Sonala Olumhense
President Bola Tinubu on Thursday lamented, for the first time, that Muhammadu Buhari’s eight years in charge was a disaster for Nigeria.
“Nigeria would have been bankrupt if we had not taken the actions that we took, and we had to prevent the economy’s collapse,” he told a group of supporters in Abuja. Powerful words.
In a statement signed by his spokesman, Bayo Onanuga, the Nigerian leader said, “For 50 years, Nigeria was spending money of generations yet unborn and servicing the West coast of our sub-region with fuel. It was getting difficult to plan for our children’s future.”
Despite the strong remarks, which basically confirm the view of many Nigerians that Buhari left Nigeria far worse than he had met it, Mr. Tinubu’s government has never questioned Buhari or any of his officials in a meaningful way.
Two days earlier, on March 11, Wale Edun, the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, disclosed a new “comprehensive economic plan” for the country.
The story was broken by Mohammed Manga, the Ministry’s Director of Information and Public Relations, who wrote that the Minister unveiled the plan. The Federal Ministry of Information reproduced Mr. Manga’s account.
But the News Agency of Nigeria, which is owned by the government, appeared uncertain as to how to report the story, and most of the Nigerian media ignored it. Did the Minister unveil a plan, or did he merely infer the existence of one?
One external interest that reported the story, the Middle East News Agency, said, “The Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun, said the Federal Government has unveiled a comprehensive economic plan for sustainable development, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reported.”
That is: he said, he said, he said.
Partly in the hope that the “comprehensive economic plan” might be related to the trillion-dollar economy-in-10-years that Mr. Tinubu spoke of in November 2023, I went searching for it: On the website of the Ministry of Finance itself. NAN. Peoples Gazette. Premium Times. Nigerian Television Authority. Daily Trust.
None of them had it. Nobody has it. Mr. Manga’s account of the Minister’s speech at the budget summit was very well written, but neither a speech nor an account of it is an economic plan.
If the government has an actual plan, please publish that. Otherwise, it is a hoax, and it is fiction like that on which Buhari feasted for the eight years Tinubu has spent his first two trying to cover up.
But you know that it is halfway to the general election when significant political figures begin to visit demigods—sick, crippled or demented—in their caves, seeking an “endorsement.”
One other measure of the season is politicians strategically switching locations. That is what Nasir el-Rufai, former Governor of Kaduna State, has just done given up, giving up his foundation membership of the ruling APC.
Last week, he revealed that he had received the approval of Buhari before he walked out on Mr. Tinubu and APC.
But it is Tinubu, not el-Rufai, who has Buhari’s fate in his hands, and so Buhari immediately rose to the microphone to pledge his loyalty. “I am an APC member,” he declared, “and I like to be addressed as such. I will try to popularise the party by all means.”
“Popularise.”
Because the games we play are nearly always in relation to power. In August 2012, for instance, an angry Reuben Abati, who was President Goodluck Jonathan’s spokesman, deployed a hammer upon Internet critics who were demanding good governance.
He called them “…Cynics, the pestle-wielding critics, the unrelenting self-appointed activities’, the idle and idling, twittering, collective children of anger, the distracted crowd of Facebook addicts, the BBM-pinging soap opera gossips of Nigeria who seem to be in competition to pull down President Goodluck Jonathan.”
Just 13 years later this week, Mr. Abati, in front of a live microphone at Baze University in Abuja, seemed to have enlisted among his pestle-wielders, telling a Founders’ Day event that governance in Nigeria must align with digital transformation.
“In a disruptive era, leadership transcends traditional authority and requires a proactive, visionary, and ethical approach,” he said, adding that a successful government must build public trust, including through accountability and ensuring sustainable national development.
In his view, “The future of governance depends on the ability of leaders to rise above personal interest and prioritise collective good.”
I applaud Mr. Abati’s change of heart. First, however, does he really understand this pestle-wielding enterprise? There is no way to acquire pestle-wielding credentials and credibility without apologies to the natives!
Speaking of credibility, I wish to acknowledge the successes that the EFCC has been celebrating lately. Among them: it recovered nearly $500 Million in 2024, and secured 4,111 convictions. It also recorded the single largest asset recovery in its history: a 753-duplex estate in Abuja, the owner of which it did not name, saying only that it belonged to a “former top brass of the [Buhari] government.”
This why I continue to report that the EFCC merely pretends to be a credible organisation, as it is shamelessly beholden to the rich and the powerful, scared to publish the annual report demanded by the law.
Go on: look at its website: its “archives” consist only of three years of small-time cybercrime and cheating/impersonation “convictions.” It flees from diligent prosecution of the big fish; where it starts one, that prosecution either drags on for decades, or is so full of holes it collapses.
The bigger offenders, particularly former governors/deputies, legislators, ministers, permanent secretaries, directors and other figures who live like locusts all over Abuja and are well-known to the EFCC, rarely make these lists. Instead, the EFCC nurtures them steadily, like animals in a farm, to grow strong enough to become a menace to such institutions as the police, the National Assembly, and the INEC.
In June 2023, as the 10th National Assembly was inaugurated, I declared in this column that Nigeria was scrubbing out character, reflecting on the new Senate President, Godswill Akpabio.
To Mr. Akpabio’s credit are a couple of excellent projects he constructed as governor of Akwa Ibom. Since 2015, however, the EFCC has chased him by day, only to treat him as special thereafter.
After he joined APC, Buhari chose him as one of his new heroes and put him in charge of the NDDC. Akpabio promptly stunk up the place on his way to the presidency of the Senate, including through trying to bribe the EFCC chairman with $350,000, and running rings around the agency.
No, the current mess at the Senate is not about Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, who is merely the latest high-profile woman to inflict a slap—legal, international or physical—on Akpabio, it is that the Senate has chosen to surrender its institutional dignity in defence of a man who has none.
But remember that we are in a specific era: the one in which, if you have no name, no character, no reputation, no training, no dignity, no self-respect, no credibility, no values, and no honour, you are the first in line to be crowned.
These are our circular games.
