Rotimi Fasan
Just before I started writing this, the news broke that President Bola Tinubu had retired the Service Chiefs and the Comptroller-General of Customs. This was with immediate effect. A major appointee of the president in this latest round of appointments is Nuhu Ribadu, a retired Assistant Inspector General of Police and pioneer Chair of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
He was named the National Security Adviser (NSA). Ribadu was only last week appointed a Special Adviser, one of eight, to the President on Security. Until the confirmation of his new appointment on Monday night by a director in the office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), he had for some time been rumoured to have been penciled down for the NSA job.
The pundits who projected his appointment as NSA appeared to have missed the mark after he was proclaimed the President’s Special Adviser on Security. The new Service Chief are Maj. Gen C.G. Musa, Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), Maj. Gen. T. A. Lagbaja, Chief of Army Staff, Rear Admiral E.A. Ogalla, Chief of Naval Staff and AVM H. B. Abubakar, Chief of Air Staff Others are the Acting Inspector General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun and Maj. Gen E.P.A Undiandeye who is the Chief of Defence Intelligence, (CDI). The Acting Comptroller General of Customs is Adeniyi Adewale.
Tinubu’s house cleaning task which comes across as a clearing of the deck started with his suspension and arrest of the Governor of the Central Bank (CBN), Godwin Emefiele, whose sacking was an assignment foretold. It was only a matter of time, a question of when and not if, despite his visits to the presidential villa in the immediate aftermath of the swearing-in of the president. Then, Godwin Emefiele looked like a fish out of water surrounded by close associates of the president that had just months before fingered him as a major obstacle in the way of their principal’s fulfilment of his self-acclaimed lifelong ambition to be president.
The ouster of Emefiele was followed by the suspension of Abdulrasheed Bawa, the youthful chair of the EFCC that had been enmeshed in a long-drawn battle with the immediate past governor of Zamfara state, Bello Matawale. Matawale had labelled Bawa a bribe-taking anti-corruption czar who sat atop a mound of filth in the EFCC.
Plaudits had poured the way of the president after he sacked Emefiele who was loathed for his mismanagement of the country’s monetary and fiscal policies, especially his blatant incursion into politics even as a serving governor of the CBN; his ill-planned naira recolouring policy that brought ruin to many homes, as well as for his shameless pandering to every whim and caprice of a shadowy group of power mongers led by Mamman Daura, Buhari’s influential nephew that operated from within the presidency.
That Tinubu could bench these star players of the Buhari team along with taking a slew of tough decisions, not the least of which was his peremptory abrogation of the oil subsidy regime, the unification of the exchange rate and signing into law a student loan bill while forging alliances and meeting key national and international political and economic players like labour unions and political associates and opponents. The last set of visitors he received before the Monday night retirement love notes to the service chiefs were Aliko Dangote and Bill Gates, both of the Dangote Group and the Bill Gates Foundation.
All of these strengthened the aura of a formidable deal maker that had surrounded Bola Tinubu for most of his time as a politician and is beginning to earn him the warm attention of critical sections of the public including erstwhile opponents that appear set to sing a different tune from the one with which they heralded and accompanied the president into and all through his struggles from the party primaries and presidential election.
But there is yet an unyielding section of the critical mass that still does not have any good word for Tinubu. They have been quick to say that sacking and appointing officers to key or available positions or making policy changes in a government is all in a day’s job and nothing to cheer about a new president whose victory at the polls is still a matter of dispute. For them, Bola Tinubu could stand on his head in a gathering of dancers and they would not be bothered.
It’s important that this critical mass keep at their self-appointed task of holding the president’s feet to the fire. Everyone desirous of seeing a new Nigeria should encourage such scepticism in those who do not see themselves eating out of the palm of the president even if his appears to be the only palm available for now to keep them from starvation. Yes, as these critics are wont to say, it’s too early to heap praises on the president. The bar of governance as of our expectation as a people may have, indeed, been so abjectly lowered that we are impelled to praise just about any mediocre act of a politician who show nascent sparks of brilliance in matching their words with action and acting right by the people.
It’s just three weeks since Bola Ahmed Tinubu became president and it’s in fact too early to make definitive statements about the apparently right steps he has taken so far. But as our people also say, the day can tell an egg that will hatch. Yet despite the wisdom of this proverb, I’d still continue to urge caution and a healthy dose of scepticism. There may be no need ultimately to heap praises on Tinubu.
This is one job he ardently sought and signed for. But we must not forget that before him, before he got into this office that he has only occupied for three weeks, somebody had been there for all of eight years but could not bring himself to make key appointments for the first six months of his presidency to say nothing of sacking any of these appointees. This, despite glaring failures that should have made such appointments untenable.
We must also not forget that had Bola Tinubu come into office like a bumbler with no sense of direction, these same critics would have hurled insults at him and crowed, “Did we not say so?” The president’s supporters and the rest of Nigerians who know we cannot hope or afford to get things wrong this time again should, for the sake of Nigeria, continue to hope that the president keep on the straight track that he appears to have started on and allow his critics their right of dissent for as long as it does not go beyond that. As our people would again say, Push me, I push you…!
Vanguard
