Baba, who taught you how to do media chat? You are a maestro.
At some point, it sounded like you were waltzing through a polished manifesto on a campaign stage, dishing out fantastic promises. And those journalists were nodding like sheep. That’s the power of oratory. You disarmed them with your eloquence. They forgot you had been around for one and a half years. Baba, Olorun, your manner of delivery mesmerised them. They have since been frothing your praise. And I’m sure it’s not because of any transport money. You have something in common with Martin Luther King. Abati has confessed to the world that you were not given the questions in advance. You are a political genius.
It takes acute intelligence to answer questions from sleepy and fawning journalists without a clue about what lousy questions they might ask. But those guys forgot to ask you why the Naira was floundering around 1650 to a dollar when you promised to lift it to 300 in your first tenure. They couldn’t be bothered about what magic you would need to effect an industrial revolution in a country with miserable power generation and distribution.
But Baba, pardon me: your 2025 budget is only 30 billion dollars. Only a quarter of that, which new loans would fund, would be used for capital projects. I feared they would ask you to outline the trillion-dollar economy dream. Olorun, I was scared they would pin you down. Well, you had taken the proper precaution of not airing it live because of banana peels. But they didn’t even ask about electoral and judicial reforms.
My able President, don’t mind that lady called Maupe. She had the guts to ask you if anti-corruption was your priority. And when you started telling her how you used the minimum wage increase, which the NLC forced on you, to fight corruption systematically, she started talking about grand theft. As if she knew criminal justice more than you. As if you were dodging the question. The office of the president deserves respect. And she is even Yoruba. Could she ever dare ask Abacha questions on torture? Is it because you are a democrat? That’s how your political opponents go about saying you awarded the Lagos-Calabar road contract to your friend without due process.
They don’t remember that your friend helped you turn a jungle threatened by rampant ocean surges into a picturesque tourist destination city. Maupe Ogun thought you wouldn’t understand the insinuation buried under her insolence. Has any government ever found you guilty of corruption? If she has any questions, why wouldn’t she direct them to Umahi, who awarded the contract? Some of these journalists have even said behind you that many of the ministers you appointed are crooked politicians with huge files at the EFCC. Don’t they know that everybody is innocent until proven guilty? Are you the EFCC chairman?
That brings me to Babajide Otitoju. A man who works in your company. Instead of starting with good questions, he asked why you were preaching cost-cutting while running a bloated and profligate cabinet. Oga, where is his loyalty? He came with an Arise mentality. Is he not supposed to know that a country of two hundred million might need up to 200 ministers? These are the people who make the masses think you are a blooming hypocrite.
Often, it’s the home rat that tells visiting rats that there is dried fish in the ‘ngiga’. If TVC people are saying your cabinet is obese and profligate, then what do they want a jobless, red-capped Kwankwasiyya man in Kano to say? Anyway, you can pardon him, sir. He recovered in time to ask you the other bread and butter leading question on price controls. At least you used that question to shine. To show them that you studied in free market America and worked at Deloitte and Mobil. Otitoju set it up with a dubious frown on his face.
Before I forget, sir, I like how you gave it to Reuben Abati. You shoved it into his throat. He is a confused partisan politician moonlighting as a journalist on TV. He used a roundabout way to allege that our friend, the FCT minister, is corrupt and might cost you re-election. Typical agbaya, sir. He wanted to knock your heads together. Even though you may not be happy with how Wike is going about lands in Abuja and parading himself like a prime minister in frequent media chats, does Abati expect you to say so publicly? Doesn’t he know you are an experienced and tactical politician?
He wants to use you to settle his personal scores with Wike. Even if the man is grabbing land and giving to his political associates and business partners, as Abati insinuated, doesn’t Abati know that elections cost money? Anyway, Abati may not know because when he ran for deputy governor, Buruji must have piggybacked him all the way. Our people say a child on his mother’s back can’t tell the distance travelled. I like that you doffed your hat for Wike. The allegation that he is reallocating lands to his cronies is not corruption in Nigeria because his cronies are Nigerians and entitled to allocations. Did you notice that Abati was indirectly hinting you might lose your reelection? Does he think you are as naive as his former boss, President Jonathan?
