concentrating on revenue and expenditure.
According to him, the debt situation deteriorated because the federal government was spending more than it was actually getting in revenues.
Aisen said that the critical thing to do was for countries to be able to rely more on their own revenue to finance their own expenditure.
“That is the autonomy and the Independence that we like to see our member countries rely on,” he said.
However, worried by post-election crisis in the country former President Olusegun Obasanjo had in his post-election appeal to Nigerians, called for national reconciliation. Lamenting on the deteriorating state of the nation, Obasanjo noted that Nigeria “is presently more divided and corroded than what leaders of thought had in mind”.
Speaking at a public lecture series tagged, “From Elections to Governance and Performance” recently in Abuja, Obasanjo said that with the current situation on ground, it would not be out of place for a national reconciliation, which would assuage the feelings of aggrieved Nigerians, particularly the youth population.
He criticised the growing debt profile and spending spree of government at all tiers, especially those at the helm of affairs currently, likening the situation to “spending like a drunken sailor”.
According to him, the trend of thinking has become inevitable for Nigeria in the face of dwindling fortunes in oil revenue, huge foreign indebtedness and the urgency of diversifying the country’s neo-cultural economy. He, however, suggested the following:
On the worsening divisiveness of the country, he suggested that the new administration should urgently facilitate the process of national moral rearmament and national reconciliation that will assuage the youths of the country.
This, according to him, must be done in sync with the imperative of national value orientation that Nigeria requires to build a collective sense of enduring and local values and national belonging.
In the same vein, the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Matthew Hassan Kukah, had earlier said that Nigerians were ready to reclaim their country, “as God guides President Muhammadu Buhari in his retirement at the end of his second tenure on May 29, 2023.”
In his 2023 Easter message, the clergy also told the president-elect, Chief Bola Ahmed Tinubu, that the most urgent task facing Nigeria was not infrastructure or the “usual cheap talk about the dividends of democracy, but the most urgent mission of embarking on the psychological journey of making Nigerians feel whole again and cutting off the chains of ethnicity and religious bigotry and placing the nation on the path to our greatness, of exorcising the ghost of nepotism and religious bigotry.”
Kukah also urged the Supreme Court of Nigeria to remember that they have their conscience and God to answer to as they decide on the cases arising from the 2023 general elections.
“We are saddened that your sacred temples have been invaded by the political class leaving the toxic fumes that now threaten your reputation as the last hope for all citizens.
“It is sad that your hard earned reputation is undergoing very severe stress and pressure from those who want justice on their own terms. Nigerians are looking up to you to reclaim their trust in you as the interpreters of the spirit of our laws.
“The future of our country is in your hands. You have only your conscience and your God to answer to when you listen to the claims and counter claims of Nigerian lawyers as you decide the future of our country. We pray that God gives you the wisdom to see what is right and the strength of character and conscience to stand by the truth.”
“I am hopeful that you (President-elect) will appreciate that the most urgent task facing our nation is not infrastructure or the usual cheap talk about dividends of democracy.
“These are important but first, keep us alive because only the living can enjoy infrastructure. For now, the most urgent mission is to start a psychological journey of making Nigerians feel whole again, of creating a large tent of opportunity and hope for us all, of expanding the frontiers of our collective freedom, of cutting off the chains of ethnicity and religious bigotry, of helping us recover from the feeling of collective rape by those who imported the men of darkness that destroyed our country, of recovering our country and placing us on the path to our greatness, of exorcising the ghost of nepotism and religious bigotry.”
On the outcome of the general election which has continued to generate tension in the land, he stated: “We are all angry and we all want Justice. Yes, we have the right to be angry and we should be angry.
To the youth of Nigeria, he stated: “I salute your energy and courage. You fought a good fight across party lines. Your engagement and involvement substantially changed the contours of our politics. Things will never be the same again.
GIK/APA