My president, I’m happy you scored yourself excellent. You deserve a UN award. Baba, please, next time, don’t tell them that the large cabinet is for efficiency. You can tell them it’s for national unity. You have defeated both petrol and dollar subsidies by knocking them out in the first round. You have stylishly castrated the NLC. After that coup matter, the NLC President has folded up. You are teaching frivolous country lessons in management. So, if the unappreciative masses won’t blow your trumpet, why shouldn’t you blow it yourself?
They can continue shouting ‘Ebin pawo, Ebin pawo’ . Is it today the rain started beating them? Like you told them, haven’t you been sharing food and money at Bourdillon for over thirty years? Yet they would return to their houses to tell silly stories about ‘bullion van’. One of those sleepy journalists wanted to blame the food stampedes on you. If a man can’t impregnate his wife, he blames Tinubu. When you share things at Bourdillon, do people die? I agree with you. People who don’t have enough to share shouldn’t try sharing. When Betta Edu, your former minister, was ministering to vulnerable people, did anyone get trampled?
My president, you shocked them when you said you were bringing 2000 tractors. They didn’t see that coming. When you make agriculture sexier, as you promised, they will join ‘Awon boys’ to ask you to do a third term. Don’t mind those people saying 2000 is too small. How many did Peter Obi buy when he was governor of Anambra? How many has Atiku bought in his life? Olorun, all those people asking, “Where is the agbado? Where is the cassava?” will see agbado now. The Agbado revolution is coming. It’s good you are planning to feed Saudi Arabia. At least the Saudis will soon know that we are not just a pilgrimages-obsessed and beggarly nation perpetually looking for foreign loans. With the new tractors, we will clear all the forests for planting. Then, all those disgruntled folks, who lack a sense of compliance with laws, saying their lands have been seized in Abuja, can take as much land as they want in Nasarawa and Niger to produce food, to use their lives meaningfully for once and pay taxes.
My president, all hungry Nigerians are with you. They appreciate your empathy, particularly when you come out at midnight to check on their suffering, as Orji Kalu said. The angry Nigerians are the few who want to continue living fake lives. They want to continue flying their girlfriends from Lagos to Abuja for fifteen thousand naira and eating a buffet at Sheraton for three thousand naira. Some of them want to continue buying a bag of foreign rice for N5000. They want to eat foreign rice like federal ministers. One paediatrician at LASUTH, who ought to be riding a keke, went to buy a Mercedes. Now, he is crying ’T-pain’, jumping danfos, and trying to japa.
When you use your policies to give them Harvard grade management lessons, they call you T-pain. If they want to continue their old lavish lifestyles, can’t they go and become politicians and win elections? You told them how one of your friends who had five Rolls Royce cars stepped down to a Honda because he had no money for fuel, but they didn’t believe you. Your critics said you fabricated the story. They said all your friends are now on the front row, feasting like gluttons. So how can any of them flaunt your name and a Rolls Royce and not get a revoked land reallocated to him in Abuja?
By the way, my president, my friend Warawara, has suggested a way of making agriculture sexier. He wants you to deploy all female NYSC youths to the new farm settlements you will create in all Local Government Areas. If you give them correct security with French soldiers monitoring by satellite that will help. Then, you can use mouth-watering incentives to make the young ladies use Instagram to publicise the cushy side of farm life. Once you do that, the boys will seek redeployment to farms. Once that starts happening, then you can move to make politics sexier, too. Warawara is an inventive sir. You can make it more appealing by pushing through affirmative legislation, reserving 50% of all political appointments at all levels for young women. Women under 35. Once that happens, you will see these young men who don’t like party politics flock to the parties. Baba, in the military, it’s called Number 6.
My president, compliments of the season. Your own will not spoil. Anytime, Abuja gets too hot, just come back to Eko. You are our own. I like seeing you shut those busy Lagos roads to teach them a few lessons in calmness and orderliness. Shut them down jor. I love your reformed long convoys. I don’t know why, but I love to see my president living large, enjoying on my behalf. When I saw that long queue of hungry people in the sun on Bourdillon, with their pans in their hands, waiting for rice at your gate, I felt proud. Some think it was an eyesore. They say the country impoverished its citizens, and now they have to queue up without dignity in the sun to collect crumbs at the feet of their president to survive.
They can’t see your heart, sir. You love the poor. If the media don’t love you, don’t chat with them again. You start Tinubu Town Halls filled with progressives, different from the hullabaloo of media chats by fawning journalists.(Saturday Vanguard)
